Worship leaders

Morning Worship

/ pastorpete51 / 1 Comment

Jesus said to him, “You have seen him, and it is he who is speaking to you.”  He said, “Lord, I believe,” and he worshiped him. John 9:37-38 ESV

Discipleship of grace begins by faith – but it will only grow as we worship. One pitfall in our modern church is that we are so comfortable that we end up connecting worship in our minds to a hushed mood, a moment in the performance and a time to settle back into our comfortable seats.

But in the Bible we see Moses worshipped bare foot in the desert by a burning bush. We see Elijah wKIMG0642orshipping God at a stone altar even when the crowd was loving the 400 man worship team at the 1st church of Baal. David worshiped while he watched sheep and Daniel worshiped in the lion’s den. All of these people were worshiping because they had met by an awesome God and they wanted Him to get all the glory, no matter what the circumstances.

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Dial it forward to Jesus meeting the blind man in John chapter nine. First, He became His healer. Later after no one else could accept him, Jesus became His friend. Finally when Jesus showed the man who He really was He could do nothing less than worship. Before we can walk down the road with Jesus or gives us something more to do we must learn what it means to truly worship Him. No ministry is more important, no goal so vital, no relationship so precious that it can stand in the way of our worship. We will know that He is worthy and worth more than all we have to give, when we begin to uncover the truth of who He really is!

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Connection by Hymn

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He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.” Luke 20:38

Hymns are songs that make a connection. Hymns can be sung by grandchildren as they hold  their Grandparent’s hands. I am connected to my father who is in now heaven when I hear the words  “When peace like a river attendeth my way.” I can still hear the voice of my pastor who has flown to heaven, when I sing “I’ll fly away O glory!” We who claim orthodoxy of the faith sometimes think and act like the Sadducees  who didn’t believe in life after death. We sing and worship as if Martin Luther, Charles Wesley and Fanny Crosby were all long dead. But the reality is that they are also praising God together with us in “Real time” as we say today. When we sing the hymns we have access to a connection of praise that runs back through the ages without the divide of denomination, geography or race.

The demand for continual new material in our cooperate worship has become so strong that even songs written 10 years ago are treated like second class citizens. Worship songs from the 1970’s – 80’s are considered so out of touch or quaint that no one even considers using them.  But focusing only on latest contemporary worship rather than keeping us wonderfully connected to God actually leaves us both isolated and impoverished. We are not the only generation that has ever known how to glorify God but rather  we are simply one row in God’s enormous heavenly arena. When we worship we need to close our eyes and imagine the voices of all believers down through the centuries blending

aniversario da igreja 002their ancient harmonies with our 21st century praise. He is not the God of the dead but of the living and He gives us worship songs ever new and yet ageless; as His gift of connection to that ageless connected community called the church!

 

 

 

Take My Life Worship session One

/ pastorpete51 / 1 Comment

Take my life and let it be – Consecrated Lord to Thee… Francis Havergal 1873

Hebrews 12:28 Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom thnew-alaska-pics-2_cropat cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe

 

As a worship leader myself I recognize my own tendency to push people. Sometimes I begin with a fast peppy song just to try and get people focused on church. I press people to clap, raise their hands or to say Amen, yet rarely have I paused to hush myself in the awesome presence of a Holy God. Rarely have I waited quietly till God sent the wind and the fire of the Holy Spirit. Francis Havergal had it exactly right when she began her now famous hymn with the words, “Take my life” Our worship is not just about having Jesus in our life, but it is about finding our life in Him. Until we offer our life, our worship will remain pretty superficial most of the time. When we ask God not only to take our life, but to ” let it be consecrated Lord to thee”, then He will truly begin to operate as both Lord and Savior of our life.

For those of you who haven’t read our about page, let me begin by saying that my wife and I serve as assistant pastors in a local Brazilian church. As Americans we find many things uniquely refreshing about some of the older customs from Brazil in our worship services. Though our Brazilian brothers and sisters are less than timely about when they enter the service, they retain the wonderful custom of pausing to kneel and dedicate themselves to the Lord upon their arrival. That kind of a sense of reverence and awe is also the very life and breath of our worship. From the times of Abraham to the Apostle John, the manifestation of the Holiness of God left them on their faces listening to what God had to say.

God wants us to be quick to hear and slow to speak. He does love to hear the voice of His children, but do we love to hear Him speak? Do we just rush to church, sing our three songs and go home checking our calendars for what new event we have to remember to include in our busy schedule? God is unchanging. God will not hurry to try and catch up with us as we run in circles. If we truthfully long to worship, we will discover that God is still truly seeking for us to fully yield in reverence and awe to Him!