church

Corporate Worship

/ Neal Embry / Leave a comment

I talked a little bit the other night about how we have become dependent on our “God-highs,” and this is especially true in some corporate worship services and Christian events.  I think that sometimes we also fail to understand the purpose of worship.  This is something I see in my own life, and in some churches I’ve been to and taken from what I see and hear from fellow believers.

So, tonight, I want to talk about worship.  Specifically corporate worship, that is, the gathering together of believers to make the glory of God known and to rejoice in who He is through our praise, the message brought, and the giving of our finances and all else that our service entails.

Stay with me, and let’s see where God takes us.

First question I’d like to raise is this: What is our attitude towards worship?

Do we come into worship services, both the singing and the message and all else, with an attitude that brings glory to God and that is holy? I have been so guilty in the past, going back to my early teenage years, of not really caring that I came to worship a holy sovereign God.  That didn’t really register with me.  I cared more about getting home in time to watch my favorite NFL team or was thinking about food after church.  I was too busy looking at the cute girl a row ahead of me and not enough at the word of God being preached.

The Lord throughout Scripture says that He is not pleased with our sacrifices, with our religious rituals.  He wants our hearts.  Look at Jeremiah 6:20: “What use to me is frankincense that comes from Sheba, or sweet cane from a distant land?  Your burnt offerings are not acceptable, nor your sacrifices pleasing to me.”

I believe that if we come to church with the intention of not truly worshiping God, we are doing a disservice to Him.  He is not pleased, and it is sin.  He is the Creator of all things, and He is most certainly worthy of our worship.

I believe that if we come to church with the intention of worshiping anything but God, we are in sin.  When the Israelites were in the wilderness, at Mount Sinai, when Moses went up to meet with the Lord, they built a golden calf to worship.  Moses was of course furious when he saw this, as was the Lord.  While we hopefully don’t set up golden idols in the middle of our sanctuaries, I wonder if we realize that worshiping ANYTHING but God is idol worship.  In our worship, are we praising because we love the way the music sounds?  Are we worshiping the music, are we worshiping the praise band?  Are we worshiping our church itself?  These are tough questions.  I think I’ve done this unintentionally.  This doesn’t mean it’s okay, or that that is an excuse, but I admit I’ve done it.  My worship experience is altered by what I think of the music, or what I think of the praise team or choir, and thus, if they don’t do what I think they should for me, I think less of the service.

This is a fault of mine, and it might be a fault of many.  Is your attitude towards worship one that is only focused on yourself?  Do you feel like you have to get something in order to count it a success?  I don’t believe this is right.  Instead of us focusing on ourselves, and on what we can get, we should focus on what we can give….that is, our praise, our time, our money, and our lives to the glory of God and rejoicing in what He has done.

I believe that if we come to church distracted, and do not plan on asking God to help us focus on Him, we are in danger of idol worship.  You see, whatever holds your focus, your time, and your heart, holds your worship.  Think about it.  If all your focus, time, and heart is being poured into God, your natural response is to worship Him.  If all of your focus, time, and heart is going towards your job, or towards your car, or whatever it is, that’s what’s going to hold your worship.  Not that you’ll bow down and worship your Chevy, but in your heart, that car or that job or that girl or that guy has become more important than God.  And when we are distracted, and all our minds can do is think about other things except God and why we come to church, our response should be to go to God and ask that He will clear our mind and help us focus on Him and worship Him.  He’s done that for me so many times in the past.

Being distracted is inevitable.  Being distracted isn’t the sin….failing to recognize it and seek God’s help is.  There will always be things that could distract us from our relationship with the Lord, whether it be our job, our family, our problems, etc.  It’s nothing to be ashamed of.  And this certainly isn’t to say that God doesn’t give us some answers to our questions/problems in church.  He does, but it will come when we focus on Him and let the Holy Spirit move.  It will come when we truly give it all up to God, and stop worrying about it, and start worshiping Him.

So our attitude towards worship should be one that marvels at who God is, not at anything else.  Our attitude should be glorifying Him, no matter what else happens or is going on in our lives.

The second question I’d like to raise is What is our expectation and focus of worship?

This ties right back in with the “God-high.”  I know from my own personal experience at church camps, and not all of them were this way, but some were, that the focus is often placed on the person and not God.  The focus is placed on the emotion of the moment, and on the songs sung and message brought, and not on the saving power of God.  Yes the gospel is proclaimed, but it is too often proclaimed as though we wrote the story, as though we were able to save, and it is proclaimed as if it is made more or less powerful by the speaking abilities of the man or woman on stage.  This is not true.  Look at Romans 1:16 with me: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.”  The gospel is not the power of man.  It is the power of God Himself, through which He calls people to a relationship with Himself through Jesus Christ.  He is the one who fuels it, who uses it, and who makes it powerful and effective.  Not us.  So when we proclaim the gospel, may we proclaim it boldly, but boldly because we trust, not in ourselves and what we can do, but in who God is and what He can do.  We should expect that God is sovereign and powerful over the work of spreading the gospel.  We should focus on Him.

God-highs are not always a bad thing.  Sometimes they’re needed, and they can be good, but when we come to expect that same emotion and feeling every day, we are setting ourselves up for a let-down.  When we expect that God is going to make us feel that way every day, or He’s going to do what He did at that camp each and every day, we will be disappointed.  What happens when those feelings aren’t there?  We feel like God has failed, and this is false.  God never fails.  Ever.  So we must lean on Him for everything, and must walk with Him each day, no matter what the circumstances.  Sometimes it’s going to be hard, but we keep going and doing what we know we ought to do and rejoice in the hope found in Christ.

In our worship services, do we come in expecting to see the music minister belt out an amazing solo, or see the worship team do a sweet-sounding medley of our favorite hymns?  Do we expect to see every single person raising their hands, coming to salvation, giving all they have?  Again, I ask, do we expect that we will personally get a lot out of worship?

You see, sometimes, we don’t get a lot out of church.  And we must learn to be ok with this.  This can affect our attitude in that we don’t worship God, but ourselves.  It affects our expectations in that we are let down when we don’t get a lot out of church.  Our worship services should be built around bringing God the praise He is due, no matter what happens with the music, no matter if the pastor tells a cool story, and no matter if we get anything out of it or not.  I would say that if we are focused on giving God the glory, and not expecting anything but to see Him praised for the God He is, we will get at least one thing……we will get to experience true worship of the Father.  We will experience God’s presence, and we will get to see Him glorified.

Is that enough for us?  I expect to see God move each time I’m in church, but how that happens is up to Him.  He can choose to move by blessing us with great fellowship, or seeing someone come to Christ.  He may move by blessing our church financially and allowing us to give that to Him.  But because of who God is, He deserves our praise no matter what happens.  He created the world, us, gave us salvation, and blesses us immensely with His love.  He deserves our praise, period.  Because our worship isn’t about us.  It isn’t about seeing an incredible “God-high,” or witnessing a “miracle.”  It isn’t about the praise band or the pastor or the people sitting next to you.  It is about bringing glory to God, and if we expect anything more or less, I’m afraid that we set ourselves up for a miserable Sunday.

Our expectations should not be based on humans, on our abilities, or even on the church, but solely on who God is, and that He deserves all the honor and glory.  I hope that we expect to worship God, and that if nothing else happens, that we get to stand in humble adoration of the Creator of the universe, and that that is enough for us.  I hope that our attitudes are ones that marvel at God’s mercy, grace, and love for us, and in humble repentance of where we have failed.

The last question I’ll raise is this: What is our response to worship?

I’m constantly asked “How was church?”  And I usually respond “It was good.”  Sometimes I’ll talk more about the bible study, or the music or the sermon, but more often than not, it’s “It was good.”  I hate that about myself.  Our answer to “How was church?” should be our same response to “How is God?”  He’s awesome!  Not because our church is extra special, not because our bible study went really well or the sermon was especially good, but it was awesome because we got to fellowship with other believers and worship the God of the universe!  It was awesome because we got to be in His house, in His presence.

Our response shouldn’t be dependent on our emotions, but on the character of God.  I’m not saying that you’re always going to have a blast at church….you won’t.  Some Sundays will be better than others.  But if our response after we get in our car and drive away is based only on how we feel about the service and if we were “fed,” and not on the thought “Wow, I just got to experience God,” then we have a problem.  Even if the service itself wasn’t the best in the world, we still marvel and wonder and are amazed by the incredible character of God.

God doesn’t need our guitars, drums, and three-point sermons to make His name known.  All we have to do to be amazed at God is to look at ourselves and see how much we need Him, and then look at Him, and see how much of Himself we have been given in salvation.  This salvation God has given to us is a gift, one that we do not deserve, and yet He loves us enough to call us to Him, and to show us who He is.  He loves us enough to pick us up out of the dirt, out of the pit of our sin, and in our rebellion, He says “I love you!  Follow me.”  How could a God who created all things possibly need our music and our messages and our abilities to make His name known?  Does He choose to use those things?  Absolutely.  But the point is that when these other things fail, God never does.  And our response should be based on His love for us, not on if the guitarist played the right chords on “Come thou Fount.”

Our response to worship is to be amazed by God, to love God, and to respond to Him as He calls out of His love for us and who He is, no matter if the human part behind worship was fantastic or not.

This focus on emotional, “powerful” worship is leading young Christians down a slippery slope.  It places the focus on the worship, and not the receiver of it.  It places the focus of the message on the messenger, and not on who the message is about.  It is all about God.  It is not about us.  It does a disservice to God and it is a sin to place the emphasis on anyone but Him.  The worship team should seek to make God known, not themselves.  The pastor should seek to humbly bring the word of God, and let himself be used by God, not the other way around.  So many times we depend on everything but God, but because they throw His name around, we think it’s okay, that will pass for a relationship with the Almighty.

Hillsong United, Chris Tomlin, and David Crowder cannot save you.  Lakeside Baptist Church, as much as I love it, and am so proud of it, cannot save you.  The Basement and Matt Pitt cannot save you.  David Platt, Billy Graham, and John Piper cannot save you.  The Montevallo BCM, as great a place as it is to serve and grow, cannot save you.  Your parents cannot save you.  You cannot save you.  All due respect to the above and what God may do through them….but they are not God.  The only way you will be saved is by God alone and through His love.  And He has shown us love through Christ.  He loves you, and if He is calling you into a relationship with Him, respond with an emphatic “YES!”  The emphasis of our worship should not be on us.  While God moves through His people, and in His church He does remarkable things, He alone deserves the honor and glory for what is done.  We rejoice as a church when God chooses to do incredible things through us, when He speaks through us to bring someone to salvation, when He does all He is capable of doing, we rejoice….but He alone deserves to receive the praise.

Instead of walking into a building, excited to see this awesome new worship team, or hear this awesome speaker, may we come in, excited and expecting to see God move and Him glorified.  Instead of tweeting how awesome our church is, or how awesome our speaker is, may we shout with every fiber of our soul and every social media network we are registered to, “God is awesome!”  May we come in with the attitude that He is always worthy, and He alone deserves our praise.  And may we respond joyfully to the love God has so graciously showed us.

Thanks for sticking with me, those who are reading this last line.  May this be used to build you up and encourage you, and may God receive all the glory from all that I do.

God bless,

Neal E

The Prodigal Son or the Older Son…which one are you?

/ Neal Embry / Leave a comment

Most, if not all, professing Christians, if you asked them, would say they rejoice when a sinner comes to Christ, as they should.  After all, it’s what Christ was and is all about.  His Word says we are all sinners, saved by grace.  So, why is it that it seems like there are some people we don’t want in heaven?  It’s time to ask the tough questions and look at ourselves in the mirror.  Do we approach missions and evangelism the same way as we do a buffet….picking out what we want and leaving the rest?

Luke 15….my favorite chapter of the Bible.  The parable of the prodigal son is one that I especially relate to.  I was saved at the age of eight, but, for ten years, I never matured past that eight year old level of spiritual growth and deepening my faith in Christ.  I trusted that Christ is the Son of God and that He was resurrected from the dead after dying for my sins on the cross, but I didn’t know what it meant to me on a daily basis and how it applied to my life.  As a result, I pushed God into a corner and started living the life I wanted.  I had anger inside of me for things that I couldn’t control.  I cussed like a sailor.  I had lust like no one’s business.  When it came down to it, I didn’t really want to remember what Christ did on the cross, because I wasn’t quite ready to give Him everything.  Thank God He never let me go.  Fast forward to age 18.  Jesus pretty much hit me upside the head and told me that He was tired of His little corner.  Sure, during the six years that I really strayed from the Lord, I had my high points.  Some weeks I felt close to God, and I would “rededicate” my life to Christ.  But, as David Platt puts it, I wanted to be pardoned, not purified.  I didn’t quite understand what it meant to live out my faith.  I get to college, and I realize that I have to give up everything.  My sin, my dreams, my friends, my life for God, and let Him take control.  So, when I read about a man that was probably a teenager going and squandering everything he had on sex, booze, and “friends,” I can relate.

This son decided he didn’t want to wait until his father died to receive his inheritance.  So he demanded it before the father died.  I can’t imagine going up to my mother and “demanding” that she give me money.  One….I don’t have an “inheritance” from my mom.  My “pay” is to be able to come home to a nice house, get great food, shower, and sleep.  Two….she might decide to learn how to fire a gun if I ever talked to her like that….anyway.  The son goes and spends it on prostitutes, alcohol, and just living the high life.  The Bible says he “came to himself” and realized that his sin went deeper than just with his father….he had sinned against the God of the universe.  He longs to eat the food that pigs eat.  A week before, he thought he was on top of the world.  Now, he’s lower than the pigs that roll around in mud.  He plans to go to his father and ask forgiveness and work his way back to him, but before he gets the chance to speak, the father runs, literally runs, towards him and embraces him.  He was looking for his son.  He never gave up.

If I had to make up for all the sin I’ve committed and the wrong I’ve done, the people I’ve hurt….I would never be able to do it.  But God sent Christ for this reason…we no longer have the burden of living to the law’s standards.  Christ secured our forgiveness with His death.  He took the payment for all those nights I spent lusting after women, all the foul language that came out of my mouth, the lies and hate I showed towards friends and family, and took my punishment.  A local pastor said this past Sunday that in the new covenant of Christ that “I get all the benefits of Christ’s faithfulness, even though I am not faithful.”  God saw me while I was a long way off, and chose, by His absolutely incredible grace, to bring me back to Him and make me new.  I truly repented and made God first.  I’m not perfect, and never will be.  But thanks to God, I’m not where I used to be.  He took a lukewarm and sinful boy that called himself a Christian and brought him back to himself, and is molding me into the Godly man He wants me to be.  The father in this story doesn’t see the sin his son has committed, he only sees his son, and looks on him with love.  Because of what Christ did on the cross, this is how the Father sees us.

So, sinners are usually seen as the prodigal son.  We are rescued from our sin by faith in Christ, and God the Father welcomes us into His family with open arms.  But there’s another group that needs mention…the older son.  Otherwise known as the Pharisees….or Christians who obviously haven’t read the Word in a while.  Otherwise known as…..our churches.

We proclaim to love all people, but instead of loving on them and showing them the love of God and the gospel….we judge them and condemn them for what they do.  Like I said earlier, we treat missions like a buffet, taking what we want, what we care about, and leaving the rest.  We hear of some nice group in Africa that needs help because they don’t have water and we go and faithfully proclaim the gospel.  Hallelujah.  Amen.  Then…we hear the opportunity to witness to a homosexual community in a big city and say “God doesn’t care about those people.  They’re too far off.  We can’t help them.  They’re just sinners.”  We may not say those words, but it’s what our attitudes show.  Jesus never said to love those who you really like and identify with.  He never said to just go to the people you feel comfortable with.  The truth is…we are miserably failing.

The campus of my university has an incredibly diverse population.  I tend to disagree with a lot of what they do.  But that doesn’t mean that I don’t love them as people.  We are all sinners.  If it wasn’t for God’s grace, none of us would be here.  Yet we act like we’re better than others because for some reason, we think being a Christian was our God-given right.  Where in the world do we, especially in the south, get this sense of entitlement?  Certainly not from Scripture!  Romans 2:1–“Therefore, you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges.  For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things.”  This verse is skipped over way too much…and it’s beginning to become obvious.

Christians, again, especially in the south, are becoming like the older brother in Luke 15.  He gets angry at his father because he has served him for two years and didn’t receive anything, yet his brother comes home, his brother who was living in sin, and receives the fattened calf.  Look at opinions of Christians all over the country.  All you have to do is go read some of the comments on newspaper stories that deal with faith.  We are seen as judgmental, mean, snobby, and ignorant hypocrites.  Does that sound like the kind of people Jesus wants to carry out the Great Commission?  It may not be true of all of us, and no, we don’t seek praise from the world, but we better start caring about our image.  Not in the sense of “If I look good, I must be good,” but with missions in mind.  With the “I want people to see Christ in me so I may better advance the Kingdom and glorify God.”  There are two problems with the older brother:

1) He treats his years with his father like years of servitude.  He expects something in return so he can “celebrate with his friends.”  This is the equivalent of us going to church without wanting to experience and glorify God.  We drag ourselves to church Sunday morning and then expect God to do something for us, when we forget that the whole point of church, the whole point of life, is to bring glory to the King, and not to ourselves.

2)  He is so focused on his brother’s sin that he forgets and refuses to see him as his actual brother.  This is where I believe we are having major issues within the church.  It’s been brought to my attention this week that I myself have failed.  I have come across as judgmental…something I never expected to hear.  I know it was not my intent, but the problem is…I wasn’t intentional enough with my love and I lost my focus and became a hypocrite.   A Pharisee.  Then, Sunday God hit me with truth.  The pastor at the church I visited said “It’s not our job to convict people.  We are not the Holy Spirit.  We are to lovingly point them to the gospel.”  I had to check myself, and it stung a little bit.  I apologized and asked God to forgive me and to guide me and my ministry with love and peace, not religion and judgment.

Our churches seem to have this thing where we focus on the sin and not the sinner.  Our Christians seem to have this thing where we want to point out others sin, but not our own.  We must remember that the only difference between non-believers and Christians is that we know Christ.  And it is by God’s grace alone, nothing we do merits our salvation.  Where do we get off thinking that we are wiser than God?  Do we honestly think that we know who is “fit” for the kingdom of heaven?  Certainly not us.  No one is.  Not without Jesus.  So why do we go around believing that we are better than others?  We’re all about getting sin out of others lives, but we fail to recognize the sin in our own lives.  We’re all about fighting against abortion, fighting against homosexuality, fighting against all these things, but we forget that this world isn’t filled with issues and sin.  It’s filled with people struggling with sin.  They may not realize it, but they are.  They don’t need us coming around and beating them over the head with the law and being a moral dictator.  Show the love of Christ, show them the way to God, and pray for them.  Spend time with them, become a friend.  We are not to condone their sin, and we certainly don’t join them in it, but we don’t leave them to the world. God didn’t leave us to fend for ourselves in this dark world….why are we leaving others?

I love what my pastor says, even though I’m not sure if he actually came up with it…maybe he’ll read this and tell me: “Hate the sin…love the sinner.”  Amen.  Jesus spent more time with sinners than he did righteous people.  He loved them and showed them the way to the Father.  If the one we call King, the one we call Savior, did these things, we should jump at the opportunity to do the same.

So, are you the prodigal son?  Caught up in sin, wondering how to get back to God?  Life wears us down sometimes….but God is there.  We will struggle with sin and with life’s problems, but we have a Savior and a Conqueror in heaven who is there to pick us back up.  Come to Jesus.  Give Him everything…sin, doubt, problems, relationships, whatever it is….just lay it down.  Make Him Lord, and He’ll make you part of the family of God.

Or, maybe you’re the older son?  Quick to judge, but slow to recognize internal sin?  It’s easy to get caught up looking at the sin of others.  Believe me.  It’s especially easy where I’m at, and in college in general.  But I’ve found that as I get swept away by God’s love for me, I start to love others more easily, and it’s not just other Christians.  I’ve decided to spend more time trying to meet people that are different than me, and share the love of Christ with them.  It must be intentional.  It must be done with the guidance of the Lord and with prayer and with the gospel.  But most of all….it must be done.  Period.

One day, peoples from every tongue, every tribe, every nation will bow before the Lord.  It’s time to stop believing that it’s all about us, all about our lifestyle, all about our friends and our “morals.”  It’s time to start believing that God can and will change the hearts of every kind of sinner imaginable.  If He did it for me, He can do it for anybody.  That goes for those that are more like the prodigal son and for those that identify with the older son.

If God loves all….why don’t we?  And what are we going to do in response to this love that transcends all lifestyles, all countries, all languages, and every other barrier imaginable?  Will we sit and wait for it all to end without reaching out to those who desperately need Jesus, just as we do?  Or will we be intentional and boldly proclaim the gospel to the nations, to the ends of the earth?

God bless,

Neal