Brown's Daily Word 7/19/14

        The Lord blessed us with a super Saturday.   I love the long summer days.  In my morning walk I met a man walking.  I stopped say hello to him. His speech was impaired.  He told me his name and told me that he had a stroke.  He shared about his work.  He is only 42 years old.  I offered to pray with him.  He agreed.  I prayed for the mighty power of Jesus to come upon him, to restore him.  Later in the afternoon I stopped by to visit a wonderful and faithful servant and warrior of the Lord.  He is in early nineties.  He vigorously  bold in his love for the Lord and in his trust in Jesus.  Alice and I stopped by our kitchen garden this afternoon.  Some of the tomato plants are over 5 feet high.  Then we  walked for 4 miles.  It was a glorious evening.  We are getting ready for worship tomorrow.

 

    The church of Jesus Christ never sleeps.  The church in the East getting ready for worship.  The church I grew up in Kanabageri, Orissa, India is a very active and enthused church.  It has grown spiritually and numerically.  While our team was there in India last April, during one of the events the praise team of the church led the worship.  There was a drummer who played the drums with  great zeal and joy.  I discovered the drummer was only 9 years old.  Two Sundays ago he died suddenly from sickle cell anemia.  We were saddened at the sudden death of this young boy.  My heart was blessed by the enthusiasm of this young boy.

    May the Lord bless us and provoke us around the corner and around the globe to worship the Risen Lord this Sunday.  The world is aflame... with the shooting down of the passenger airliner... the escalation of war between Israel and the Palestinians... the chaos in Iraq and Afghanistan... we need to turn the Lord for His peace and for His intervention.  The word “worship” comes from an old English word “worthship”, meaning that God is worthy; He deserves our praise.  Worship is our response to all God is and says and does.  When we really believe God deserves our worship, nothing will keep us away from church.  It’s simply a matter of priorities.  Worship has been described as “the most urgent, the most glorious action that can take place in human life” (Barth).  In worship we learn to respond to the ups and downs of life.  We discover that faith means trusting in God even when life doesn’t make much sense.

    Worship is not   an individual act.  We do not live in isolation—we are part of something larger.  Praise is the appropriate response to God’s goodness.  Sometimes we don’t feel like praising.  Our emotions too often govern us—yet the Bible is clear that God wants our worship whether we feel like it or not. When we discipline ourselves to faithful worship we will discover how our faith is increased and our relationship with God is being nurtured.  

    We’re not the audience when we come to church—God is the audience.  When we leave, we shouldn’t be asking, “What did I get out of church?”, but rather, “Was God pleased by my worship?”  There are many ways to worship God when we gather in His house; though styles of worship vary, we come to church to encounter and exalt the Lord God.  Augustine wrote that, “A Christian should be an alleluia from head to foot.”  Praise is the appropriate response to God’s goodness.  “Worship does not satisfy our hunger for God—it whets our appetite. Our need for God is not taken care of by engaging in worship—it deepens. It overflows the hour and permeates the week.” -Eugene Peterson 

    We who know Christ as our Savior will one day journey to what the author of Hebrews calls our “heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God” (12:24).  The book of Revelation describes this “new Jerusalem” as the perfect fulfillment of the City of God. 

 In Christ,

 Brown

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