This week, we’re exploring how a church community should be committed to connectedness to God in worship.

Humans will never be more connected to God than in the kingdom of heaven, or the kingdom of God.  The Bible includes the book of Revelation, which recounts John’s vision of the kingdom of heaven.  Here’s what he described about angels, and then humans:

Each of the four living creatures had six wings and was covered with eyes all around, even under his wings. Day and night they never stop saying: “HOLY, HOLY, HOLY IS THE Lord GOD ALMIGHTY, WHO WAS, AND IS, AND IS TO COME.”  Whenever the living creatures give glory, honor and thanks to him who sits on the throne and who lives for ever and ever,  the twenty-four elders fall down before him who sits on the throne, and worship him who lives for ever and ever. They lay their crowns before the throne and say:  “You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being.” (Revelation 4:8-11)

Even in the kingdom, there is worship.  The word may not appear in this reading, but the core meaning is there.  Worship means “to give worth to something.”  And the words “you are worthy” are right at the beginning of the words the elders say in their heavenly worship.

You can tell what someone values by how they spend money, time.  You can see what’s worth their limited resources.  Worship is spending our limited time on God.  It’s an expression of love.

In our Marriage and Parenting courses, we introduce the five love languages.  Some communicate and receive love through words, touch, acts of service, time, and others through gifts.

In the same way, we can show love to God through various “languages”.  Worship includes prayer, and music, confessing sins, asking forgiveness, reminding ourselves what we believe, reading the Bible together, and more.  All aspects of how communities of Christians worship.

These are all ways to communicate God’s worth in our eyes.  You can see it in this reading.  The elders say, “You are worthy to receive glory and honor and power” but then they tell him why: he is the creator of everything.

He knows all this, of course.  But this is a time for humans, mortals, to feed that back to him.  To acknowledge he is at the cetner of our lives, not the periphery, and we’re not going to deny it.

Question: How do you know someone values you?  What do they say, do, or not?

Reminder: Earlier in this series, we saw the importance of reading the Bible together in sync, so our new daily bible readings start today in our mobile app and web site.

Read the Bible in Sync Today

Ryan Sim - January 27, 2014

Monday - A New Idea - Reset Time

Reset

We’re recently started a new series called “reset”. In the first week, we talked about how Jesus makes it possible to reset all of life, giving us a fresh start in life that impacts every key area. We’re going to look at many of these in depth, and this week we see how Jesus resets our use of time. There was a time in my life when I prided myself on never needing a day planner. I remembered everything I signed up for, and never double booked. That was high school. Ever since, I’ve found my time needed to be managed. Through university, I started to rely on a day planner, an old fashioned spiral bound book. I got progressively busier, but could still say yes to pretty much anything I wanted. I would stay up all night getting things done if I needed to. I was young. By the time I started working, I had to start making choices. I can only be in one meeting, one event, or one place at a time. When I first pastored a church, I was still working as a paramedic on the side, until I finally realized I simply didn’t have the time to do both things well. And still today, I find myself constantly choosing between demands on my time. It’s only escalated since having children. I can go on. You probably can, too. Bottom line, unless we’re still kids, time is all about choices. It’s a limited resource – we can’t create it, we can only choose how to use it. The Future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is. ~C.S. Lewis But what if you could reset your clock? That used to be easy – whenever I’ve started a new job, I feel like it’s a chance to structure my time differently, within the constraints of set tasks, family and personal responsibilities. But even then, it’s never clear what’s best. Read one thing that says “say yes to every invitation, you never know who you’ll meet” but then I’ll read something else that says I should learn to say “no” to more invitations to protect my sanity and family. Which is it? With an extra hour, I don’t know whether I should work more, play with my kids, read the Bible, exercise, fix things around the house, or what. Someone will advocate that each one is most important. Time marches on. Closely connected with goals, last week’s topic. Question: What would you do with an extra hour in the day? Why? What would be your goal?

From Series: "Reset"

When our computers get bogged down and unmanageable, we know to hit a reset button to simply start over. Wouldn't a reset button be great in life? We know it would be complicated, with all our responsibilities and routines to consider, but imagine the freedom and refreshment of a new start in life! What would you do differently? What would you pay more attention to, and what would you ignore? How would you avoid getting bogged down and broken again? The great news is, in coming to earth as Jesus Christ, God has begun to "reset" our universe, our world, and even us. We're invited to start over with him, in what he calls his kingdom. We're invited to start a new life with a clean slate. What gets wiped clean, and lived differently, when God resets our lives? We'll explore how God resets these key areas of our lives: Reset: Goals Reset: Time Reset: Money Reset: Work Reset: Body & Food Reset: Sex & Marriage Reset: Family Reset: Compassion Reset: Nature Reset: Society Reset: Death Join us for the next several weeks, and invite God to reset your life.

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