Why I Worship

What Is Worship, Why Do We Worship, How to Worship

Do You Smell That?

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Such a beautiful Sight… I wonder how many of the people that pass this garden on the street ever really stop to take a look at how beautiful it really is or to enjoy the intoxicating aroma that fills the air around it.

You’ve heard the phrase a million times; “you’d better stop and smell the roses along the way.”

As a worship leader, I have the tendency to get very immersed in the “let’s get it done” mentality. We have so many things to accomplish, calendars full of meetings, people to keep track of, new music to learn or write, services to plan, etc. Sometimes we can forget what we are really here for: “To have an intimate relationship with our Creator!”

Jesus said to Peter and Andrew in Matthew 4, verse 18 “Come, follow me and I will make you fishers of men.”

We often get so overwhelmed with our “goal-oriented” lifestyles that we forget to enjoy our everyday lives. We are so focused on “arriving” at our destination or our “next level” that we miss the simple joys of the journey. We spend our entire career as ministers of this life changing Gospel striving for arrival at some  far off destination when all we really were required to do was “Come… follow me….”

Notice, Jesus didn’t tell them where they were going. He just said “Come and follow…” It was the journey He was concerned about.

In Luke 9:23 He says these words: “23 And he said unto all, If any man would come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.”

He doesn’t tell us we have to be perfectly organized or constantly completing everything on our to-do list. He says for us to follow Him(we could dive in to the “deny himself and take up his cross” part but that’s another discussion).

Please don’t misunderstand my words here! I firmly believe that we must have goals. We must be organized or we will never be able to lead people anywhere. I’m just afraid that we have become so consumed with a “Driven” lifestyle that many of us are truly missing the point of what it means to to walk with God.

Paul said it this way: “I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith.”

Notice he didn’t say “I have won thousands of people to Christ. I have built hundreds of churches all over the world. I have written thirty something books, etc. He said I have fought the good fight (did he win?). I have finished the race (first or last?). I have kept the faith(did it keep him out of trouble?).

I believe there are many lessons we fail to learn, blessings we fail to receive, people we fail to touch along the way when we forget that our responsibility in this discipleship thing is to follow… That’s it. “Follow me and I WILL MAKE you fishers of men.”

Stop today. Take a look around you. Take a deep breath. Enjoy the journey.

“He Said What???”

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I have recently been reminded of how much my life depends on me exercising my faith in order to reach the destiny God has set before me. It is not dependent on anything I am or anything I can do.

When God sends a Word to frame a new season in our lives, our first thoughts are for our current circumstances. Maybe you’ve said something like this: “How can I be called by God after all I’ve done?” Or perhaps you’ve felt this way: “I don’t have the education to do what God has called me to do.”

We must begin to understand that the calling of God on our lives is solely dependent on His power and grace.

In Romans 4:19-24, Paul says these words:

19 Abraham didn’t focus on his own impotence and say, “It’s hopeless. This hundred-year-old body could never father a child.” Nor did he survey Sarah’s decades of infertility and give up.20 He didn’t tiptoe around God’s promise asking cautiously skeptical questions. He plunged into the promise and came up strong, ready for God,21 sure that God would make good on what he had said.22 That’s why it is said, “Abraham was declared fit before God by trusting God to set him right.”23 But it’s not just Abraham;24 it’s also us! The same thing gets said about us when we embrace and believe the One who brought Jesus to life when the conditions were equally hopeless.

It has nothing to do with us; our abilities; our education; or our circumstances. It has everything to do with the power of the “rhema” word of God being perfected in our lives.

Isaiah 55:11 says:

11 So will the words that come out of my mouth not come back empty-handed. They’ll do the work I sent them to do, they’ll complete the assignment I gave them.

What has god placed in front of you? What has he spoken into your life as a destiny and a purpose? As you begin the process of moving toward your destiny, allow God to reveal himself to you in the fact that if He has spoken it, He will perform it. He will bring you through any circumstance that may try to keep you from achieving the thing He has purposed for you to achieve.

“Father, help me today to trust you with every part of my life. Help me to know that you have set my feet on a good path and that since you started this work in my life, you will be faithful to complete it. Help me to not look at my circumstances and allow them to keep me from moving forward. Help me to trust that you are my perfect father, and you will not lead me into danger, you will only lead me to what will make me like you.”

Be Blessed Today!!

I’ll Take Mine “Well Done” Please.

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Mark 1:9-11 tells us the story of Jesus being baptized. In verse 11, we hear the voice of God saying “You are My Son in whom I am well pleased.” The next verse says “Immediately, The Spirit drove Him into the wilderness to be tested.”

Those of you who know me know that I love to cook. It’s one of my favorite things. I’ve experimented with many different techniques and methods of seasoning and preparation. One of my favorite methods of cooking is called “injection cooking.” You may have seen the advertisements for these tools you can use to inject different things into meat for flavoring and seasoning.

The funny thing about this is that if you don’t cook the meat after you inject the seasoning into it, the seasoning will actually ruin the meat its been injected into.

The passage above reminds me of this. Jesus came to a place in His life when God placed something inside Him: “You are my Son in whom I am well pleased” and then immediately He was led by the Spirit into a time of testing. It was a time of testing the very thing that the Father had placed inside Him. Satan said to Jesus “If You are the Son of God….”

Jesus endured the testing and from that time operated with the power of God present in His life.

What has God placed inside you? What has He injected you with that makes you unique?

We don’t like it when testing comes to our lives. Most of the time, we blame it on some demon or something bad. But maybe it’s Gods way of seasoning and preparing us for our purpose.

Jeremiah 29:11 is a very popular scripture to us “Faith” people. We embrace the fact that God has a plan and future for us, but we fail to recognize the preceding verse in that passage “…after seventy years are completed, then I will visit you and perform my Word to you.”

Yes, God does have a plan and future for your life, but I’m afraid many of us have allowed the very thing that God placed inside us to season us and make us unique to rot and become unusable because we refuse to subject ourselves to the heat of Gods testing.

I want to hear Him say “WELL DONE, my good and faithful servant. Enter into My rest.”

“Father, help me today to recognize that You know me better than I know myself. Help me to trust that You know my end from my beginning just as a master chef knows the wonderful flavor that will be produced by the seasoning, cutting, pounding, and heating of the meat he is preparing. Help me to understand that You know the perfect temperature and the perfect time at which to “cook” my life, and when my time has come, I will come out with the perfect aroma and flavor that you had in your heart for me.”

Be Blessed!!