Worship

15
Dec
2006

The Prayer Life of a Worshiper

This is something I picked up at a conference a long time ago and it had a great impact on me. I hope you enjoy it.

By: Brian Anderson

I. Worship is a lifestyle, not just a few minutes on Sundays!

I Corinthians 10:31 So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.
Colossians 3:17 And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

“We are called to an everlasting preoccupation with God” A.W. Tozier Body Soul & Spirit are to be used in Worship.

II. A worshiper needs to develop a strong prayer life!

A. first book translated in another language is Mark (a short gospel) the second book translated is Psalms (songs & prayers)

B. Worship & Prayer are closely tied together. They both have to do with connecting with God In an intimate way and communicating with Him.

Revelation 5:8 And when he had taken it, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each one had a harp and they were holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.

Harps represent Worship
Incense represents Prayer

Phillipians 4:6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.

C. Prayer in the Jerusalem Church

Acts 1:14 They all joined together constantly in prayer, along with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers.
Acts 2:42 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.
Acts 6:4 and will give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the word.”

III. Why don’t we pray much?

A. We haven’t seen the importance of prayer in the lives of major New Testament Characters.

Paul.
Ephesians 6:18 And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints. Pray also for me, that whenever I open my mouth, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it fearlessly, as I should.
I Thessalonians 5:17 pray continually;
Phillipians 4:6-7 Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Jesus
Hebrews 5:7 During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission.
John 5:19 Jesus gave them this answer: “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.
Luke 6:12-13 One of those days Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God. When morning came, he called his disciples to him and chose twelve of them, whom he also designated apostles:
Romans 8:34 Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died–more than that, who was raised to life–is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.

B. We don’t expect anything to happen.

1. One of the greatest deceptions the enemy wants to pull on us is that our prayers don’t work.

2. That’s why the word of God constantly exhorts us about the necessity persevering in prayer. (Satan doesn’t want us to communicate with God because then we will see things happen)

Luke 11:5-13 Then he said to them, “Suppose one of you has a friend, and he goes to him at midnight and says, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, because a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have nothing to set before him. “Then the one inside answers, ‘Don’t bother me. The door is already locked, and my children are with me in bed. I can’t get up and give you anything. I tell you, though he will not get up and give him the bread because he is his friend, yet because of the man’s boldness he will get up and give him as much as he needs. “So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened. “Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”
Luke 18:1-8 Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. He said: “In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared about men. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’ “For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care about men, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually wear me out with her coming!'” And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”
Matt 7:7-11 7 “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened. “Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!
Is 62:6-7 6 I have posted watchmen on your walls, O Jerusalem; they will never be silent day or night. You who call on the LORD, give yourselves no rest, and give him no rest till he establishes Jerusalem and makes her the praise of the earth. The LORD has sworn by his right hand and by his mighty arm: “Never again will I give your grain as food for your enemies, and never again will foreigners drink the new wine for which you have toiled;

Real faith is praying even when it looks like it will never happen. Things that won’t work any other way will start working if we start praying about them.

James 4:2 You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God.

A common attitude among people is “ I want to get started on the days work” That’s the problem right there! Most people don’t see prayer as a good portion of the days work.

If you see prayer as a religious duty (“I’m putting in my time with God”) over and against an activity that changes the outcome of events, you’ll end up not praying much! We are not that disciplined! But;

if we realize that that our prayer will change our world we will pray !

C. We rely on our personal strengths: (I’ll never quit)

Ephesians 2:10 For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

1.. Gifted people can get a lot of “ministry” done in the kingdom of God just through their personal giftedness.

2. The problem is we then tend to rely on our personal giftedness to get the “Ministry” accomplished, and often times a lot gets accomplished! But not in comparison. When we work “we” work but when we pray God works. E.M. Bounds

D. Time Pressures

1. In life there are lots of things trying to eat up your time. (work, family, ministry, friends, activities, relaxation, TV, etc.)

2. The most important time commitment you can make is an appointment with God every day.

a. We all know that intellectually when the time crunch comes what we will let go of. And the time crunch will come.

b. Guard that time commitment as if your life depends on it. (because it does). Don’t ever give it to anyone or anything else. It belongs to God. Sacrifice sleep, relaxation, TV, yes even Ministry if you have to.

3. Find out how much Grace you’ve been given for prayer time.

Grace is Gods empowering of you to be who He created you to be.

Ephesians 4:7 But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it.

We were created differently so we have different amounts of Grace. Don’t compare yourself with others.

II Corinthians 10:12 We do not dare to classify or compare ourselves with some who commend themselves. When they measure themselves by themselves and compare themselves with themselves, they are not wise.

IV. Why we should pray

A. To seek Gods face

Jeremiah 29:13 You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.
Psalm 27:8 My heart says of you, “Seek his face!” Your face, LORD, I will seek.

God’s greatest desire from us is for us to love Him.

Matthew 22:37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. We only seek God’s face out of a heart of love and that’s pleasing to Him. II Corinthians 5:9 So we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it.

It would be shame to do ministry for God all of our lives and never come to know Him.

B. It’s part of developing a “secret history” with God.

1. Everything else in ministry flows out of this. If you’re in ministry it’s probably because you fell in love with Him & formed a relationship…… time has taken the shine off if we don’t keep it up.

2. In life often times you will be overwhelmed with all the tasks at hand. When that happens, there is only one place to go….the prayer room and seek His face.

3. Pastor Cho- “Pray and Obey” ( 50,000 home churches)

C. To receive wisdom & revelation from God

1. Gods communication with us.

Psalm 103:7 He made known his ways to Moses, his deeds to the people of Israel

2. The difference between knowing someone as a friend and knowing someone because you have their resume’

D. Direction & vision in ministry

Proverbs 14:12 there is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.
Proverbs 3:5-8 Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight. Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the LORD and shun evil. This will bring health to your body and nourishment to your bones.

1. We can’t rely on our own intelligence.

E. In dealing with people.

1. As we pray God will give us direction in dealing with people with boldness & compassion. Ephesians 4:15 Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ.

F. For impartation from God to be released among the people you are leading.

1. Preaching and or teaching by itself will not bring change in peoples lives to a great degree.

a. It takes more than a command to produce fruit.

2. Authority in prayer and laboring in the secret place over people will produce more lasting fruit in their lives than teaching on it for years.

a. Pray that God will raise up the people you need in specific places.

3. God creates and imparts more things through prayer than by any other means! Prayer has more power to make things happen than preaching, organization, administration, programs, music, personalities, etc………

G. To receive direction from God.

1. The most significant things that God has done with us have come in the place of prayer.

2. God will direct us to things and away from things when we are devoted to prayer.

H. Spiritual Warfare

Daniel 10:12-14 “Do not be afraid, Daniel. Since the first day that you set your mind to gain understanding and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard, and I have come in response to them. But the prince of the Persian kingdom resisted me twenty-one days. Then Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, because I was detained there with the king of Persia. Now I have come to explain to you what will happen to your people in the future, for the vision concerns a time yet to come.”

1. Prayer is the beginning of spiritual warfare

2. The battle of spiritual warfare is won through persevering in prayer.

Posted by Gary in Intimacy W/God, Pastoral Care, Practical, Worship
30
Oct
2006

Beyond Self-Centred Worship

Found this by accident and thought it was relevant. Enjoy.

Beyond Self-Centred Worship

Geoff Bullock

Geoff Bullock served as music pastor at Hills Christian Life Centre, Sydney.

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True worship is much more than

singing songs we like to sing

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Have you ever wondered how Paul and Silas could sing praises in a Philippian gaol after being stripped, flogged and clamped in the stocks? Or how Jesus could sing a hymn on the eve of his arrest, knowing everything that was about to happen to him? Or how Paul could describe worship with the spine-tingling phrase ‘living sacrifice’?

It was because their worship was not based on what they liked. It was based on who they loved.

There is an explosion of worship in the church today. The buzz word is ‘contemporary’ and the aim is to ‘enter into God’s presence’ and enjoy a sense of closeness with him. The music, the setting, the lyrics must all help create a fulfilling worship ‘experience’.

But I am absolutely convinced that it’s not the worship that God wants us to enjoy. It’s him.

Christians have often felt that worship has to suit their tastes. Many times churches have been built based on people’s preferences in worship style. We want to choose how we will worship.

We’ve made worship self-centred instead of God-centred. We lobby for what we want: ‘I don’t like the songs’, ‘I don’t like the volume’. It’s as if we’re worshipping worship instead of worshipping God.

Imagine conducting your relationship with your spouse on the basis of only relating to them in certain circumstances. In marriage you can’t love demanding an answer; you have to love selflessly. You don’t say, ‘As long as I get everything I want out of this relationship I’ll commit myself.’ But that’s the attitude we often have to worship. We say: ‘You musicians, singers and pastors do your tricks, then we’ll be happy.’

Worship is not a musical experience. Musicians, singers and worship leaders can no more create a worship experience than an evangelist can create a salvation experience. Both worship and salvation are decisions – decisions that only individuals can make.

When we allow someone else to take responsibility for our decisions we place human interests in front of God’s. If my worship depends on others creating an atmosphere, I am allowing them to make my decision to worship for me.

Worship is not a result of how good the music is or whether my favourite songs are sung. It is not a consequence of whether I stand or sit, lift my hands or kneel. My worship must be an expression of my relationship with God – in song, in shouts and whispers, sitting, walking, or driving the car. Worship is my response to God.

If worship is a decision, then the greatest worship happens when someone who doesn’t like a church’s music or liturgical style prays, ‘Not my will but yours be done, God – I’ll worship you in spite of it.’

Your gifts aren’t the issue

There’s another way in which we worship worship instead of worshipping God. Let me come at it by a round-about route.

Consider two ways of understanding why the church exists. The first is that it exists to equip the saints for the work of ministry. So part of our teaching and worship must be aimed at equipping the saints.

But there is a danger in this first perspective. It could lead us to think that people are in a church so that the church can release their individual gifts and ministries. This is back-to-front. People are actually in a church with their gifts to release the ministry of the church.

It’s far more important to know where you are called than what you are called to do.

Let me give a practical example. My hands write songs by accident; they just happen to be attached to the rest of my body and I’m a songwriter. In the same way, I’m a songwriter at Hills Christian Life Centre more because I’m ‘attached’ to a worshipping, song-writing church than because Hills Christian Life Centre has a songwriter who writes songs. The call is on the church, and my talent as a songwriter helps the church fulfil its call.

This is a the second way to understand the church’s existence: It exists to fulfil God’s call on its life. To live out God’s vision. And the people in a church don’t so much need to own that vision as to be owned by it. Once that happens, the various facets of its life are given shape according to what God has called the church to be and do.

This has a profound effect on worship. It takes the focus away from what we want and replaces it with what is needed to fulfil the vision. It really doesn’t matter whether we like the worship style or not; it’s whether the style is consistent with the call and vision. Unless we think this way, we’re in danger of creating our own entertainment – and hence of worshipping worship again.

Worship and the will of God

In other words, for our worship to be a response to God, an expression of our love and devotion, it must be a reflection of his will in and through our lives. For me to express my love for my wife Janine, I must do more than say ‘I love you”. I must mow the lawn, pick up my socks, wash the car, share her dreams and visions and goals – I must be a partner to her, working to be a team that expresses mutual love to each other selflessly.

In this I discover that the best intimacy is the intimacy that forces you to get up in the morning after making love with your wife the night before and go and mow the lawns, fix the kitchen door, paint the shed – to do those things that are produced out of love.

It’s the same in our relationship with God. I can’t sing, ‘I love you, Lord’, ‘I’ll worship you’, ‘Be exalted’ without being a partner in his will and vision.

What is God’s vision, his expectations? Is it that we hold nice, comfortable worship services with three praise songs, two worship songs, one prophecy, one offering, one message, two altar calls and a closing hymn? Is his expectation our comfort, our enjoyment, our tradition?

No. God’s vision is that the world will know his Son. The Lord’s expectation of us is crystal clear in Matthew 28:19-20: ‘Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.’

God has called us into his contemporary world to make disciples. Our worship central in our decision to meet this commission.

Of course we must sing and dance and praise the Lord. But if while we sing and dance and praise we either ignore God’s commission or create a culture that alienates those whom God has called us to reach, are we really worshipping God at all? Or are we, yet again, worshiping the worship instead of him?

Communication is more than words

The church I’m part of is a middle-income, yuppie, contemporary church of baby boomers and their children. That’s who we are, and that’s whom God has called us to reach. So that’s what we look and sound like. Other churches have different calls – perhaps to the elderly. In that case people will have to get used to singing hymns.

If every church became ‘modern contemporary’ in music and we all played Crowded House and Dire Straits, what would happen to churches in Vaucluse in Sydney or St Kilda in Melbourne, which need a totally different touch?

To put it in marketing terms, once we understand our mission (to make disciples), we need to find our market place (the people that God want us to reach). That will then give us our methodology.

We have to find and use the language of our market place. At Youth Alive rallies, for example, where 10-12,000 people cram into the Sydney Entertainment Centre, we know that ‘Amazing Grace’ or ‘Shine Jesus Shine’ aren’t going to work with some 15-year-old home boy with his cap on backwards who’s into the basketball culture. So we sing songs like ‘Jump into the Jam with the Great I Am’ – songs that reflect our passion for Jesus and our love and vitality for life in their language. In this way we reclaim their music to glorify God and open a window to Christian experience in language they can understand.

When I say ‘language’ I don’t just mean terminology, words. People can go to a Madonna concert in Japan and not understand a word she says but still feel part of what she’s doing because they understand the whole language – the visual communication, the sound, the music.

We need to speak people’s language – not just in our music but in our newsletters and graphics and decor and preaching and dress.

When the church forgets this and loses sight of its mission and market place, it locks itself into its own culture. Anyone who comes in from outside has to undergo a cultural revolution, before they can get to our answer. In the end the only people we reach are ourselves. That’s scandalous. We’re called to be light in darkness, not light in light.

I’m not saying that all worship must be directed toward attracting non-believers – far from it. Worship is an individual’s adoration of God. Our worship attention must be on intimacy with God led by the Spirit. So we must not make it so relevant that we lose the intimacy.

You won’t reach your marketplace until you equip the saints, and you won’t equip the saints by just speaking the language of the marketplace. You have to teach them to speak the language of the marketplace. There’s a transition. So there must be a balance between equipping the saints and reaching the marketplace.

Sometimes, however, the saints bet lost in enjoying the ‘showers of blessings’ that come through their relationship with God. When we go to church to stand under the shower of blessings, our worship involves that experience.

But life is more than standing under the shower. Life is also getting dressed and going to work. Our worship should translate into the outcome of our lives.

For the believer, an effect of worship is like a remedial massage at half-time to get us back on the field. It’s healing for injuries so we can keep playing. It’s the coach at half-time saying toa tired team, ‘You can win’ – and sending them out to turn the game around.

Worship, then, is refocussing. It’s re-equipping. It’s realigning yourself with the passion of God and realising that you have to say, ‘Not my will but yours be done’.

Worship doesn’t end with ‘I exalt you’. It goes on to say, ‘I must go out and take the experience to others.’ I believe that God is changing the face of Christian worship today because he is trying to align us again with him and his vision.

We can’t worship God truly and remain unchanged. When we worship, we push into God’s heart. Older married couples can sometimes sit in a room together for an hour and a half and not speak to each other and yet communicate, because they’ve grown together and they understand each other’s heart. It’s like that with God. As we worship him we come to understand his heart, and we start to share his passion. Then his vision comes our vision.

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(c) On Being, February 1995, 2 Denham Street, Hawthorn, Victoria, 3122.

Used with permission.

Renewal Journal #6 (1995:2), Brisbane, Australia, pp. 8-11.

http://www.renewaljournal.com/

Reproduction is allowed as long as the copyright remains intact with the text.

Source: http://www.pastornet.net.au/renewal/journal6/bullock.html

07
Sep
2006

The Amazing Invisible Worship Leader

I have always said that the first responsibility of the worship leader is to “get out of the way”.

I ran across this article today and thought I would post it.

worshipartist.net

Posted by Gary in Worship