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Comment on ABBA? by woodworking tools

woodworking tools — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 08:27:02 +0000

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Comment on ABBA? by Adam Swift

Adam Swift — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 03:44:25 +0000

You know, God’s love is just so amazing. I was out tonight to let the dog out and i just stood out in the backyard, no lights, no planes, no view of anything but stars. They were soooo beautiful. And i thought to myself, “These stars are brand new. I’m one of the FIRST people to be able to look at these new creations by God. And there is tons of billions of trillions of uncountable stars out there, and more galaxies then man can imagine.” It is amazing to think of this massive huge space outside of earth, and think that we aren’t even the biggest planet…we are a tiny speck of dust compared to every out there. And the whole universe is a tiny speck of dust to God. And when this is fully fathomed and we come back to realization that there is something BIGGER than ANYTHING that will EVER be that loves us like a dad out there…repentance comes, awe comes, humbleness comes, fear comes, and love takes over. He knows my heart and how i have strayed, that i have “built cisterns of water that can’t even hold water (Jer. 2:5-6)” instead of staying with Him, the Living Water. That i have “played the whore with many lovers (Jer. 3)” instead of staying faithful to Him. He’s the ultimate dad. But still, we let the miraculous stories that are revealed in His Word pass from one through the other without letting it phase us, we have forgotten the full power of prayer, we have forgotten the full power of God, and we no longer fall down on our faces (literally) to find Him. He longs for His children…let’s stop building these faulty wells and chasing after lovers that dont fullfill. Let the body of Christ start to move…start to work together to bring Him glory. Soli Deo Gloria.

Comment on Turn it on it’s side….. gain fresh perspective by Adam

Adam — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 19:04:33 +0000

I think this is a very good topic. Let me speak about worship in the form of music like we seem to be doing. We must keep in mind that at one time, the hymns that were sung by the people of the OT were contemporary, and the hymns that we find in our hymnals were contemporary, and now we have people bashing what is now contemporary music because it is done with electric guitars and drum sets.
Realize that if you have a perspective of what God has done for you and that every breath you breathe is a miracle, you have reason to worship. You have reason to proclaim how good God is, you have reason to do what Pslamn 47:1 says “to clap your hands with joy”, you have reason to make a “joyful noise to the Lord”. I have to disagree with Phill when he speaks of emotion not being a part of worship. If you worship dully and it is not from the heart then you are essentially praising God because you feel you have to. What good is that? What joy does God get from people who refrain to think about the words that sing to him. Singing is a form of prayer. What good is prayer if your emotions are not in it? It’s just words.
Whether you sing hymns, listen to orchestras, listen to punk-rock screaming bands, rap, dance, or rock out…if you do not do it because you are passionate about God, your worship means nothing. Some people find it hard to worship to modern music, so they go towards better ways they can worship effectively for God’s glory. Some people do the same because hymns aren’t their thing.
After all is said and done…it doesn’t matter how you worship, as long as you really do mean it from your heart. God doesn’t care if you tell Him He is worthy, and you love Him, and thank Him if you don’t mean it.
A.W Tozer once wrote, “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us…worship is pure or base as the worshiper entertains high or low thoughts of God. For this reason the gravest question before the Church is always God Himself, and the most portentous fact about any man is not what he at a given time may say or do, but what he in his deep heart conceives God to be like.”
I often read this passage of Scripture before i am about to lead people in a time of worship, reminding me of the God that i worship and what He is doing as i sing to Him. I read Revelations 4:2-11. I would encourage a lot of you to do the same. It changed my perspective of worship. Maybe it could yours as well. But please, realize that when you worship in song it is a prayer…and what you say to your Father means a lot. Don;t be a shallow worshipper, that doesn’t mean that you have to go dancing around and clapping your hands or crying your eyes out in every song. But, it does mean that worship in song SHOULD come from your heart.

Soli Deo Gloria

Comment on Turn it on it’s side….. gain fresh perspective by Philip

Philip — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 22:27:06 +0000

Isn’t it interesting that the Spirit intercedes for us with groans more powerful than human language and also that Romans 1 suggests that in some way we know what we’re doing wrong? It’s true that we need to give God our best and keep trying to work out what God wants of us. We’re not God, so we can’t produce anything that equals him (nor should we want to), and we’re fallen, which makes things even harder. The problem is seeking self-gratification instead of trying to obey God with our worship. A lot of people who have bought into contemporary Christian music talk about how worship needs to be “genuine” and how one needs to mean what one sings, but they really are equating emotion with worship, fun with their music, and dourness/sombernes/boringness with Christian music that does not come from their new CD ($14.99, available from the band’s website). It’s a sly marketing trick, but it’s a means to seek personal gain that obstructs real worship. God will have grace on the well-meaning, and he is bringing us to obedience. We must praise God in the best way we can discern, and he will interpret our meager praise through his love.

Comment on Turn it on it’s side….. gain fresh perspective by Art

Art — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 19:54:19 +0000

I agree with what Philip says, but I also believe that worship that is truly in “spirit and in truth” will unleash the inner music of one’s soul to the greater glory of God.

Comment on ABBA? by Art Rettew

Art Rettew — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 19:50:36 +0000

Len,
Jesus told us we should become “like Children” (Matt. 18:3) to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. One can imagine the joy that floods God’s heart when one of his “children” calls to him … “Abba, Father.”
Art

Comment on Turn it on it’s side….. gain fresh perspective by Philip

Philip — Sun, 10 May 2009 11:55:51 +0000

YES, you can worship without music, but you can’t translate all forms of worship to congregational forms of worship. Music is a scripturally mandated form of worship. (If you don’t want to sing in church anymore, which I don’t think the pastor is saying he wants to do, I hear Ulrich Zwingli is running low on followers.)
YES, we do judge other people who worship differently, praise and worship types by buying into sentimentalism and secular notions of progress and “traditional” types by the belief that older is necessarily better, a belief expressed with intransigent, nostalgic glances to the past (which, by the way, was plagued by many of the same errors in worship we see today).
I think the pastor’s post comes from a frustration about how to worship. Pride and confusion are the greatest obstacles to proper worship. No one likes to be wrong, but we need to realize that there is a right way to worship God, we must practice it, and we must gently rebuke and teach fellow Christians when they hold contrary beliefs.
Worship is the praise of God. I think the whole worth-ship etymology could have come from the Psalms, which tend to follow a formula including declaring praise for God and explaining why we are praising him. This explanation of God’s deeds is often lacking in the modern church, perhaps because we (and I very much must include myself in this) are not always swift to see God’s hand or will. I think this attitude may have developed because of the embarrassments of certain groups or people trying to see God’s will expressed in too many ways (“God is sending this thunderstorm because someone here has committed a sin” or the “God permitted the World Trade Center to be blown up because Americans have become too permissive about homosexuality” of more recent infamy) and because of the Darwinian commitment to denying, often scathingly, the possibility of design in the universe.
Nevertheless, God has done mighty deeds for us, even if the only one we can think of is the atonement on Calvary. (Creation, faithfulness, and preservation are other examples likely to come to mind.) If we merely sing (or write or preach or create oil paintings that explain) that God is “mighty, awesome, wonderful, / mighty, awesome, wonderful, / mighty, awesome, wonderful” we can lose our reasons and sensible devotion in emotionalizing over how my buddy Jesus loves me. Worship is not emotionalism; as one of my professors insightfully says, emotion is good when it is prompted by an encounter with profound truth. This truth can be a compelling poem on the redeeming act, an article about child sex slaves, or news that a relative has died (though in these cases emotion is not necessarily in the context of worship).
Worship is exalting God for the things he has done. It is something you do, not something you feel. I’m hesitant to say that worship is a way of life; the implications of that statement are so vast, the meaning is so vague, and my own knowledge of theology is so slight. You can glorify God by painting an image, it seems, but there are many activities that glorify God that we would not primarily associate with worship, such as obedience to parents and evangelism. Paul does write that offering one’s body as a living sacrifice is our spiritual act of worship. As long as a painting proclaims the glory of God and tells why he is worthy to receive glory, I think we can call it a form of worship.
While I’m still not sure how many forms worship may take, words are the most important. Christianity is a very verbal religion: Christ is the Word made flesh. Worship services are opportunities to proclaim the glory of God and tell of his mighty deeds (in other words, worship is not about what we “get out of it” but about the beauty and power of God). We exalt God and we instruct others. Worship rightly includes music, but the glorification of God takes other forms as well.

Comment on breaking the l…i…e…s that bind by Philip

Philip — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 18:12:09 +0000

Myth: God gives us freedom to worship him however we choose.

We must temper our pronouncements about our freedom in Christ (freedom from sin and the freedom to be able to worship God) by the knowledge that “not everything is beneficial” (1 Cor. 6:12 and 10:23). We must also remember that God punished Nadab and Abihu for offering unauthorized fire and that Saul was castigated for sacrificing improperly. God does explain how we should worship him. Colossians 3:16 is particularly important to musical worship, and it destroys all notions we may have of worship as mere emotion. We cannot teach and admonish each other if we are singing vapidly, in our own little me-and-God worlds, or simply emoting (which, as one of my professors puts it, is like dancing around your wife shouting “I love you, I love you, I love you). There are many ways to worship God, not all of them congregational. Religious paintings like Giotto’s or Albrecht Duerer’s, cantatas like Handel’s Messiah, and poetry like Gerard Manley Hopkins’s are all forms of worship, but none of them are suitable for congregational use. God gives each of us talents to use, but he calls us to sing as a congregation.

Often this subject becomes an issue because people become inured to the ugliness of popular music or forms of representation (“art” is too strong of a word for some pictures, for example). Popular music becomes “their music,” and hymns becoming the “old-fashioned people’s music.” What about God’s music? Also, you do not need popular/Christian rock songs in your service to attract people, even young people. People should be attracted to our churches by the truth of Christ and our doctrinal fidelity, which includes worshipping according to biblical guidelines. They should not be attracted because of our trendiness—because that means they are being attracted to something ephemeral and extrinsic to Christianity.

Comment on breaking the l…i…e…s that bind by Carlene Wolf

Carlene Wolf — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 03:42:54 +0000

This is a response to the 3/31 question. My faith, my acceptance that Jesus is the Son of God, who died on the cross for my sins, who rose again, so that I may follow a risen Savior is based soley on the Word, the Truth.
I’ve always connected reality with today’s world, the good, the bad, and the ugly of life as it is now. My car is real but it could break down tomorrow. I can say that Jesus is real to me but He is not going to break down tomorrow. My car is not Truth; it’s going to the junkyard someday! Jesus’ Words are Truth and never change; that’s where my heart is.

Comment on dave’s demanding dilemma by lencalhoun

lencalhoun — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 03:39:44 +0000

We cannot forget the historical and military context that Jesus spoke into- Rome was bearing down on Jerusalem/Israel. The oppression of Israel was probably FAR worst than anything America experienced with England over 200 years ago, yet, Jesus spoke to his disciples, some of whom (Zealots) wanted to wage war- telling them to “turn the other cheek, love your enemy, bless those who curse you, and put down your sword.”

Now- here is the amazing part. After Jesus died and resurrected, there were three Jewish Rebellions (seemingly against Jesus’ own teaching), all resulting in utter devastation for God’s chosen Israel. Including the loss of the land for, well, about 2000 years (Ancient Jewish Scholars viewed this as God’s judgment upon Israel, just like the Assyrian and Babylonian invasions).

Practically, it makes sense Jesus would warn his passionate disciples about their anger and lust for vengeance. It would eventually be the downfall for millenia for Israel. Instead, he showed them a better way, and while Israel as a coherent nation-state was destroyed, the Gospel got out and spread like wildfire!

But if the Rebellion had never happened, would Israel have kept their land? And then, there would have been no need to “displace” any persons last century, preventing a chain of misery and terrorism. If only the rebellious militants in Israel would have submitted. That is, if you take a pacifist view of Christ’s teachings. There are good Christians who believe more strongly in “just war.”