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
Loading Content...
Share a Link to this Message
The link has been copied to your clipboard; paste it anywhere you would like to share it.
I recently read Chris Hadfield’s book – An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth. Most of us know Hadfield the astronaut – and assume that being an astronaut involves a lot of adrenaline, courage, all focused on the time from takeoff to landing.
But in his book, he tries to broaden our view of astronauts, so we don’t just focus on those few days in space. HE talks about a number of the practices that he’s used in his lifetime…all in preparation for going to space, and debriefing afterwards.
For example, he says he sweats the small stuff, always thinking about the details of how he’d react to an emergency before it happens. He touts the power of negative thinking – he would always spend hours going over his failures with others, to ensure they didn’t happen again.
He studied like crazy - his kids made fun of him for having more homework, and taking it more seriously than they did! All this, in addition to the need for physical fitness and wellbeing with constant trips to the doctor, trying to avoid illness and injury.
It wasn’t glamorous or easy, his life sounds like it’s been so single-mindedly focused on making it to space that it was very boring in many other ways, thanks in part to these practices.
Those kids of practices are what prepared him for his mission going to the space station, so when things went wrong, he was prepared.
This kind of thinking is valuable not just for space travel. Any big challenge needs preparation, and if the challenge is big enough, we need to learn new routines, rituals and practices well in advance, to change who we are in sustainable ways, focusing ourselves on being ready for the task ahead.
That’s why we’re exploring the book of Acts right now to understand the first followers of Jesus as pioneers, and figure out how they organized themselves as a church community. That was a big mission, and they needed some practices as well, to help prepare them for the challenges ahead.
Question: What kind of practices do you think would be essential to being a follower of Jesus?
