So why do Christians gather to worship week in and week out?  The answer is that there are at least three very good reasons:  to acknowledge God’s presence and worth, to remember that we are not alone but part of a community that is growing and learning, and to offer a visible witness to ourselves and others.  But when we gather to worship for these reasons, what do we do?  We celebrate!

The keynote of worship is celebration.  At times in its long and winding history the church has lost its sight of this.  But that is what Sunday mornings are all about—celebrating who we know God is (wow—he is our Father)  –celebrating what Jesus has done for us (wow—set us free from the consequences of our sin)—celebrating that can live in relationship with God through the power of the Holy Spirit (wow—we are not alone).

God is a God who throws parties.  Perhaps this is one of the reasons why Jesus told adults to keep their eyes on the children if they wanted to know what God is like.  Left on their own, adults develop strange ideas of what worship should be. …in the purely adult world, God frequently comes across as a cranky old grandfather..but children seem to know instinctively that God likes celebration.

Christians are people who are called to live in community, and we are a community of learners. We need to realize how impossible it is to be a Christian on our own, not to mention half the fun.

As Redeemer Church comes together, we’ll have three approaches to worship, in order:

Personal:  We encourage you to engage in prayer, particularly on Fridays.  We also hope you’ll have personal moments of worship to thank God for what happens in your life day to day.

Small Groups: As you share our challenges with friends, we hope your Friday prayers will no longer be something quiet and personal but something you share with the team.  Share the moments when God was at work in your life, and pray about them!

Celebration Events: Up to now, our celebration events have been just about fun, but in a few months we’ll start to host events with worship component.  We want to hear from you what will help you worship God as part of a larger community.

Challenge:  Complete our online survey about worship here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/8TS7K93

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 - September 12, 2013

Thursday - Act On It - Neighbours Matter

Yesterday I asked you to define love. One common way people today define love is to be as tolerant and permissive as possible, as long as the other person does not to hurt others. See what a low standard that is? Jesus defines love to a much higher degree, he says to love one another as oneself. He knows we are self-centered…and Jesus uses that to teach us love for others. Between loving God with everything, and loving neighbours as ourselves, Jesus has declared self-salvation to be impossible. We may love God to one degree or another. But with everything? We can and should try, but we reach our limits since we are only human, and separated ourselves from God in sin. We need help. Equally true, we may make ourselves harmless and never say a word to anyone who isn’t harming another, but we can’t make ourselves completely love others as ourselves – we always want more for ourselves than to be tolerated and put up with. We can and should try to love others as ourselves, but we need the help of another to do this. Jesus made himself harmless, and willingly sacrificed himself on a cross in the ultimate action of love for God and others. He led the way, and did what would be impossible for humans, so we could follow him in love for God and love for others, rather than trying to trailblaze ourselves. We’ll look at this more in this upcoming series on neighbours. Challenge: How do your actions “hang’ under love of God or love of neighbour? Is there anything you’ve done in the last week that doesn’t fit one of those loves?

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