WORSHIP WITHOUT RUMINATION?

WORSHIP WITHOUT RUMINATION?

Sunday, July 08, 2018

   Psalm [GW] 119:89-100 O’ LORD, your word is established in heaven forever. Your faithfulness endures throughout every generation. You set the earth in place, and it continues to stand. All things continue to stand today because of your regulations, since they are all your servants. If your teachings had not made me happy, then I would have died in my misery. I will never forget your guiding principles, because you gave me a new life through them. I am yours. Save me, because I have searched for your guiding principles. The wicked people have waited for me in order to destroy me, yet I want to understand your written instructions. I have seen a limit to everything else, but your commandments have no limit. Oh, how I love your teachings! They are in my thoughts all day long. Your commandments make me wiser than my enemies, because your commandments are always with me. I have more insight than all my teachers, because your written instructions are in my thoughts. I have more wisdom than those with many years of experience, because I have obeyed your guiding principles.

   John 4:23-24 Indeed, the time is coming, and it is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. The Father is looking for people like that to worship him. God is a spirit. Those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth."

   Romans 12:1-3 Brothers and sisters, in view of all we have just shared about God's compassion, I encourage you to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, dedicated to God and pleasing to him. This kind of worship is appropriate for you. Don't become like the people of this world. Instead, change the way you think. Then you will always be able to determine what God really wants-what is good, pleasing, and perfect. Because of the kindness that God has shown me, I ask you not to think of yourselves more highly than you should. Instead, your thoughts should lead you to use good judgment based on what God has given each of you as believers.

  Barna, Pew, and others in surveying USA have repeatedly found that in all reality Christians live no differently than those outside of the church. (Divorce, adultery, LTAs, teen pregnancy, STD, materialism, et al.)

  Why so, could it be for a lack of true worship?

  Jesus stated that we must worship in spirit and truth. The word “spirit”, includes meaning “with/from a rational soul”. The “truth” of course meaning as Jesus pointed out to the Samaritan woman: the truth about God the Father as opposed to concepts and traditions.

  We have the truth, God’s Word, highly available. (2Tim.3:16-17)

  So the lack of godly living, true worship, is the result of Christians being deficient in a rational soul?

  Sadly, the contemporary church is not alive as a community of careful ruminators being reasonable about God, His will, and His purpose for us as believers. (Rom.12:1-3) If we were such a spiritually cooperative community we would evidence sanctified gracious godliness, undergirded in Psalm119:11/1John 2:15-17 rational spirit.

  Just as atheism rejects theism, so does centering in this world’s entertainment, stifling musing that produces true worship. This includes we who know whom God is. 

EBB4