Showing posts with label worship. Show all posts
Showing posts with label worship. Show all posts

Wednesday

5 Things We Can Use To Worship - A Dose of Encouragement

  



Fred and I are involved in "leading the worship" in our church which means we lead the corporate singing of our praise and worship to God.


Some people see this as all that worship consists of but we also need to remember that


Worship is an act of devotion towards God


So when I look at it like that then it is obvious that as a Christian I should automatically love worship.









If we consider our purpose on earth (as mentioned in Why We Worship 1 ) which is nothing to do with all the Purpose books I see around us - but simply what the reason we are alive is then we see that


Man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever


But because we are human and imperfect, I know that we are not immediately drawn in to worship and it may feel completely alien to some of us.


One of the reasons I love worship is basically because I love singing and we find it easier to worship God in a song, don't we - someone else has done the hard work of writing the words and arranging the music and we just have to read the words listen to the tune and sing along.


But can't we do other things that are very easy? 


That's why I'm going to take the opportunity to give you some help by thinking about
5 Things We Can Use To Worship

  1. The Bible
  2. Prayer
  3. Thoughts
  4. Songs
  5. Actions



1. We can use the Bible as a great means of Worship.

Reading and memorizing God's Word is a great and easy way to worship God.
Either on our own in our quiet times or in church among others.



Read out verses in worship to God

Here we are reading out His Word which is powerful and in doing so we are agreeing with what God has said.

As we ourselves read from the bible we are focused on the truth in those passages and greatly encouraged by what we read, also if we read aloud in corporate worship services everyone gains from hearing His Word which is Truth and because He never changes then neither will His Word.







Read out Bible Verses that are simply words of Worship

Here we are reading what is recorded in the bible of what others have said in worship and in repeating these words we can be in agreement with them.






Read out Bible Verses about God's Love

Here we are reading and hence concentrating on the Love of God.






You may be further encouraged by 
10 Bible Verses of Encouragement about God's Love



Read out Bible Verses about God's Mercy & Grace

Here we are reading and concentrating on the Mercy of God.







Read out Bible Verses about the nature and attributes of God

Here we are reading and concentrating on the very essence of God



You may be further encouraged by this series of short posts on
Why We Worship which is fully based around the Attributes of God




Read out Bible Verses about Jesus

Here we are reading verses about our Saviour and basking in all that He has done for us.






Read out Bible Verses declaring our intention to Worship God

Here we are reading verses which are telling God that we will Bless Him, Praise Him, Obey Him and His Word.






Read out Bible Verses encouraging ourselves and others to worship God

Here we are reading Bible verses written by the apostles (other followers of God) to encourage us all to worship







2. 
We can use Prayer as a great means of Worship.

Talking to God in Prayer is a great and easy way to worship Him.
Again either on our own in our quiet times or in church among others.



Praising God in Prayer

We are talking to God in acknowledgement of His Greatness.






Thanking God in Prayer

We are talking to God about the wonderful things He has done for us




and how He has answered our petitions.






3. We can use Our Thoughts as a great means of Worship.

Thinking about God Regularly is a great and easy way to worship Him.







Recognising just how He is is the one we can depend on at all times.






and let's not leave out what we started with


4. We can use Song as a great means of Worship.

Singing to God is a great and easy way to worship Him.
Again either on our own in our quiet times or in church among others.

Singing all those wonderful hymns that have been written throughout the ages and all the more recent songs and choruses mean we are praising and worshiping God.
Also at the same time we are learning and memorizing His Word which is so often contained in the verses of the hymns and learning doctrine.


We can Write our own Songs and Sing our own Songs.


We can Wait in the Presence of God and receive new Words and Songs from Him.


We can follow the example of the Psalmists and others as they encouraged themselves and others to sing unto God.


O sing unto the LORD a new song: sing unto the LORD, 
all the earth.    
 Psalm 96:1


O sing unto the LORD a new song; for he hath done 
marvellous things:    
Psalm 98:1


Sing unto the LORD a new song, and his praise from the end of the earth, ye that go down to the sea, and all that is therein; 
the isles, 
and the inhabitants thereof.   
 Isaiah 42:10





Then we should Progress to other Forms of Worship we may not find so Easy to start with. 



5. We can use Actions as a great means of Worship.

  • We can Obey the Word of God.
  • We can Tell others about His Love and Work in our Lives.
  • We can Write our own Praises and Speak our own Praises.
  • We can Memorize His Word so that we always have it in our thoughts and ready to teach to others.
  • We can help others to Memorize His Word
  • We can show His Love to others
  • We can encourage others to to Sing unto the Lord
  • We can teach the children to learn about God and His Word through Songs


We started off by saying that

Worship is an act of devotion towards God


and 

Man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever


So let's glorify God and enjoy being in His presence as we worship God and teach and encourage others to do the same.















Monday

Free Worship Word Search Puzzle - Coffee & Conversation









The Theme for this Word Search is

WORSHIP






I'm offering this Word Search as one of my assortment of free printables which can be found in my Resource Library



Worship Word Search


Can you find the word WORSHIP written 19 times 
in this Word Search Puzzle?






The Word Search is available to download in both A4 and Letter size and of course comes with an answer sheet.


If you are interested in other Word Search Printables or other Free Printables you can find a list of all of them in our Resource Library




Have you downloaded this Free WORSHIP Word Search yet?









Other Posts about Worship
are

Why We Worship - Devotional series
Songs of Worship - Devotional series





BUT
don't forget to




Or pin this pic below to come back later









Tuesday

Knowing God - 31 Days in Acts

Disclaimer:
There is an affiliate link on this blogpost.


At the end of this blog post the whole 31 Days Challenge will be over.  Some days the blog post has taken a little over an hour to work on but mostly it has taken up to three hours or more so for any blogger who can keep up daily blogging for longer than a month - Good for you!


Yesterday we left chapter 17 at the end of verse 15 so today we will finish off the chapter.


verses 16 - 21

Paul had gone on to Athens ahead of Silas, Timothy and Luke because of the anger incited up against him at the end of  Day 30  The Power & Destruction of Envy

Now we see him getting upset about the idol worship of the people in this city.  He feels so strongly about it that he goes to the synagogue and tries to get the Jews and the Gentile worshippers to see how wrong this is.  We are told he even went into the marketplace each day to talk to people there. 

The people who seemed to take the most notice are the philosophers who just want to always talk and hear about new things and they think that Paul is talking about a new god because he is preaching about the resurrection of Jesus which is unfamiliar to them.

The first thing that stood out to me here was the mention, yet again, of the resurrection being preached about and we have seen this several times before by Peter and others so it appears that the Apostles and other early Christians thought it important that they spoke of the resurrection and indeed could not preach about Salvation without including it.  
We would not have any hope of resurrection ourselves if Jesus had not been resurrected and yes part of our eternal life will involve resurrection for us so it is a main part of our understanding about Salvation.

So the philosophers take Paul to Mars Hill ( Areopagus ) because they want to know what this talk of his is all about.





verses 22 - 34
He starts with something that is familiar to them all which is the altar with the inscription to the 

TO THE UNKNOWN GOD.

An altar indicated that they would worship this god, one whom they did not know anything about but Paul directs them straight to God the creator of the world from this.

He explains who the god they don't know is, He's the creator, He is Lord of heaven and earth and everything else but does not dwell in temples that the people have made.
He isn't worshipped by our hard work instead He has formed us all as we are and placed on on this earth so that all men would seek Him and find Him.  He does not need us to do things for Him as we saw in Day 29  What Does God Need?

Why?
Because everything we do is made possible by Him

28 for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also His offspring.’ 


So the true God is not an idol, not made or formed by man but is alive and is to be worshipped by all when we understand who He is


30 Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent, 31 because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead.”


and He brings us to the knowledge of Him and the understanding that we need to repent of our sins and accept the fact that one day we will face Jesus and we will have no righteousness of our own to be able to stand before Him as He judges the world.  We will have no right to say we have worked for Him if we have not accepted Him as the true and living God because he has not looked for work.


God looks for true worship and obedience.


Then back to the testimony of the resurrection again.

Some people mocked Paul for telling them about the true God the one they felt existed but did not know who He was and perhaps were just happy not knowing so that they could believe whatever they wanted but Paul because He was a believer and was called of God to preach had the responsibility to speak the truth to them.

This should be a challenge to us that no matter what others decide to believe about God, if it is not what the Word of God tells us then we as believers have also the responsibility to tell them the truth.

Remember all of us will stand before Christ one day and we can only depend on one thing 
 - not how we lived our lives 
but who we truly worshipped as our Lord.


Christianity is not based on works but on the death and resurrection of Jesus in our place for the life we are not able to live by ourselves.


Christianity is not based on works but on the death and resurrection of Jesus in our place.


Thank you for joining in so much with me over this past month and for those who have asked if I'm going to continue in Acts the answer is yes, but not on a daily basis.  I will post a few times a week but not feel an obligation to keep to a very rigid schedule.

For anyone who has been reading and realises that they have not known who the true God is or has in the past kept putting off actually becoming a true believer then please click on the short  3 2 1 video at the side of my blog to hear more about the Gospel or contact me for further info.




Also if you have missed any of the days in this series on Acts please click on the link below and you will find a list & link to all of the 31 Days.










Interested to know more about the Book of Acts?
Then Try these commentaries




Or this Bible Study



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Sunday

Pondering the Psalms - Psalm 95


Today I'm looking at Psalm 95 

This is one of Encouragement to come to God with Praise and Worship







This Psalm falls into 5 parts:


V. 1-2
A Call to Praise

V. 3-5
The Reason Why

V. 6
A Call to Worship

V. 7
The Reason Why

V. 8-11
A Prophetic Word of God


"The way to go deeper with God"



A Call to Praise.
The way to come and approach The Lord: singing, joyfully, knowing He is our rock, thankfully, remembering our Salvation.



The Reason Why.
He is a Great God.
He is a Great King.
All of the Earth is His.
All of the Sea is His.
Everything is His.






A Call to Worship.
The way to go deeper with God: with reverence, humility and awe of our Creator.



The Reason Why.
We are His People and He is our God.  He is the one who protects and cares for us.



A Prophetic word of God.
A Reminder not to be like the Israelites in the wilderness when they hardened their hearts, tempted God and looked to themselves and not God.




The first part of the Psalm seems to be the instruction of how we are to pursue 
our relationship with the Lord


The second part is how not to have the right relationship.



















Songs for Worship #26

Welcome to the Sunday Series

Last year from January to June I wrote a series on
Why We Worship  where I considered an attribute of God each Sunday.


At different times people mentioned to me about a song that a post reminded them of so I thought that I would now go through those attributes again with a song for each one.






Today we come to our last post in this series.



                         Looking today at 




God is the Great "I AM"










Holy



What heart could hold the weight of Your love
And know the heights of Your great worth
What eyes could look on Your glorious face

Shining like the sun



You are holy, holy, holy
God most high and God most worthy

You are holy, holy, holy

Jesus, You are

Jesus, You are


Your name alone has power to raise us
Your light will shine when all else fades

Our eyes will look on Your glorious face

Shining like the sun

Who is like You, God?


You are holy, holy, holy
God most high and God most worthy

You are holy, holy, holy

Jesus, You are

Jesus, You are

Who shall we say You are
You're the living God

Who shall we say You are

You're the Great I AM

The highest name of all
You're all You say You are



You are holy, holy, holy
God most high and God most worthy

You are holy, holy, holy

Jesus, You are

Jesus, You are


And You shall come again in glory
To judge the living and the dead

All eyes will look on Your glorious face

Shining like the sun

Who is like You, God?









If you would like to see the post from last year that this is based on please click on the graphic below





Thank you for joining with me for this Songs for Worship Series and I hope you have enjoyed the songs as much as I have.