A Call to Worship

Read Psalm 66:2, John 4:24

In regards to society, A.W. Tozer stated, “We have lost the art of worship. We are not producing saints. Our models are successful businessmen, celebrated athletes and theatrical personalities. We carry on our religious activities after the methods of the modern advertisers. Our homes have been turned into theatres, our literature is shallow, our hymns border on sacrilege and scarcely anyone seems to care. Christianity is little more than objective truth, sweetened with song and made palatable through religious entertainment, and we call them to have fun in His name. Christ calls men to carry a cross.”
I am glad that I do not belong to a church that is that far gone as to their worship, but we are living in a religious age when people are forgetting what worship is all about. To most people today, worship is an action that is performed within the confines of a sacred service like the thousands that take place each Sunday. Worship is three choruses, a couple of hand waves and maybe even a little shout. However, worship is not fulfilled by momentary bursts of energy that is produced by the beat of a drum or the chord of the piano. Worship is not predicated upon feeling. It is predicated upon the acknowledgment of who He is.
Jesus declared that God is looking for true worshippers. So to say you are a worshipper identifies you, not as an outgoing person in church, but as an individual whose life attracts the glory of God. To worship is to experience reality, to touch life. It is to know and experience the resurrected Christ in the midst of the gathered community. It is breaking into the Shekinah of God, or better yet, being invaded by the Shekinah of God.
You see, the worship of the sanctuary is wholly meaningless and without any real value if it is not preceded by and prepared for by the worship of the life. God is seeking men and women that are ready to truly worship Him. If there is any shortcoming to the true Apostolic church, it is the failure to realize what true worship is, and so I would like to spend a day or two on what worship is all about. If God is looking for them then I want to become a true worshipper, how about you?

“An authentic life is the most personal form of worship. Everyday life has become my prayer.”
- Sarah Ban Breathnach

The Real Thing

Read Romans 3:21-26

I lived on the East Coast for five years. We were about 10 minutes from the Delaware Bay and 30 minutes from the Atlantic Ocean. Where we lived was just a couple hour drive to New York City, Washington D.C. and Baltimore. I remember a time when we took our chorale to New York and a friend of ours thought he was getting a great deal on a video recorder that he bought off the street. When he opened the box, however, there wasn’t a recorder even in the box. You can walk all over the city and find places where you can buy great products at great prices, but you can also get ripped off.
A Rolex watch is one of the finest timepieces made. Many people would jump at the opportunity to own one. That’s why there are some people who pick up a few of them to give to their children as souvenirs. Souvenirs? Yes. You see, these watches were "knockoffs"—imitations of the real thing easily passed off to tourists at ridiculously cheap prices.
In today’s world, there are few things of value that are inexpensive. Fewer still are free. However, salvation—the most important gift of all—is free. Unlike the imitation Rolex, salvation is of infinite value. Yet it is free because, as one hymn reminds us, "Jesus paid it all." No one can earn salvation (Eph. 2:8-9). There is a price for your salvation, but it was paid by another.
It’s a paradoxical truth that while salvation is free, its cost was great. Oswald Chambers wrote, "Forgiveness, which is so easy for us to accept, cost the agony at Calvary." The word free doesn’t mean you will never have to pay something for it, it means there is nothing you have whereby you could earn it. You see, your salvation will cost you everything. It will cost you your old thoughts, your old attitudes, your old lifestyle, but that is the beauty of the cross – He paid the price for you to get a new life. You just have to exchange it for your old one.
There are too many people settling for “knock-off” salvation. I cannot tell you how to be saved, and your friends cannot tell you how to be saved, nor can your religious leaders tell you how to be saved, but He can tell you how to be saved. His Word very clearly states in John 14:6 where Jesus said, "I am the way..." Instead of trying so hard to get to heaven based on something someome else has taught us, why do we not just get to Jesus and let Him lead the way. He that believeth and is baptised shall be saved! Jesus is the real thing - authentic, pwoerful, God manifest in flesh and our ever loving Savior that came to seek and to save that which was lost! I know that most readers of this devotion have already experienced this great exchange, but remember this today, you cannot settle for the “knock-off” life when the real thing is staring you in the mirror.

“Ours is the age of substitutes: instead of language, we have jargon: instead of principles, slogans: and, instead of genuine ideas, bright ideas.”
- Eric Bentley

When God Shows Up...

Read Isaiah 6:1-8

Have you ever just wanted to see God? It just burned in you to wonder if you really knew when God showed up on the scene of your life. Was it just the “goose bump syndrome” that took place when you started to sing or praise? If it was just the goose bump syndrome, God shows up in my life when I see or listen to the last 10 seconds of the 1980 Olympic hockey game between Russia and the United States. I don’t think God cared too much about who won, and every time I see the replay of the game, even though I’ve seen it a million times, I get goose bumps, so that is not God showing up for me.
When God shows up in my life, I grasp some feature of his CHARACTER. Isaiah wrote, “In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple. Above it stood the seraphim, each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly. And one cried unto another, “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory. And the posts of the door moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke.”
While going about his priestly duties Isaiah saw God. I hope you notice that it was a shock to him. God pulled back the thin veil between our physical realm and spiritual reality and Isaiah saw the big picture. I’m sure his mind could not conceive what God was up to while he was going about his ordinary ministry in the Temple. Sure, he knew God was present in that holy place, but he probably never imagined it was more than mere symbolism. The veil was pulled back and he saw the Seraphim surrounding the throne of God. Kind of blows your image of angels doesn’t it. They’re not cute little cupids. Neither are they beautiful women as so many pictures depict them. These particular angels have three sets of wings. They only fly with one pair. The others are used to cover their feet and faces. Why. They are in the presence of a holy God.
This is the feature of God’s character that Isaiah clearly sees; holiness. Here’s God in all his pure, undefiled and total majesty. In this case the seraphim even call out the attribute that they want Isaiah to see. “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts!”
When God shows up we grasp some feature of his character. When the band plays a song you may become aware of a number of God’s attributes, his righteousness, his justice, his faithfulness, his mercy. You just have to pay attention. When the Bible is read you have to do the same thing. Look and listen for what God is revealing about himself. Features of his character display themselves all the time in the prayers of others, in testimonies, in dramas and videos, in images and symbols. You have to look for them. You don’t even have to be in church to discover them. Just picture in your mind any individual that you may seem to think has some shortcoming, or scar or sickness and abnormality. Then picture that person as your child. As you realize that such flaws in that person would make no difference to you, and that you would love that person anyway you will get a glimpse of the character of God. Allow God to break into your thought process. The impression of that thought may be God saying, “You love that child despite their flaws. I love you even more despite your own.” God steps into the room. It becomes a holy moment. As the emotions of that realization come pouring into your spirit you will begin to understand something profound about the heart of God. His love is enormous. His love is for you and me. When you come into contact with a feature of God’s character, you can be certain that God has shown up.

“Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.”
- Abraham Lincoln