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7/31/2013 0 Comments Minister To Him Like Anna We are in Day 3 of our 10 Day Daniel Fast. We find in Scripture, that fasting was an expected, inseparable part of a Believer’s life. Fasting is a way of submitting and surrendering to the Holy Spirit in our lives. Fasting, it is an unfamiliar concept to many, and a seldom used means of intimacy with our Savior. Fasting is a valid spiritual discipline and should become part of a Believer’s lifestyle, similar to prayer, Bible study, Scripture memory. Above all, fasting should be a personal expression of worship to our Lord from a heart devoted to Him and worship should be done night and day. As you worship Him and resist temptation, you place your desire for intimacy with God above physical cravings of hunger, sleep or the comfort and trappings of this world. Prophetess Anna was that type of believer. In Luke 2:37 says, “She never left the temple but worshiped night and day, fasting and praying.” Much is not told of Prophetess Anna in Luke other than:
Anna—what an interesting woman! She served the Lord (ministered to the Lord) with fasting and prayer night and day. The word ministered is often exchanged with the word serve, what an unusual idea for a woman to minister to the Lord in prayer and fasting. Luke makes it clear that Anna never leaves the temple. Perhaps her devotion and expectation is why she never leaves the temple. Whatever her reasons, she is a fixture at the temple. Depending upon one’s perspective, Anna is living a life of worship or is a religious fanatic. Either way, Anna has found her niche. Luke stresses Anna’s age and single minded devotion. Anna does not lead a very complicated life. She never goes anywhere. Her singular focus is the service and worship of God. She is part of the remnant that is still actively seeking the Messiah. Anna is a throwback to a bygone era whose unwavering faith is likely as rare as being from her long lost tribe. We have no sense that Anna is impoverished, anxious or desperate…She seems to be yearning for something that is not practical at all. And though no priest notices the baby Jesus, someone, a widow, associated with organized religion takes notice and although Anna could not go into the Holy of Holies as the priests of her times, she is fortunate to see God in person. Anna proved that fasting coupled with prayer is pleasing to the Lord and when you are submitted to Him in a posture of worship and love, He will surely honor your sacrifice. As we corporately fast, pray for a worshipful posture like Anna. Resist the temptation to be prideful or think more highly of yourself than you ought, but let your worship take on the form of “fasting and prayers” and open your heart so that you can minister (serve) Him like Anna! Enter into The Sanctuary to worship and express your heart to your "One Desire".
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7/23/2013 1 Comment His Glory Is Where You Want to Be Each Wednesday in The Sanctuary we set aside to teach and educate on the importance of Worship. Worship is important to the individual and to the Body of Christ. As a matter of fact both are powerless without worship. If you don’t worship as an individual down through the week there is no way you can truly worship during a church service or fellowship. Why? Because worship is a lifestyle and not just something that we do at church. Worship is how we get into the presence of God. The Bible says in Psalm 22:3 “But thou [art] holy, [O thou] that inhabitest the praises of Israel”. We take this scripture and say give praise because God inhabits the praise of His people; however, for us to come into His presence we must worship Him. If we don’t go into the presence of God we cannot grow spiritually, therefore we die spiritually. When we come into the sanctuary to worship we need to get our minds off all the stuff and negative things in life and concentrate and focus on God. Understand that we can’t worship God if our focus is everywhere but on God. The heart must be focused on Jesus in worship. Worship is what brings revival. Worship brings us into the presence of God and in the presence of God is where you want to be. Worship with the power of the Holy Ghost produces breakthrough, deliverance, peace, and victory. When we worship in spirit and in truth, we are preparing the way of the Lord. When His way is prepared, He steps in and does a great work in the lives of people. And the devil can’t do anything to stop it. He can’t stop you from receiving your breakthrough, from being delivered, set free, cleansed, made whole, and getting the victory.  Repeatedly in Scripture, we see that whenever God calls someone into His service, He first reminds the person of His enduring presence. We see this in the stories of Moses (Ex. 3:11-12), Joshua (Josh. 1:1-9), Gideon (Judg. 6:12), and Jeremiah (Jer. 1:6-8), to name just a few. These men discovered, as we can, that the awareness of God’s presence energizes us for our work. Why does God repeatedly assure His followers of His presence? He does so because we need to be reminded of the reason for our confidence. He essentially says, “You can be strong and courageous because I am with you. Victory isn’t about your abilities, your strength, your skill, your armor, your gifts, or your dedication; it has to do with My presence. You can be strong because I will be strong in you.”When Jeremiah trembled at the thought of the difficult ministry ahead of him, the Lord strengthened him with these words: “They will fight against you, but they will not overcome you, for I am with you to deliver you” (Jer. 1:19). The adversary knows if we don’t worship we become weak and frail and easy to defeat; therefore he will do whatever it takes to distract you to the point that you don’t feel like worshiping God. But that’s even more reason why we should do everything in our power to be in His presence, in His presence we find the strength to get up out of that current condition and go on to higher heights and deeper depths in God. The adversary knows if we don’t worship we become weak and frail and easy to defeat; therefore he will do whatever it takes to distract you to the point that you don’t feel like worshiping God. When did you last feel the presence of God in your life? I don’t mean a merely intellectual recognition that He is with you, for He is everywhere. Rather, when did you last recognize in your heart that the Lord is personally, intimately abiding in you? If you are like many believers, it may have been a while since you really felt His presence. Too many people go about their lives without a genuine sense of God’s closeness. Today, worship God in spirit and truth and tell Him that you will do anything for Him, just see Him, to behold Him as your King. Tell Him that you want to be "Where He is"! 7/17/2013 0 Comments He is Faithful! Worship as it relates to suffering is a subject of discussion that doesn’t seem to be widely talked about. Worship is a choice to praise God despite the pain a person may find themselves in or the circumstances that surrounds us. It’s at these times of suffering when we can do nothing but trust God. Do we have faith to believe God is God of the storms of our lives? Faith will always fan the flames of worship. We need to be reminded that God’s love, and loyalty will never run out, and are new every morning and we can trust that time after time He will be there! Lamentations 3:22-23 says,"Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness.”  The writer of Lamentations knew something that many of us may have forgotten. We should always be in a state of worship and praise. As the writer of Lamentations points out: We should lift up our hearts and our hands to God in heaven. This is indeed a posture of worship and it is a posture that we should continually be in because of who God is. When we lift our hands and our hearts to heaven, we keep our eyes heaven-bound rather than self-bound. We should be in a posture of praise and worship because we know that God grants us new mercies each and every day. Every new morning we awake, we know His mercies are fresh and new, giving us another opportunity to get things right. His faithfulness far exceeds our own and that, should be all the reason we need to remain in a posture of praise and worship. So, as the writer of Lamentations tells us, let us examine ourselves and turn back to the Lord, for His faithfulness endures forever. When we can’t seem to perceive God amidst our path and the clouds of anxiety and fear closes in on us, the way forward is to remind ourselves of what we know to be true and dependable. The unchanging grace of God we see. To worship God is to tell Him that we believe Him for who He says He is. I believe in the sun even when it is not shining. I believe in God, even when He is silent. Yes, every act of worship is a choice, a decision to believe and respond to God for who He says He is; no matter how pressing our circumstances. And the greater the pain we’re experiencing the greater a choice it may be. Sometimes we will walk blindly, unable to understand a certain situation. Our only comfort being the knowledge that God Himself is not walking blindly, but instead, He is kindly and firmly in control. To praise God through all of the storms is to fully praise and worship Him. The Lord's faithful love should be all we need to keep us in a posture of praise and worship. His faithful love sustains us, His faithful love keeps us even when our love is less than faithful. God loves us in the midst of our challenges as well as on the peaks of our joys. Great is His faithfulness! 7/10/2013 5 Comments Thank You is the Heart of Worship Here is a searching spiritual question as we focus on Worship this Wednesday, in your worship: Are you cultivating and becoming a more rejoicing, grateful, thankful person? Would your work associates say that you are in a constant state of gratitude and thankfulness? What would your spouse, children, and close friends say? Or would they say that you are generally negative, gloomy, complaining? Would you say that your prayer life is increasingly characterized by praise and gratitude? Or is it dominated by whining requests and demands? If you could record the last month's thoughts of praise and gratitude vs. envy, self-pity and complaining, what would the replay ratio be? Cultivating a lifestyle/disposition of praising and thanking God is right at the heart of the new worship that was discussed in the New Testament. Hebrews 12:28 says, "Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe." Hebrews 13:15 states, "Therefore, let us offer through Jesus a continual sacrifice of praise to God, proclaiming our allegiance to his name." God’s desire is that we praise and thank Him for our benefit, not His. God is pleased when we thank him for the same reason that good parents are pleased when their child thank them—not because it validates them as parents, but because it shows that their child is maturing. An attitude of thankfulness toward God is the most reliable indicator of your spiritual health. Are you spiritually healthy? Gratitude is the normal and natural response to one who has received grace. “Grace” means undeserved charity. In fact, “gratitude” comes from the Latin word for grace (“gratio”). A biblically grateful person is someone who appreciates both how undeserving he is before God and how charitable God has been to him. An ungrateful person feels he is deserving, and therefore expects God to give him his due. If lack of gratitude indicates that one is spiritually unhealthy, one can improve their spiritual health by cultivating a grateful attitude. And cultivating a grateful attitude will result in experiencing more true happiness. You can cultivate gratitude by prioritizing thanksgiving in your prayer life vs. letting it get crowded out by petitioning. You should always include it, and sometimes focus on it alone. You should take note of “small” blessings and actually express thanks to God for them vs. taking them for granted, acknowledging without expressing thanks. Warmly thank people who bless you daily, even if it's “small.” This will complete your enjoyment of the blessing, and it will increase your capacity to see other blessings. Ask God to sensitize you to internal negativity and complaining. When He does this, promptly turn away from these thoughts and replace them with thanks in the related areas. Set aside time to reflect on how God has worked through past negative situations for good in your life. This will help you believe that He is doing so in present negative situations—and thereby help you to thank Him now. Finally, utilize spiritual songs. They often have power to lift my eyes and heart when nothing else does. And on this Worship Wednesday, as you enter into The Sanctuary, allow this song of worship to bring "Thank You's" to your lips and let them flow to our Heavenly Father's ears; as your continual praise of gratitude and thankfulness will surely be pleasing to His heart.  The smile of God is the goal of your life! Numbers 6:25 says, “May the Lord smile on you …” Our worship is something that God enjoys and makes Him smile. It is communion with Him and we were made for that sole purpose. It makes God happy to receive worship. It is all that we actually own and can give to Him. Everything else, he gave to us. Worship is our only real gift to God. Since pleasing God is the first purpose of your life, your most important task is to discover how to do that. “Figure out what will please Christ, and then do it.” Ephesians 5:10 (MSG) . Five acts of worship that make God smile: - God smiles when we love him supremely. - God smiles when we trust him completely. - God smiles when we obey him wholeheartedly. - God smiles when we praise and thank him continually. - And God smiles when we use our abilities. John 4:24 reminds us that we are to worship God in spirit and in truth. That simply means that what we say should match what we do. That is the only way our worship will make God smile. I don't know about you, but I love the fact that my worship can make such a wonderful God smile. Will you make pleasing God the goal for the rest of your life? There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that God won’t do for the person totally absorbed with the desire to make Him smile. On this Worship Wednesday let's put a smile on our Heavenly Father's face and present our lives, our heart and our worship to Him. |
What is Worship?
The Apostle Paul described true worship perfectly in Romans 12:1:
“I urge you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God which is your spiritual service of worship." Worship is first of all an experience. It may express itself through certain forms, but it is not primarily a form. It is an experience. It is a consciousness of the presence of God and a response to that consciousness. Worship expresses itself as an outreach of the deepest emotions of the soul in adoration, reverence, homage, exaltation, and praise to the Almighty. We hope that our Worship Wednesday creates a deeper more meaningful worship experience for you. Visit our other inspirational blog
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