Day 7
Purpose Driven Life Point to Ponder: It's all for Him.
EHBC Prayer Guide Note: PRAY asking God to break your heart for the things that break His. Pray for a spirit of conviction and repentance. Read Psalm 32 and thank God for His mercy and forgiveness.
Day 8
Purpose Driven Life Point to Ponder: I was planned for God's pleasure.
EHBC Prayer Guide Note: Read Psalm 29. Pray that God would sharpen your ears to be able to hear His voice clearly. Pray that each member of our church would be able to clearly discern His voice.
Day 9
Purpose Driven Life Point to Ponder: God smiles when I trust Him.
EHBC Prayer Guide Note: Pray for the Spirit of God to move on the hearts our loved ones who are lost so that they will be able to see how God is grieved and how their lives are being destroyed by sin.
Thoughts I have had over the past few days, hopefully some of them thoughts from God:
(1) I still have way too much of ME in my living, as evidenced by (among other things) how quickly I faded away from my prayer and Bible study and also how easily I take offence at perceived snubs. I must decrease, that He may increase!
(2) All my adult life I have read in Matthew 4:18-22 how these men followed Jesus after hearing Him speak one sentence, and where some have seen faith, I have seen insanity. I have been convinced that they must have heard or seen something of Him prior to this encounter, but I have never been able to support this position with anything other than my thoughts of what seemed reasonable. Last night, I was reading in Luke, and there it was! In chapters 4 and 5 we see that the first disciples did indeed have other interactions with Christ before He invited them to follow Him. It has been there all along and I never saw it. This serves as a reminder how critical it is to READ Scripture, to be thoroughly familiar with the Book from front to back!
(3) There are two ways (at least) to use a concordance. The first is to look for verses you already kindof know to confirm what you already kindof think. The second is to find out what you DON'T know about what the Bible says about a particular subject. This seems to me reflective of two ways to read the Bible. Do we read the Bible to feel good about what we already think? Or do we read the Bible to discover more about our Lord and to submit our lives to what we find?
(4) Is it true that worship is supposed to be for God, not for us? If no, why do we keep saying yes? If yes, why do we still view worship through the lens of our experience? >Our enjoyment of the songs. >Our appreciation of the sermon. >Our level of distraction. If our worship is really for God, then how does HE evaluate it? Is He pleased with "the service" if a certain percentage are "truly" worshiping? Does God only focus on the positive, ignoring those who aren't worshiping or is His Spirit "grieved" by them? (In Isaiah 63, the Spirit is grieved by rebellion, and in Ephesians 4 He is grieved by broken fellowship.) Does He only evaluate individuals, not congregations? In Revelation He addresses churches as groups and says "anyone who has an ear. . ." The overall church is warned concerning the actions of individuals. In Sardis, it's reversed, the overall is bad, but there are a few good people. I conclude God evaluates the body AND the individuals. So how does God evaluate worship? First, DOES God evaluate worship? I would say yes. Jesus said the Father wants "such people" (true worshipers) to worship Him in spirit and truth. God said in places in the Old Testament that worship was unacceptable to Him because of the hearts of the worshipers and/or their behavior outside of the worship environment. So how DOES God evaluate worship, and can we use His criteria to judge our own? I don't have answers to these questions yet, but I think this is the direction our discussion of worship needs to be moving. . .
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