Ambassadors of Worship

I remember the Royal Ambassador's motto when I was a boy: "We are ambassadors for Christ".  And as a young elementary school kid I would lead the other boys in the Royal Ambassador Hymn - The King's Business. I remember singing those words . . . "I am a stranger here within a foreign land . . . Ambassador to be . . . I'm here on business for my King!  This is the message that I bring . . . be ye reconciled to God."  

If we are aligned with our Lord, we are aligned in our relationship to the world.  God shows us that there is a wall of separation from the world.  "Be not conformed to this world . .. " (Rom. 12:2).  "Be ye not unequally yoked with unbelievers . . . be ye separate " (2 Cor. 6:14-15, 17).  In a real sense we are taken out of the world so that we can be put back into it.  In John 20:21 Jesus says, "Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so send I You."  Christ came into the world as the Father's Ambassador.  Now the Christian goes forth into the world as an Ambassador of the Kingdom to shed the light of Christ, to be the light of the world, and to call people out of darkness to worship the King of Kings and Lord of Lords!  

The Holy Spirit indwells us in Christ and takes the love of the crucified, risen, ascended Christ,  shedding it abroad in our hearts . . . giving us a Spirit-filled love for the Father just as the Son loves Him, love for fellow members of the body of Christ as the Head loves them, and love for the unsaved world as the Savior loves them. We are ambassadors of the Kingdom while here in a foreign land.  Praying, going, and giving because of the love of Christ and His call to us to bring others to worship Him, joining us in shedding light to a dark, lost and dying world. God's business is to reconcile the world back to Himself.  We have a choice as to whether we will join the endeavor He calls us to.  mjm

Thanksgiving, Our Lives, Our Worship

Thanksgiving is really a state of mind and heart.  I am amazed at how many times we are challenged to be thanks-givers in the Scripture.  Giving thanks is an acknowledgment  that all we have comes to us and is not something of our own contriving.  We give thanks to God because we know He is creator and redeemer of His people, and our sustainer.  Whether we live our lives in an attitude of thanksgiving determines how we worship.  

Philippians 4 gives us insight into our thanksgiving state of mind.  Paul challenges us to rejoice . . . to not worry but to depend on our Lord, with thanksgiving.  It is an affront to our Lord, after all He is and has done, for us not to rejoice, for us to worry, for us not to have His peace guarding our hearts and minds in Him.  In this chapter we are challenged to "think" on all that God provides for us and in us.  

Will our thanksgiving instruct our living?  Will our thanksgiving affect our worship and bless the Lord?  Will our thanksgiving challenge us to give sacrificially so others may know the same peace?  Will our thanksgiving create an attitude of thankfulness in us that affects all we do and say so that He is glorified?  The more an attitude of thanksgiving instructs our lives . . . the more it will change our worship!  And . . . it also works the other way.  The more we thank Him in our worship the more apt we will be in living our daily lives with an attitude of thankfulness.  mjm

Proclaiming His Glory Throughout the Earth

If we love the Lord with all that we are we will bear a burden of love for people in need with a passionate desire to proclaim His glory to all the world.  Proclaiming God's glory is one of the fruits of true worship.  

A true test is if believers spend more time praying for their own prosperity and breakthroughs in their lives than they do praying for the advancement of the gospel to all peoples.  Many believers have come to believe that Christianity is all about what God can do for them and how He can bless them.  Rather, we as true worshippers would believe that Christianity is about our getting involved with Him and His kingdom purposes all around the earth.

Are we more concerned as churches as to how much we invest in our own churches or in how we invest in God's great kingdom mission?  If our churches are full of worshippers, we will become white hot about proclaiming God's glory through our lives and churches.

May we pray that God will ignite a fire in His people raising up an army of worshippers and followers of Jesus who are totally His (surrendered) and committed to proclaiming His Glory to the ends of the earth.  It begins with prayer.  So basic.  So overlooked.  Let us pray that as we worship and love God with all that we are, He will give us a vision of His heart for a world that really is hungry to see His glory!  Lord, set my soul afire! mjm

Praise and Glory for the Breakthrough

I was reading Acts 11 this morning and verse 18 literally jumped off the page.  Peter is trying to explain why he was ministering to the Gentiles, and all of a sudden it sinks in to his fellow Jews that salvation is for all peoples. And when it sank in guess what?  They started praising and glorifying God. What a breakthrough! This life was for all peoples.   It was prophesied in Isaiah 42, mentioned in Luke 2:32, John 11:52 and Romans 10:12-13...and the Isaiah passage was referred to again in Romans 15:9-16.

History has a way of repeating itself.  Over the years and even now I sometimes hear people say things like, "Why do we need to go to the other side of the world to tell people about Jesus?".  There are some in the church today who have the same kind of attitude the Jews had before the breakthrough.  We live in a country with evangelical churches on almost every other corner.  We have the most advanced media in the world. People here have the opportunity to hear about Jesus.  But there are many people groups across the earth that have never heard the name of Jesus. Of course we  need to be telling people here at home about Jesus, but we must not stop there.  

We can praise and glorify God which, by the way, is worship.  We can praise Him that our church here in Rockwall gives around 40% of all of our giving every year to ministry and missions outside our church.  This includes our giving through the Cooperative Program of the Southern Baptist Convention (which is a lifeline to our missionaries and other ministries), associational missions, our World Missions Offering,  budgeted items for ministry and missions here in our community, monies set aside for our student and adult mission trips and other monies designated to mission projects.  We praise and glorify God that we are part of a church with that kind of heart for missions.  Praise and glorify God for the breakthrough to all peoples.  

We are singing a hymn on Sunday, "Because I Have Been Given Much" which ends with these words by Grace Noll Crowell,  . . . "I shall give love to those in need, Shall show that love by word and deed: Thus shall my thanks be thanks indeed."  As we approach Thanksgiving, Christmas, and our World Missions Offering may those words be our heart's desire. Then, we can give praise and glory for the breakthrough of life to all peoples.  mjm

Throne Room Worship

In a very real sense our praise "enthrones" the Lord and as He is enthroned  it becomes a place of His abiding  presence.  Anywhere, anytime, anyplace the Lord shows up becomes a sacred place; a throne room if you please.  These throne room encounters are worship.  

God's Word is full of these throne room encounters.  In every instance there is a direct correlation between individuals encountering God and being involved in His mission to others.  Throne room encounters transform us into people on mission with God.  We see it in Isaiah's encounter in Isaiah 6. Isaiah was cleansed, commissioned, and sent forth on mission.  In Matthew 28 we see the 11 disciples encounter.  After a worship encounter, they are given the great commission.  Day of Pentecost encounter results in 3000 people being saved.  The Antioch church encounter included worship, laying on hands and sending them out.  The Philippian jail encounter of singing hymns to God results in the jailer and all of his house being saved, as well as the other prisoners witnessing God's power.  

Throne Room encounters equal great things:

Praise and Worship = His Presence

His Presence = Encounter

Encounter = Evangelism and Mission

Ministering to the Lord always comes before ministering for the Lord.  Throne room encounters are a prerequisite.  We can never effectively love the lost and dying world unless we first love Him!  mjm

Missions in Relation to Worship

One of the places in Scripture that we find missions and worship intertwined is in Acts 13:2.  This is a description of the birth of the great missionary movement that in a sense continues today.  Paul and Barnabas on their mission to the Gentile world is the beginning of that movement.

We see that the mission commission comes in the midst of worship.  It says in this passage "they were ministering to the Lord and fasting" when the Holy Spirit calls them to the mission.  Their mission came while they were worshipping.  Authentic Godly mission will always begin and end in worship.  We mentioned in other blogs how we see the same principle in Isaiah 6.  Worship will always lead us to be on mission.  If it doesn't, then we are not really worshipping.  We may attend church regularly, love to sing, be very religious, but if it doesn't lead us to mission, we are not really worshipping.  If we are not telling others about the Lord, praying, going, and giving then our basic problem is that our hearts are not abounding in Him.  

Why are these people in the church in Antioch found "ministering to the Lord and fasting"?  Because in chapter 11 we find the church of Jerusalem sending out people on mission, reaching those at Antioch.  The mission to the church at Antioch leads the new church at Antioch to worship.  Missions is not an end in itself.  Missions is a means to the greatest end - worship.  

John Piper is well known for saying: "Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church, worship is.  Missions exists because worship doesn't."  We were not created to be on mission, we were created to worship.  Because if our worship is genuine we will be on mission to those who are not worshipping Him.  Those who are reached are reached so they may worship the same glorious God whom we serve and worship.  And the very, very end of the mission will be the worship in heaven around the throne as predicted in Revelation 7.

Missions starts in worship, when God's people become caught up in His glory and majesty, becoming compelled to do everything possible to share Him with all peoples.  And the mission will end in worship... with peoples from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation one day standing before the throne of God joining with us in the eternal worship of heaven.  Hallelujah!  mjm

Out of Despair into Worship

As human beings we are capable of despair and depression.  There are things in our lives that are calculated to cause despair.  The actualities of life sometimes overwhelm and we begin to look down over our circumstances, our failures, our missed opportunities, and our unintentional hurting of others.  Despair comes when there seems to be no hope of things to come.

In I Kings 19:5 we find that the angel did not give Elijah a vision, an exegesis of the scripture or any other outstanding thing.  He simply told him to do an unremarkable thing . . . "arise and eat." When God's Spirit is able to get into our despair He tells us to do the most ordinary things.  When God comes He inspires us to do the most natural and simplest of things.  And, in the doing of them, we find that God is there.  When God's Spirit tells us to do something and we do it, we find the despair is gone.   Later in that chapter we see the word of the Lord as God's revelation comes to Elijah because he crawled out from under that tree.  When we arise and obey, we literally enter into a higher plane of life and worship. 

In Matthew 26:46 we find the disciples have failed to stay awake with Jesus and it produces despair.  A sense of the irreparable will bring us despair.  That's when we say, "There's no use in trying anymore."  This is not exceptional but common place in ordinary human experience.  Jesus comes to them and basically says this opportunity is lost forever and you can't change that,  . . . "but arise and go to the next thing."  His challenge is to allow the past to sleep on the shoulders of Christ, and to do the next thing, which is to trust Him wholly and to pray on the ground and basis of His Redemption.  We have had experiences like this in our lives.  But His challenge is for us to never let the sense of failure keep us from "arising and doing the next thing."  

The hope from despair comes when we know that "in us (in our flesh) dwelleth no good thing."  And our hope is:  as God shows Himself we are raised up by the hand of God.  God can do nothing until we reach the limit of our possible.  Rev. 1:17 says, "And when I saw Him, I fell at His feet as dead." When we see our limitations, we see His limitlessness.  Another place in scripture I am reminded of says, "My voice You shall hear in the morning, O Lord; In the morning I will direct it to You, And I will look up."  Yes, even despair can lead us to "arise, . . . look up" and . . . worship.  We need to arise and look up and see what God is doing on mission in our world! . . . and join with Him.    mjm

Gathered Together

We the disciples of Christ faithfully gather together week after week in worship.  In an interesting way today it dawned upon me that the account of His disciples gathering together with Him that last time we find in Acts 1 has great signifigance -  in the sense of our gathering together weekly as His disciples to worship Him even as they did.  And because they gathered with Him they were told:

"When the Holy Spirit comes on you, you will be able to be my witnesses in Jerusalem, all over Judea and Samaria, even to the ends of the world."  If we gather as we should in His name and for His glory faithfully, He will be faithful to make us witnesses beginning right in our homes and in the places we live, extending out to those areas around us, our country and yes, the whole world.

Our involvement in witness is direct and indirect.  We can be involved by praying for the lost in all those places and for those who will go.  We can give so that both we and others can go directly and witness in the power of the Holy Spirit.

In a very real sense, as we gather to worship every week, He says to us, "Ye shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and ye shall be witnesses to Me in your home town, your state and nation, and the entire world."  God, in our worship as we yield to you as totally yours, may we be given your global vision that begins here at home.  mjm

With Thanksgiving

I don't know how there can be any worship without thanksgiving.  As we enter that month where we talk about it, let's do more than talk and eat turkey and dressing.  

Our worship must extend beyond the wall of the church into our everyday lives.  Our worship touches and affects our homes, our work, our community, and our world through relationships, circumstances and opportunities.  The problem is many times we allow worry to replace worship in our hearts when it comes to all of these things.  

In verse 6 of Philippians 4 we find the following words, "do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplications with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God." And in the next verse we see that the result of doing that brings the peace of God guarding our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.  He is the center of our worship if we approach all of life as Paul challenges us in this passage.  

I remember agonizing as a teenager praying about someone who was straying from the Lord.  And I read this passage in Philippians over and over until one day I finally saw the words, "with thanksgiving" and it totally changed my perspective in my praying over this one and the circumstances involved.  If we are to worship Him in all aspects of our lives, we must learn to lay things at His feet with thanksgiving knowing, knowing, knowing, yes, knowing that He is working and accomplishing His will and way in every circumstance.  With thanksgiving is our act of trust and faith in a dependable God.  May we worship Him . . . with thanksgiving! mjm