Tag: Worship

Passion Points

On By BrianIn PASSION Points

Here are some good posts for your weekend reading:

The Cumulative Effect of Our Little Choices – Randy Alcorn (EPM)
Following Christ isn’t magic. It requires repeated actions on our part, which develop into habits and life disciplines. Our spirituality hinges on the development of these little habits, such as Bible reading and memorization and prayer. In putting one foot in front of the other day after day, we become the kind of person who grows in Christlikeness.

Your Sin Begins with a Felt Need – David Bowden (DG)
The more we put our faith in the truth of who God is for us in Christ, the more he fills in the places within us that are lacking. As he does this, the Holy Spirit creates new desires within our hearts (Romans 8:1–11). These new desires cut temptation’s legs out from under it and lead us away from sin and toward holiness.

Who Was Saint Patrick and Should Christians Celebrate St. Patrick’s Day? – Stephen Nichols (Ligonier)
Perhaps we remember him best by reflecting on the “St. Patrick’s Breastplate,” which has traditionally been attributed to him. The word breastplate is a translation of the Latin word lorica, a prayer, especially for protection. These prayers would be written out and at times placed on shields of soldiers and knights as they went out to battle. St. Patrick’s Lorica points beyond himself and his adventurous life. It points to Christ, the one he proclaimed to the people who had taken him captive….

Instructive Worship – Andrew Roycroft
The beauty of true worship is that we address ourselves to God, but we also address one another with who God is and what he has said. We worship in our spirits, by the power of the Holy Spirit, but also with deep intellectual investment, with an eye fixed on the glory of the gospel as well as a heart tuned to its sentiments. Such worship is deeply didactic, it retrains the flagging disciple, it prohibits empty sentiment, it draws our attention and our affection towards the God in whose presence and power we are meeting.

Hope you have a great Lord’s Day!

Passion Points

On By BrianIn PASSION Points

Here are some good posts for your weekend reading:

Why You’ll Never Be Free Until You Start Obeying God – Kevin DeYoung (Crossway)
We sometimes define freedom as the ability to do whatever we want to do, but that’s not really how the Bible understands freedom. Freedom is the ability to do what we ought to do—that’s real freedom.

God’s Hidden Purposes in Your Suffering – Leah Baugh (Core Christianity)
God is often working not just for our good but for the good of others through us. Sometimes in our American context, we can get a little wrapped up in our own little world. We can think that our suffering is just all about us and God, that God is only doing something in my life. But as Dr. Ferguson also points out in his sermon, the truth is that God is always working in multiple lives and in multiple ways all at once. ​

How Evangelism Is Kind of Like Fishing – Tim Challies
The great work God is accomplishing in this world is catching people for himself. He’s saving them by his grace and for his glory. What’s amazing is that he uses people like you and me to help accomplish that. He saves people through the good news of the gospel and he tells you and me to speak out that news. He calls us to be fishers of men, to catch people alive.

Desperately Seeking Transcendence – Own Strachan
When we gather for the weekly worship service, we gather as those starved for God, and starved for transcendence. We have been swimming all week in the normal, trivial, earthly, ordinary, and natural. We need the abnormal. We need the essential. We need the heavenly. We need the extraordinary. We need what is above nature. We need the supernatural. This is what weekly worship gives us. It does not fundamentally give us a little “touch from the Lord,” as if all we need is a divine pat on the shoulder, a quick grin from a hall-crossing deity. It gives us a brush with God. We hide besides Moses in the cleft of the rock, expectantly and reverently awaiting the passing-by of the radiance of the appearing of God’s glory.

Hope you have a great Lord’s Day with the Lord!

Passion Points

On By BrianIn PASSION Points

Here are some good posts for your weekend reading:

The Spiritual Dangers of Disconnecting from Creation – Scott Martin (TGC)
Creation is not an end in itself, something to be worshiped in place of the Creator. It is rather something that points us—if we are willing to pay attention—to a good, gracious, powerful, extravagant, and loving God. A world that disregards or distances itself from creation is a world that will naturally disregard and distance itself from God.

Quiet and Deep Christianity – Andrew Roycroft (Thinking Pastorally)
Ours is an age of fragmentation, of intellectual hopscotch, of results-oriented activity on the one hand and mindless entertainment on the other. We have demolished the stonewalls and uprooted the hedgerows of our intellectual past in favour of speed, convenience, and leisure; the mass production of information on which to gorge ourselves, without a thought for the mental and emotional habitats which have been destroyed in the process. Sooner or later we will have accommodated these changes to such a degree that we won’t even know to feel regret, and by the time my young children reach adulthood the concepts of silence, stillness, meditation, deep reading, and unbroken thought will be so far back in our history that they may scarcely seem real….  A huge, and largely unaddressed, issue is what kind of effect will this tempo and tone have on the life and work of the local church?

An Open Letter to the Timid Evangelist – Brian Hedges (Crossway)
In diagnosing our evangelistic disorders, it helps to remember that effective personal evangelism depends on the convergence of multiple factors including opportunity, character, and skill. Here are a few thoughts about each.

We Don’t Sing for Fun – Tim Challies
One of the trends that has swept our society through the past decades is the “funification” of pretty much everything….Yet singing is not prescribed for Christian worship for the purpose of fun. It actually serves a far higher purpose…

Hope you have a great Lord’s Day!

Sermon Songs: Revelation 22:1-5

On By BrianIn Revelation Hymns

MusicNotes

We are longing for the Garden, Living Water flowing through
Bright as crystal in this Eden, Life with God for me and you
We are longing, We are thirsting, We yearn for Christ to return

In this Garden – the Tree of Life, No more death, disease, aging
No more curse, no more cosmic strife, No more pain, sorrow, weeping
We are longing, We are thirsting, We yearn for Christ to return

In this Garden reigns the good King, Evil gone – there is no night
We will serve Him, His praise we’ll sing, Dwelling in His brilliant light
We are longing, We are thirsting, We yearn for Christ to return

In this Garden – His name bearing, Forever we’ll see His face
Close communion ever growing, Behold God’s amazing grace
We are longing, We are thirsting, We yearn for Christ to return

To the tune of “Lo He Comes With Clouds Descending”

Sermon Songs: Revelation 21:9-27

On By BrianIn Revelation Hymns

MusicNotes

Behold the Lamb’s glorious Bride, The Lord’s Holy City
The people for whom Jesus died, Arrayed with God’s glory
Dwelling in God’s brilliant presence, In loving unity
Forever in God’s remembrance, With radiant beauty

Behold our God’s new dwelling place, Ablaze with His glory
Home of the redeemed human race, The great holy city
The nations bring their glory in, The gates open always
There’ll be no wickedness or sin, In these glorious days

To the tune of “We Sing the Greatness of Our God”

Sermon Songs: Revelation 21:1-8

On By BrianIn Revelation Hymns

MusicNotes

I saw the new heaven and earth, And there was no more sea
The Bride of Christ came down to earth, As the Holy City
Behold with man God now dwelling, Our tears He’ll wipe away
No more death, pain, or suffering, On this joyful new day!

Behold God will make new all things, These words are trustworthy
The water of life from the Spring, Given to the thirsty
The one who conquers will receive, A place in God’s fam’ly
Turn from your sin, in Christ believe, These gifts accept freely

To the tune of “We Sing the Greatness of Our God”

Sermon Songs: Revelation 20:1-10

On By BrianIn Revelation Hymns

MusicNotes

See an angel seize the dragon, Bind him for a 1000 years
See the saints raised to life again, Reigning for a 1000 years
Blessed and holy, Priests to our God, Jesus wins the victory

See Satan released from prison, Deceive, gather an army
See fire fall down from heaven, Satan judged eternally
War is over, Christian rejoice, Jesus wins the victory

To the tune of “Lo He Comes With Clouds Descending”