Sacrificial Worship

  Pastor Fred continued the series on worship by preaching out of Ephesians 6:5-9. One of the things that hit me as Pastor Fred started out is that does our worship have purpose? One of the things that often gets us in trouble is that when we worship, we just go through the motions. In essence, it is just something that we do so that we can check it off of our list. Whether it is our devotional and prayer life, or coming to church and even sharing the Gospel. Do we do it so that we can check it off of our list and we can go do our own thing. True worship should be in everything we do and takes our all, whether it is worship in a church service to how we work for our paycheck and how we interact with everyone we come into contact with. 

  I was doing some reading this week and was reminded that worship is sacrifice. As we have gone through this series, Romans 12:1-2 has come up weekly and it is Paul telling us that we are to be a living sacrifice. When we become a living sacrifice, we say that it is not our will but Gods. When we worship and become a living sacrifice, it’s often means that that it is going to cost us something great. Could it mean we get a little less sleep, or go without so others can have something. Often when this happens, God puts us in uncomfortable situations, not because He is a jerk, but it allows u to either trust Him more or to walk away and do our own thing. Sometimes God calls us to sacrifice something that we hold valuable because we have placed it over God and we would rather worship that instead of God. Maybe we Gould spend less time on social media or drop it all together because we either care to much about what other people think or their reaction to some news story or gossip. I know I can be guilty of this, it is saying something just to get a reaction out of someone while sitting back and watching them fume. Sacrificial worship is keeping the right things in the right place and giving God all the glory. 

  So here is a question I thought of, can we truly worship without joy? We can worship when we are happy, because that is more circumstantial and we are in a good mood for various reasons. Worshipping with joy means we worship despite our circumstances and what is going on. Can we worship when our boss is being unfair, or our significant other said or did something extremely hurtful. True worship is handling those situations with grace, forgiveness and not sweeping it under the rug. Or how about when we are the idiot and do or say something that is hurtful. We shouldn’t have joy because we did those things, but joy in worship comes in seeking forgiveness and making restitution so that it does not happen again. 

  Over the last few weeks Pastor Fred has repeatedly said that worship happens in all area of our lives. One of the big areas is how we worship at work. Most of us work at places where Christianity isn’t the only option and there are even people who are hostile towards Christianity. Worship at work is more than requesting Christian music be played or praying for our meals during our lunch. True worship is how we work. Do we do things to the best of our ability, do we take shortcuts in our projects, to how we interact and talk with and about people. People often notice and believe in more of what they see us do and how we react people than the words we say. I have worked with people who had the ability to talk about big game, but when it was time to work, they had no work ethic and treated people like garbage and most people knew it. 

  One of the interesting things with working at Wal Mart is that I work with a lot of younger people and they have no connection with God. There are two guys in particular that I interact with a lot and we are all history fans. So we often share tidbits of history stuff with each other and ask historical questions. My latest question was asking them what famous world leader past or present they would like to interview? I got everything from Julius Caesar to Adolf Hitler.  The conversation it led to was interesting. When we worship as we work, people tend to notice and ask questions. Through that, we can build relationships and point them to Jesus. 

  I will close with this. We are all created to worship God in everything we do, and yess sometimes it is hard work and sacrifice, but life goes better when we do it Gods way. 

Grace and Peace

Tom Boustead

Work as Worship

   Pastor Fred continued the series on worship by preaching out of Colossians 3:18-4:1. The crux of the message is how do we bring the sacred  to the secular. As Pastor Fred was preaching, I was reminded of when President Kennedy as he was campaigning for the White House in 1960, he had gotten a question about being Catholic and President. He responded by saying that: 

     “He wasn’t a Catholic running for president, but he was the Democratic Nominee running for president 

       who happens to be Catholic.”

  In essence, he was saying that his faith or worship wasn’t going to affect how he was going to run the country and interact with other world leaders. When we take this view or approach, our faith or worship isn’t that important to change how we do things and see the world. Our faith becomes very private when we do this and we loose that communal feel not only with God, but others also. Here are some thoughts from this weekends message.

  My first observation is about our sincerity in worship, not so much when we are in church, but we live life when we are with our family, at work, or even when we are doing our hobbies. How often do we zone out while we are doing those mundane task whether it is doing dishes, pointless paperwork while at work. Sincerity in worship means that we do those things to the best of our ability, no matter if it is for our best friend or that boss we could care less for. Remember, everyone is created in Gods image, and we worship God in how we treat them and do things for them. 

  The Apostle Paul in his letter to Philemon, he encourages the runaway slave Onesimus to go back to Philemon and to work as he is working for God. This idea of work is more than performing task, but it is glorifying God in all we do and doing things to the best of our ability. Paul also tells Philemon to treat Onesimus with care and respect because he is a believer and a child of God. 

  My second observation is that according to the Apostle Paul in Ephesians 2:10 that we are Gods handiwork and we were created for a purpose. God has created each one of us uniquely and it not only shows the vastness and greatness of God, but our worship back to God is taking the gifts that He gives us and doing them for His purpose. God designed each one of us for a specific task and to reach particular people. Where we get ourselves in trouble is when we take those gifts and use them for not their desired purpose. Even worse is when we become jealous of other people’s gifts and we either try and develop those gifts and become frustrated when we don’t get the desired result, or we sit down, throw our hands in the air and throw a fit. Bringing the sacred a little closer to the secular is taking those gifts that God gave us and taking how He designed us and we go out and we change the world. I call this work as worship, because we are not only worshipping God through song, but in action also. 

  I will close with this and it has been a theme throughout the whole series. We are to be a living sacrifice, and when we do this, it requires everything from us. We can not keep certain things from God, we are getting off of that altar and doing our own thing, we go from worshipping God to worshipping ourselves. When this happens, the secular and sacred get further apart and when we do this, we put God in a box and we only open that box when we need Him. God is not only supposed to transform our song and who we pledge allegiance to, but also in what we do and how we do it.

Grace and Peace

Tom Boustead

Worship as Response

 

  

  Pastor Fred continued the series on worship by preaching out of Colossians 3:12-17 and we could spend forever in this passage mining the truths that the Apostle Paul gives not only to Timothy and the church at Colossae in the first century, but to us in the twenty first century. If you want a piece of random information, theologians like John and Charles Wesley along with Martin Luther took popular songs of their day and put sound theology to the melodies and they used it in their worship

  The first thing that hit me was that forgiveness is apart of our worship. Just as we were forgiven by God, we shall forgive others as a part of our worship. Can we truly sing and worship God if we have bitterness, fear or hate in our hearts? Throughout the whole Bible, God tells us that He would rather for us to be in right relationship with Him and others over a well sung song or the gifts that we give. Even Jesus tells us to leave our gifts at the altar so we can go make things right with others. Can we truly sing and worship God without giving and receiving forgiveness?

  My second observation is that worship is sacrifice. In Romans 12 the Apostle Paul tells us that we are to be a living sacrifice. This means that worship takes our whole life and dedication, wether we are singing in church to mowing the lawn, and even at our place of employment, we do things and interact with people as a form of worship and for Gods glory and also to exalt Him. But I will warn all of us, being a living sacrifice means that it’s for Gods glory and not ours. The other is that being a living sacrifice means that we like to jump off of the altar and not be that living sacrifice because things get uncomfortable or we don’t like the direction that Gods calling us. 

  My third observation is that singing often is a great unifier. I was at a conference in college and the worship duo Shane and Shane led worship. After one teaching session, they came on stage and led worship and there is something about a bunch of over caffeinated and sleep deprived college students who came from all over the Midwest singing and worshiping together. God showed up that night and we worshiped as one. It didn’t matter our college, where we were from or if we had Armenian, Reformed or  Pentecostal theology, or who we voted for, because we were all there to worship the same Savior. Worship, especially singing helps us not only unifies and builds community, but it also restores our focus on who should be worshiped and that is God. 

  I will close with this, it’s easy to worship when we know the songs and we like the style, but can we still worship when we don’t know the songs and or despise the style? Also, do we check out when we don’t like the song, style, or are distracted by that days events. True worship is singing no matter if it is a Chris Tomlin song or a hymn from the 1500’s played on an organ, we worship God in song, because worship, especially singing is our response to what God has done for us and even through us. 

Grace and Peace

Tom Boustead