![]() The Wonder of Worship ! Psalms 95:6 - O come, let us worship and bow down: let us kneel before the LORD our maker. Genuine worship can take our most miserable moments and make them our most meaningful. One of the greatest illustrations of this is found in the Bible book of Acts. We read of Paul and Silas, who were beaten and thrown into a cold, dark, terrible dungeon for preaching the gospel. But at midnight Paul and Silas began worshiping God by singing and praising Him from their hearts and lips. As they worshiped, an earthquake came, and the prison door opened and they walked out from their misery of incarceration and entered into the majesty of freedom. It’s life changing when you can be set free through worship. Our almighty Lord may deliver us immediately from our situation and He may not. The fact is at times when we worship the Lord our problems remain or even increase, but as we worship they no longer seem overwhelming and enslaving. It is not because our problems have been taken away but because we have focused on our Lord instead of our problems and on His greatness. In so doing we have gained His eternal perspective and repented from an earthly one. The word worship means “worthship.” We should worship God because He is worthy of our worship. No matter what we’re going through, no matter what our circumstances may be, when He delivers us and when He allows the problem to remain. God deserves our worship and He desires it. There is never a time when the Lord is not due worship. We were created to worship Him. God made us to bring Him pleasure. And God is pleased when we worship Him with a proper heart, especially when things are not so positive.
0 Comments
# 1 Reason To Share The Gospel !
It is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment. —Hebrews 9:27 In just this one Bible verse we find the primary reason that each follower of Christ should share the gospel continually. It is because every human will die one day and after they do they will personally stand before the Lord’s judgment. I hear often the statement “ I don’t like hellfire preaching”. I think you would agree with me that preaching about hell has fallen on hard times. And because of that many preachers have stopped preaching on this topic altogether and many others are preaching much less and much lighter on the subject. Thousands of messages are preached in churches and via the airwaves and internet on how to prosper, how to have a healthy family, how to succeed in marriage and many other biblical doctrines. But we must preach the whole council of God and we most certainly need to preach on main doctrines and hell is one of those. We have to look at this topic biblically, not emotionally, and remember that life comes to an end for everyone. We have to realize that everyone's earthly life will come to an end but after physical life is over each person will still be alive in heaven or in hell. As we read the New Testament it is clear that Jesus spent more time talking about Hell than anyone else. Of the forty parables He told, more than half of them relate to God’s eternal judgment of sinners. That is because Hell is a real place for real people. J. I. Packer said, “An endless hell can no more be removed from the New Testament than an endless heaven can be.” The # 1 reason for sharing the gospel is so people won’t go to Hell. We can tell people if they come to Jesus that life will be more abundant that is true. But the greatest aspect of the gospel, which means “good news,” is that we don’t have to go to Hell. Instead, we can go to Heaven and that is GOOD NEWS! If you know a child, teen adult who does not know Christ, then they are headed to Hell. The question is what are you doing to reach them? May we each be encouraged with this truth to share the Glorious Gospel of Jesus Christ! |
AuthorTerry has been the Senior Pastor of Liberty for 30 years. He and his wife, Karen, have 4 children, 11 grandchildren, and 1 spoiled dog named Cooper. Archives
March 2020
Categories |