Worship: Making the sacrifice

Worship is an essential part of spiritual formation.
Spiritual formation is about our relationship with God. Abiding in Christ, means living with Jesus in our lives, hanging out with him, making the choice to obey him! The Bible tells us that we are to worship God by sacrificing our whole being to God. We are to do his will and not conform to this world.

“Worship” has many facets, many levels to it. It is not merely singing praises. There is a lot more to it. To summarize “Let’s talk about worship,” we see that “worship” is about acknowledging and knowing the Lord, adoration and loving Him, and action in service to God. The word has several meanings and there are many ways to worship God. This is what we are discussing today, the many ways to express our worship to God in our worship services and in life.

In
regards to …the first directive that strikes my attention is that
we are to “continually offer up a sacrifice of praise…” The idea is to praise
God all the time, without ceasing. In our worship services this means that when
the singing is over, the worship is still happening. We worship God when we
give our offerings. We worship him in prayer of praise. We worship him in
learning from his Word. We worship him in fellowship with others. Also I must
note that our entire life can be an act of worship. We must not compartmentalize
our worship to Sunday morning instead continually worship God.

The
second directive is the repetitive idea of “offering up a sacrifice” similar to
. Praise is not about making ourselves feel good and energized, but it is
about worshiping, giving to God. It is not entertainment for your own soul, but
a gift to God, a sacrifice. In our worship services, we must remember that
church is not merely for us. Sure, God blesses us and fills us. Our entire life
is about worship. It is not always going to be easy to worship God. But we
sacrifice for God. And he is pleased with us when we do.

The
third directive is “do not neglect doing good and sharing.” (This is another
sacrifice!) We can and should please God through sharing our wealth, money,time, energy, blessings, etc. But we also share life together with other Christians. We share our time, our sacrifices, food,
fellowship, but also our tragedies, our prayer requests. I think also that we
must not only share with other Christians, but also with those who are sick,
those who are in need, those who need Jesus, and those who are not into the
church. It is good, right, and a sacrifice (of sorts) that pleases God when we
share the Gospel truth!

Easter: Only by His Blood

I don’t typically post on Sundays, but today is special. Today is Easter.
I want to talk about blood, but not any blood. Just the saving blood of Jesus Christ. That is what today is all about, remembering and celebrating Jesus Christ’s death. His death and bloodshed for our sin. With Christ we are forgiven.

The importance and power of blood
without the shedding of BLOOD there is no remission” (Hebrews 9:22).

God presented him [Jesus] as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished—(ROM. 3:25)

the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. (1 Jn 1:7)

Jesus is the propitiation for our sins. Christ died for our sins so that we may live in Him. This is the essence of the Gospel. We are forgiven only by the blood.

After looking at Christ and why he died, we only have 3 choices:

1. Accept Christ’s blood and death for our sins. Jesus is Lord. Jesus is Deity.
2. Reject Christ’s blood and death for sins. Think he is crazy. Jesus is a lunatic. Jesus is delusional.
3. Reject Christ’s blood and death for sins. Don’t trust Christ and His Word. Jesus is a liar. Jesus is deceiver.

For the Saint: Abusing the Blood
This is primarily, one of the greatest struggles a Christian can have. It is the struggle of the flesh as a sinner saved by grace. Psychologically, we know that God has forgiven ALL our sins. And we gladly accept this gift, that is Christ’s blood. We know God is sovereign and that we cannot lose our salvation from sinning (in general). So we have a struggle:
Abusing grace
But while we fully accept God as a forgiving God we should not forget He is also a Just God. He will judge us according to our actions here on earth. In Rom 6 chapter Paul lets us know that we do not have a license to sin. This how many abuse God’s Grace. If you read Philippians 3:18-19 It will tell you the consequences.
(My Rant:)
We have to live right! No longer should we live as abusers to grace. We need to step up and live right. Don’t hug all of Christ’s blood! He died for others too, so instead of selfishly indulging in our own sinful pleasures, we should be going onto the World and telling other’s about Christ’s redeeming blood that saves!

I want to end this blog with three amazing hymns/worship songs:
(In Christ Alone
Nothing But The Blood
Power in the Blood)