Tag: Worship

Idols?

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What or who are they in your life?

A lot of us within the body of Christ have the false belief that because we don’t look up to graven images and we don’t physically bow down to shrines or symbolic statues or figures, that we aren’t idolators…

But we’re so wrong.

Take a look at the list below and let’s rank these things – and I want you to be very very honest with yourself.

In your life, where is God’s true position amongst the following things/people?
(And please let this be a genuine assessment of where He really comes in the mix of things and not where you’d like Him to be in an ideal world…)

  • Job/Career
  • Business
  • Spouse
  • Partner (boyfriend or girlfriend)
  • Child/children
  • Education
  • Home care and chores
  • Socialising
  • Food
  • Bills
  • Fitness
  • Any other activities and people we fill our days with

Where is He?
Lower than you expected?

You see, every single thing/person that you allow to take a greater weight, value or importance in your life than your pursuit of God and His will and His word –
is an I D O L.

And please bear in mind that this is not always done consciously…
You mean no harm or insult to God when you do it, but to name a few:

  • You look at your phone and check that social media news feed ten times more than you even think of meditating and conversing with Your Maker.
  • Your tithe and offering is often short because you had other things to pay for.
  • You just want to quickly do the washing up first, then you’ll pray.
  • You just need to cook for the family first, then you’ll read the Word.

Very easily, He’s fallen a couple or even a good number of places in the ranking…
But we didn’t mean for it to be so.

Now don’t get me wrong, a very select number of things in our lives are actually ‘that important’ and in fact God does not undermine their importance either. However the problem of idolatry arises when we prioritise these things above God, and often it becomes a repeated habit.

What many of us have done is just about ‘fit God in’ and made Him work around everything else that we have going on, rather than the other way round. This is not only in terms of spending time with God, but it is also applicable in terms of what we do with our finances and other resources in which He has given us clear instructions about how to use them to serve Him.
We have put things so far above God and made Him last on our list. We rush and are eager and take so much more pleasure in engaging ourselves with all the things of the world; but we forget that we ought to be working out our salvation with fear and trembling. (Philippians 2:12-13).

Sound like idol worshipping yet?

One of our favourite luxuries being children of God, I’m sure is G R A C E.
But that very gift that God has given us freely, is what many of us are abusing and it’s the reason why we’ve become so lax in our service and worship to the Creator of Heaven and Earth.

We seem to have forgotten that God comes first!
(Matthew 6:33, Matthew 22:37-40).

How about we flip it, and start to do it right.

-Prayer and worship should be intentionally scheduled into your daily routine, not just as and when you remember.

-Your tithes should be the first thing intentionally set aside from your 100% on payday, not just scraped together after you’ve dealt with everything else.
I understand this can be sensitive for some who are struggling, but I really encourage you to activate your faith in doing this, and then watch for the fruits of your obedience – the Lord Himself says ‘Test Me…’ – God will never fail you! (Please see related scripture here: Proverbs 3:9-10, Leviticus 27:30-34, Malachi 3:8-12).

-Church services – to fellowship with others, and render a service before God, take precedence over work and social events etc.

Again, that’s only to name a few – we all know the things we need to adjust in our lives, so let’s not neglect what needs to be changed.

I must say though – I get it… A lot of the time when we’ve put God on the back burner, our main justification is because it’s in order to do stuff ‘we HAVE to do’ – it’s when we’re tending our flock – so God understands, right?
I’ll put my hands up and say I’ve done it too – mainly with my education – surely God doesn’t want me to fail, right?

But let us remember the word in Ecclesiastes 3:1 that says there is a time for everything, thus we must create order, structure and discipline in our lives and ensure that drawing nearer to God is at the top of our plans.
Retrain your mind to know and understand that God who gave you all these things will surely help you take great care of it all, but not at the expense of your worship and relationship with Him.

Father,
Today we call our hearts back to You in Jesus’ Name. We ask for Your perfect forgiveness to cleanse us and renew us for every single way we’ve made things and people in our lives god above You.
We ask that You enable us to consecrate our lives back unto You and revere and honour You as we ought to.
We don’t want Your wrath O God, we want Your smile and we want to make You happy, therefore help us get our worship and service right in order to please You. And help our hearts to truly chase and long after You in Jesus’ Mighty Name

Restore us unto You Father, let us be close to You,
in Jesus’ Mighty Name we pray.
Amen.

Keep the Faith, Don’t Stop Believing.

 

What can I do for You?

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Having recently had many conversations regarding relationships, and ‘getting it right’, and understanding the different requirements etc, it made me think about applying certain things to our relationship with The Father.

One thing that came up in particular is the fact that as individuals, we often focus solely on receiving our personal wants and needs from others.

Meaning that though we’re in a relationship with another person, we only concentrate on the different things we expect that person to do for us; how their actions and decisions can benefit us, and how anything and everything pertaining to them, can please us.

But what about the other person?

Today I’m asking us, What about God?

A relationship with God is the most important relationship anyone should have, therefore we ought to evaluate our behaviour in this relationship, every now and then, in order to see how we can improve it and make it better – all in the desire of drawing closer to Jehovah.

So let’s be real, just as we can sometimes be selfish in our relationships with one another, we are often also very selfish in our relationship with Abba Father.

Many of us get to a place where our prayers (which ought to be conversations) only contain requests galore…

“Father can You do, ABCDEF,
maybe I don’t need G,
but I definitely need HIJK and all the rest of it.”

We wake up, and yes we may manage to thank Him, but again, we jump in and ask Him to bless our days, grant us favour and grace and so on.

Now don’t get me wrong, asking God to be the centre of your day is not a bad thing, trusting in the beauty of His grace and therefore desiring your day to be saturated in it, again, is not a bad thing, but what God gave me for this post, to pass on to you, is that
every now and then, it’ll be nice for us to ask Him what He wants…

If we read Deuteronomy 12, we see a God of specificity.
And don’t worry, I understand that this chapter is in a completely different time, where there was no Saviour yet, but what I want to draw from it, is that we serve a God who pays attention to detail.
And if the bible tells me that my God is Consistent, never-changing, the same today, yesterday and forever (Revelation 1:8, Malachi 3:6, Hebrews 13:8), then that must mean, that this Specific and attention to detail God, still exists.
So why not appeal to that side of Him every so often?

Why not acknowledge that He has wants and desires too, and rather than ask so much for things that can bless our own lives, let’s ask God how we can Perfect the one thing that He takes from us, which is our worship.

I’m not asking you to go before God with a goat or a cow, but I am encouraging us to develop a habit of ASKING God what He wants and how He wants it…

How would You like me to proclaim Your name today?

How would You like to be served today?

What do You want my worship to sound and look like today?

What songs do You want to hear me sing to You?

What can I do today to make Your name and glory STAND OUT to those who experience and encounter me?

Many times we base our entire ‘living for God’, on what we think and assume He wants, what we’ve seen or heard others do, or what we’ve been told to do;

““These people come near to me with their mouth
    and honor me with their lips,
    but their hearts are far from me.
Their worship of me
    is based on merely human rules they have been taught.”
[Isaiah 29:13]

But the bible tells us a true worshipper, worships in spirit and in truth – John 4:24.

Therefore I want us to become more sensitive to the Spirit of God in us and let us listen to what God is saying about true worship, rather than imitating what we’ve seen around us.
Let us become unselfish in our relationship with God, and learn to stop focusing only on what we can get out it.
Instead, let us ask Him what He wants, and actually wait to hear what God desires of us.

Let us desire to have a heart that is near to Him, through a worship that is no longer based on rules and acting, but rather based on a deeper knowledge and understanding of what God wants, what God likes, and what God will be pleased with.

Let’s pray;

Father, I know I have the freedom to worship You freely all the days my life, so I pray that You will help me to worship You in a way that is personally perfect for You.

Let me not focus on doing it anyone else’s way, but rather help me to acknowledge and focus on what You want, and how You want it.

I pray that after reading this message, I won’t get caught up on worrying about worshipping ‘right’, but instead, I pray that I will always long to worship You in Spirit, and in Truth.

Help me to always consider You more in my daily living, and let me walk closely with You, and become so familiar with Your heart and Your desires, that the things that flow from me naturally are more and more aligned with that which pleases You.
In Jesus’ Name,
Amen.

Keep the Faith, Don’t Stop Believing
God Bless you.

#AnUnselfishRelationship
#MoreThan100PeoplePraying (Let’s keep our daily prayers up for the youth of today – our leaders of tomorrow)