What Is The Chief End of Man? Man’s Chief end is to glorify God, and enjoy Him forever!

That is the first question and answer of the Westminster Shorter Catechism. Apply that to your life. Do you glorify God in all you do? Do you enjoy being with him? We attribute worship to what we love.

Today we most commonly think of Christian Worship as only one thing; Sunday morning church service. We have had a change over the last twenty years, like never before, in how the Sunday morning worship service is going to be acted out. We have seen churches split apart over the style of music used in the worship services. We are now seeing a new kind of service, and churches for that matter, that is modeled after what some believe to be the book of Acts model.

But is Sunday morning the only time we are to worship God? Do we worship him in our daily lives and work? Do we give our all to honor him? Lets explore worship and see what it really is.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind (Luke 10:27)

What Do You Worship

Not everyone that says they worship God actually worships Him. We see so many people today that go to church only show up there because they get a good feeling from the experience or out of duty to someone (maybe to God maybe grandma).  They go to a church but do not actually worship the God they go to see.  How do we determine this? Look at the divorce rate or the teen pregnancy rate or the drug and alcohol abuse rate in the church at large.  For every pastor that gets caught with drugs or porn there are ten more that have not been.

So what does this have to do with worship?

Look at the verse above. We worship what we love. We pour or affection into what we love. One of the reasons I say the Church in America has become a laughing stock is because we love the world and all it has to offer and we put God and Jesus on the back burner. When we say yes to Christ we begin a discipleship where we learn from him. If we do not love Him then how can we learn anything from Him?

Let’s go back for a minute. If you came to this lens from the Spiritual Disciplines lens then you know that I asked you to read the 23rd Psalm during the week. Verse 1-3 says:

1The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.

3He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. (KJV)

How are you going to let someone lead you if you do not love them? How can you read this and worship him for leading you if you do not love him? in verse 4 it says, “thy rod and thy staff comfort me.” How can you say that if you are trying to buck the system and lead yourself.

Worship is about love, we will worship and need what we love and we will shun and deny what we do not.

I’m going to go ahead and walk right out on a limb here and make a stand.  I believe the bible is the absolute inerrant word of God.  I believe it is good for teaching as well as rebuke.  I believe it can teach us about salvation and about living a life that is holy.  I do not believe it changes nor do I believe it need to be reinterpreted.  I believe that there are things in it that we will not understand until we get to Heaven and if I get there and was wrong so be it, but to what I understand now I will not waiver.

In Romans 1 Paul says this:

16I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. 17For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”

18The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

21For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.

24Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.

26Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. 27In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.

28Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. 29They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.

According to the bible, I am going to go ahead and say that I believe Tony Jones got it wrong.  If you read the above and believe that sexual immorality and homosexuality are o.k. I have no argument for you because I can not say it anymore clear than that.  We as Christians are to declare the gospel and according to the parable of the sower some will listen and some won’t its just that simple.

Let me know what you think.

Read the originating article here:

http://blog.christianitytoday.com/outofur/archives/2008/11/tony_jones_bles.html

I traveled to my brother’s for the weekend and while that in itself is no big deal it was a huge deal for me.  He has done two tours in Afghanistan since I saw him last.  His tours to Afghanistan are real tours.   He does not sit in a town and tell people what to do, he is out getting rid of terrorists.  He loves his job.  If he died doing it I would not be mad at anyone because he chose this job and does it because it is what he wants to do.  What made this trip special was that I got to talk to my brother about Christ.

For many years he was agnostic at least or just to intellectual at best.  He left the church at 17 or 18 like many young people do.  He used every excuse not to listen to the gospel.  He knew every argument to block what he thought was a crutch for the week minded.  My grandmother prayed for him relentlessly until her death.  I have prayed for him since I have returned to the church.  Finally he heard the call of Christ to return to Him and he heeded that call.

I didn’t get into details about his conversion experience but I could see the change in his face.  He and his family are attending a bible teaching church and his growth is amazing.  If he does have to go back to Afghanistan and he does get killed doing his job I will be sad but I know that he will be in Heaven saving me a spot, and for that I am Thankful.

I receive a weekly newsletter from Leadership Journal and I usually just go through the main articles then file it in my leadership folder for future reference.  Today I scrolled through it and decided to go to their blog called Out of UR.  David Swanson has written a very good article about the new move toward a social justice in our conservative churches.

About four years ago we had a guy come to our church to help us discover our mission and try to figure out how to reach our community.  During one of these session I pointed out that our church does no mission work either in our neighborhood or abroad.  I was met with a resounding what are you talking about our this and we that.  So I knew we were going to get no where.  Yes we give about 13% of our budget to missions but we do no missional work what so ever.  But I digress

This article points out what I was trying to tell our congregation 4 years ago.  We need to see the hurting and get involved.  Unlike the social gospel movement in more liberal churches we are equipped to share the gospel when we do these missional projects.  My point is that we need to get involved.  Read the article I think you will like it.

Urban Exile: Re-discovering Justice? | Out of Ur | Conversations for Ministry Leaders.

Mart De Haan gives a great look at Paul and without saying it, legalism.  He shows how Paul looked at the law as a mirror of ourselves not as something to be lived up to.

He never denied that the law of Moses tells the truth about us. He just used the law like a doctor uses diagnostic tests. Not as a cure, but to show what’s wrong.

Been Thinking About » Messianics, Law, and Grace.