Worship Because...

Read Psalm 100
(No Bible near? Click the Scripture reference to read any number of translations online at BibleGateway.com.)

This past Sunday, the pastor gave four reasons to worship God:

Because God made us.
Because God loves us.
Because we belong to God.
Because He is all around.

How do you feel about each of these reasons?Do they stir your heart to worship?

God made you. Just the way you are with your specific looks, gifts, talents and abilities. Do you find reason to worship God because He made you?

God loves you. He loves you just as you are. You cannot do anything to earn His love or make Him love you more. He loved you first. While you were still His enemy. He loves you so much, He died for you. How does this make you feel? Any desire for worship stirred?

You belong to God. God made you, therefore you are His. To place wherever He chooses. To care for however He thinks best. How is God treating you as one of His possessions? Feeling a Hallelujah! rising from your depths?

God is all around. He has hemmed you in before and behind. There is no running from Him. No hiding from Him. He sees all and knows all. Your interior and exterior. How does that make you feel?

Our spirit may squirm at the responses our flesh wants to give to these questions.

Criticism may rise about how we were made, question His love for us, be resentful of how we perceive His treatment of us, and with no where to hide... that's quite an invasion of privacy.

Depending on whether we know God as God, will color our response to the questions, as well as determine the depth of our worship.

To receive God as God, is to accept His will as perfect, His way as perfect, His plan and purpose as perfect.

To receive God as God begins by giving Him thanks
because He made you,
because He loves you,
because you belong to Him,
because He is all around,
no matter how you feel about it, but just because He is God.

I dare you. Give thanks now. Because He is God and there is no other.

Thank Him specifically. For everything. Whether you feel it's bad or good. Whether you like what He's allowed in your life or not.

Thank Him. Because He is God. And there is no other.

I believe He will honor your faith...
and fill your heart...
with a joyful noise of praise...

I know He did mine...

Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth!

Psalm 100:1 ESV

Just some thoughts from Sunday...

Where to Find Encouragement to Take Up Your Cross Daily

Read Luke 9:23-27
(Click the Scripture reference above to read on BibleGateway.com)

In his message on Sunday, Rev. Stephenson said Jesus teaches that self-sacrifice leads to contentment.

"...If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it.

But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it. ..."

---Jesus

Luke 9 24 NLT

This from the One whose purpose is to make the way for a rich satisfying life. If He says give up your life for His sake to save your life, then that must be the key to a contented life.

 But, as Rev. Stephenson pointed out, it's a challenge to follow Jesus.

Choosing daily to pick up your cross and die to self is hard.

The writer of Hebrews gives advice on how to make such a hard choice each day:

Keep your eyes on Jesus, who both began and finished this race we're in. Study how he did it. Because he never lost sight of where he was headed --- that exhilarating finish in and with God --- he could put up with anything along the way: Cross, shame, whatever. And now he's there, in the place of honor, right alongside God. When you find yourselves flagging in your faith, go over that story again, item by item, that long litany of hostility he plowed through. That will shoot adrenaline into your souls!

Hebrews 12:2-3 The Message

When you wake up one morning, and the cross doesn't look so good, look to Jesus. Study His story. Spend time in the Gospels. Ask Him to encourage, sustain, and pump you up with spiritual adrenaline.

The more you know Him and understand what He has done for you, the more willing you will be to sacrifice for Him. Then you will know a full, abundant, rich, satisfying life of contentment.

Consider taking time this week to sit and read one of the Gospels in its entirety. Be encouraged.

In your struggle against sin, 

you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.

Hebrews 12:4 NIV

Where is Your Treasure?

Read Matthew 6:19-24 
(No Bible near? Click the Scripture reference to read online)

The message last Sunday provoked a simple thought that requires honest examination.

Where is your treasure?

For where your treasure is,

there your heart will be also.

Matthew 6:21 ESV

Are you investing in the world or in God?

Do you trust the things of this world more than God?

Are you rooted in the spiritual or the temporal?

Not Only at His Feet, But in the Garden

Thoughts on Sunday began with the offering of music.

Mike Kellogg on his saxophone, accompanied by Phyllis Hunt on the piano, performed a beautiful jazz rendition of a classic, In the Garden.

Thoughts of Jesus walking, talking, laughing, listening, tending the garden of my heart... filled my mind as the melody filled the Sanctuary. Spirit-inspired pictures of a Savior who longs for relationship, waiting for me, for you, to join Him.

Here is where my heart was when Rev. Stephanie Scott began to preach. She came at the invitation of UMW, whose Sunday it was to serve through worship. Her selected passage: Luke 10:38-42. Take time to read it for yourself (click the Scripture reference to read it online if you don't have a Bible available at this moment).

Rev. Scott began by resisting her interior Martha and stepping out from behind the pulpit...

The Mary in me tells me to come down and sit with you at the feet of Jesus...

Her emphasis, spiritual formation. The art and practice of sitting at Jesus's feet... joining Him in the garden of your heart... allowing Him to tend your soul...

It's the better choice.

The first step of discipleship, before the work for Him, is relationship with Him.

Spiritual formation is work in itself, requiring discipline to carve out time with Him.
Praying.
Meditating on Scripture.
Spiritual Disciplines.

To our interior Martha these practices can seem unproductive, a waste of time. But don't be deceived...

"...Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken from her."

Luke 10:42 NIV84

The lessons learned sitting at His feet, or walking with Him in the garden, are eternal. They will not be taken from you. Let them color, guide, and energize the work to which He calls you.

He's waiting... calling you... to join Him...

Do you hear Him...?