What is worship?  (from worship.com)

• Louie Giglio: Worship is our response, both personal and corporate, to God for who He is, and what He has done; expressed in and by the things we say and the way we live.
• Josh Riley: Worship is everything we think, everything we say, and everything we do, revealing that which we treasure and value most in life.
• John Piper: Worship is what we were created for. This is the final end of all existence-the worship of God. God created the universe so that it would display the worth of His glory. And He created us so that we would see this glory and reflect it by knowing and loving it-with all our heart and soul and mind and strength. The church needs to build a common vision of what worship is and what she is gathering to do on Sunday morning and scattering to do on Monday morning.
• Mark Driscoll: Worship is living our life individually and corporately as continuous living sacrifices to the glory of a person or thing.
• Harold Best: Worship is the sign that in giving myself completely to someone or something, I want to be mastered by it.
• Warren Weirsbe: Worship is the believer’s response to all they are – mind, emotions, will, body – to what God is and says and does.
• William Temple: Worship is the submission of all our nature to God. It is the quickening of conscience by His holiness; the nourishment of mind with His truth; the purifying of imagination by His Beauty; the opening of the heart to His love; the surrender of will to His purpose – and all of this gathered up in adoration, the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable and therefore the chief remedy for that self-centeredness which is our original sin and the source of all actual sin.
• David Peterson: Worship of the living and true God is essentially an engagement with him on the terms that he proposes and in the way that he alone makes possible.  David Peterson
• Dan Block: Reverential human acts of submission and homage before the divine Sovereign, in response to his gracious revelation of himself, and in accordance with his will.
• John Stott: Christians believe that true worship is the highest and noblest activity of which man, by the grace of God, is capable.
• A.W. Tozer: To great sections of the church the art of worship has been lost entirely, and in its place has come that strange and foreign thing called the ‘program.’ This word has been borrowed from the stage and applied with sad wisdom to the type of public service which now passes for worship among us.
• William Temple: To worship is to quicken the conscience by the holiness of God, to feed the mind with the truth of God, to purge the imagination by the beauty of God, to open the heart to the love of God, to devote the will to the purpose of God.
• William Barclay: The true, the genuine worship is when man, through his spirit, attains to friendship and intimacy with God. True and genuine worship is not to come to a certain place; it is not to go through a certain ritual or liturgy; it is not even to bring certain gifts. True worship is when the spirit, the immortal and invisible part of man, speaks to and meets with God, who is immortal and invisible.
• D. A. Carson: To worship God ‘in spirit and in truth’ is first and foremost a way of saying that we must worship God by means of Christ. In him the reality has dawned and the shadows are being swept away (Hebrews 8:13). Christian worship is new covenant worship; it is gospel-inspired worship; it is Christ-centered worship; it is cross-focused worship.
• John Frame: Redemption is the means; worship is the goal. In one sense, worship is the whole point of everything. It is the purpose of history, the goal of the whole Christian story. Worship is not one segment of the Christian life among others. Worship is the entire Christian life, seen as a priestly offering to God. And when we meet together as a church, our time of worship is not merely a preliminary to something else; rather, it is the whole point of our existence as the body of Christ.
• John Piper: Strong affections for God, rooted in and shaped by the truth of Scripture – this is the bone and marrow of biblical worship

I’ve been in Africa all week wondering what could I possibly do to help. Its pretty overwhelming walking the streets in Addis. What could i possibly do to change anything?Atleast I thought that till I met my compassion child today. There it is. There is still hope. As long as I do something. They cannot afford for the church to sit around. We are the hope of the world- not government- we are. AND we have been given POWER to be the hands and feet and make disciples of nations! I may not be able to change much- but I can do this! Help reconcile what was lost in the genocide in 94 in Rwanda.! I saw first hand that my $30 per month doesn’t just change the life of Elisa (my child). It changed his whole family! And this his community in Rwanda. It will break many generations of poverty. He is 14 and healthy. He is already a little leader. He loves Jesus and he is enormously grateful- to the point that he will live for his community- in their culture he is the hope of the whole family. The hope of future support for the whole family. Hugging his neck today i felt the Lord reassure me- there is hope! Do something.

The conference was Thursday and Friday and it was amazing.  Working with a team of African’s on the music was challenging but GREAT.  They were such a cool group of guys and have been a blessing to me so much!  Tomorrow I’m rehearsing with another team for IEC’s Sunday Morning Church service.  I’ll be leading out on that (they have around 68 nations represented in their one church!).  My pastor Kyle will be giving a sermon and I can’t wait.  These folks know how to worship. They know how to give praise without caring about how they look or what other will think of them.  They are passionately in love with Jesus and its contagious.

After we finish up on Sunday we’ll be going out to a small town called Bantu where we have built a school and dug water wells (Hope Springs Water).  I can’t wait to see that.

Then to round out the trip I’m flying down the next day to Rwanda to visit our child we sponsered almost 10 years ago.  I can’t wait to finally meet him!  I’m going out to his village Tuesday and to spend some time with him.  His name is Munyempeta and he’s 15 now.  Just alittle history- in 94 there was a huge genoicide that took place in Rwanda that left literally millions of children with out parents or brothers and sisters for that matter.  It was one of the most recent Horrible crimes against mankind (check out the movie Hotel Rwanda if you want)!  So my child is one of many affected by this deeply.  I pray God’s grace over our meeting.  I have no idea what I’m in for but can hardly wait~

steven

Here’s a quick exerpt from the book:

“Nobody falls down on their face before a god they wanted.  Nobody trembles at the word of a home-made god.  Nobody goes out with fire in their belly to heal the sick, clothe the naked, teach the ignorant, to feed the hungry, because of a god they wanted. They are more likely to stay at home with their feet up.” 

Ouch.  My feet where up on my couch at home as i read this.  I want to say I serve the Almighty God, but where is my awe of Him?  Where is my fear of Him?  Where is my respect as I humbly submit to His purpose and will- to His word.  More often then not my attitude is to ask God to join MY TEAM.  My prayers are filled with things like, God bless _____ that I’l be doing or God be in ____ project I’m working on.. ect.

Not sure if I should be so transparent in a blog, but i know I’m not alone in my attitudes.  I also know that there is freedom won in letting go of my agenda and desires.  To trust in the Lord and seek FIRST His Kingdom.

Father, help me let go today….again……  help me die to me today…..again…. help me surrender….again.

steven

Other things I’m delving into today (because I always like knowing what people are reading and listening to):

Music: worshipping God and getting my heart stirred by the music of “All Sons & Daughters”  amazing!

Book: N.T. Wright  “For All God’s Worth”

My question always to myself in my life, with my opportunities, money and resources, freedom, understanding of The Gospel- IS THIS: am I being faithful? The question isn’t how many lives have “I” helped to change….because really who knows. Some people seem to have radical transformation and may not – while others don’t “seem” to respond the way I expect and God may be doing huge things in them.

All that to get to this: in analyzing the ministries of Jeremiah and Jonah. Who was faithful? Who was successful? One guy says all that God tells him with NO conversion. The other guyruns away till a fish swallows him and basically spits him out at Nineveh and he says a sentence to them (begrudgedly) and the entire City is saved! I thought I’d write a bit and give you my insights but they may not be correct….. So maybe it’s better just to think about that question. To be continued….

What does it matter if we get popular? When has anyone been profoundly affected by a pop star? Does anyone even remember the Jonas Brothers? They made some money and filled Stadiums- but who cares!!

So what am I saying? I’m saying to musicians that writing songs isnt enough. I’m saying to bands that playing great music isn’t enough. I’m saying to teachers and speakers that speaking a great word from some platform isn’t enough. I’m sying to athletes that what you do on the field or court isn’t enough. It’s greatness from afar that might impress some people but will be forgotten in a couple years.

Jesus Christ changed people by having the most amazing humility to get on our level and serve us. Humility and serving will change a persons life! They’ll take what you say with so much more weight. Your music, message, actions will be amplified.

I’m so guilty of thinking my serving God is how well a song I can write or music I can make- BUT the call is to be like Jesus. To get close to people and love and serve them. That’s a lot harder than rocking a song- BUT so much more valuable.

“Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant,t being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. ” (Philippians 2:3-11 ESV)

Hope Springs Water acknowledges that approximately 1.2 billion people in the world have NO access to pure drinking water, and that as many as 5 million people residing in developing countries die every year of water-related illnesses. Most of these deaths occur in the most vulnerable among us-children. In fact, a child dies, somewhere in the world, every 20 seconds of a water-bourne disease. The purpose of Hope Springs Water is to partner with communities in developing countries around the world to help provide sources of pure drinking water. This will primarily involve drilling water wells for communities without access to acceptable water sources. At times, it may also involve: helping provide water purification systems for existing water supplies, water distribution systems, assisting with sanitation systems, and ongoing public health education for the affiliated communities.This will be facilitated by our close association with benevolent non-profit organizations located in the United States, Africa, and Central America, who share our vision. We believe that those of us who are fortunate enough to live in countries with universal access to safe sources of drinking water need to say in unison that in the twenty first century, no one on planet earth should be in a position of either having no access to water or else only access to contaminated sources of water. No parent, anywhere, should have to watch their child die because they have no access to pure drinking water.We invite everyone to join us in this effort. Drink Hope Springs Water. Contribute to the cause. We  believe that, together, we can make a difference