God

Simply. Church.

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So tired of playing the church game. You know what I mean. Everyone smiles and says they are doing fine. I know better. As their pastor, I see who is hurting. This one is crippled by fear. Another is a worry wart. This guy is losing his job and his wife is scared they may lose their home. This lady is battling cancer, again. This couple desperately wants children but cannot. Another couple is concerned about their rebellious child. Still a third is separated and aren’t sure they want to reconcile.

Beginning today, our church is redoing our services. We have one simple rule – no masks. Honesty is to reign. Trust will be rebuilt. Hope restored. No fluff. No Oprah rah-rah.  Simply. Church. Where we come together to worship God and lift up each other. We will spend time in confession, testimony and the Word. We will plead with God to remake our lives, our family, our church. We will ask for the Spirit’s power to cleanse and empower us to live godly lives. Because, Christ bids us to come just as we are and He loves us enough not to leave us there.

Simply. Church.  I wonder why we ever got away from that.

Hymn Devotions Day 11 – Come Thou Fount

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DAY 11 – COME THOU FOUNT

Prone to wander – yes, that is me. Prone to leave the God I love. Why? That is the question, isn’t it. Why do we leave the place where we are safest? Why do we leave the One who has given us everything we need to live a godly life?

O, the depths the human soul has sunk to! Even when brought into a transforming relationship with the God of the Universe we still seek to go our own way. Yes, I will raise my Ebenezer, knowing full well it is only by His help, His grace and power that I have come as far as I have. Only by His help, grace and power will I arrive at the destination He has planned for me. I need to pray for Him to daily bind me to Him. Not to keep me from experiencing a wonderful life, but to keep me from danger and harm. To keep me close to Him, the Savior of Life and every good blessing.

If I cannot keep myself close to Him, and I have proven over and over that I cannot, I can ask Him to keep close to me.

Bend my heart to Thee Lord, I pray. Fetter my wandering feet so they do not leave Your path. You have said you will never leave me nor forsake me and I appreciate that very much. Forgive my sins, I pray, and draw me close to your side.

 

COME THOU FOUNT by Robert Robinson

Come, thou fount of every blessing

Tune my heart to sing Thy grace

Streams of mercy, never ceasing

Call for songs of loudest praise

Teach me some melodious sonnet

Sung by flaming tongues above

Praise the mount, I’m fixed upon it

Mount of Thy redeeming love

Here I raise mine Ebenezer

Hither by Thy help I’m come

And I hope by Thy good pleasure

Safely to arrive at home

Jesus sought me when a stranger

Wandering from the fold of God

He to rescue me from danger

Interposed His precious blood

O to grace how great a debtor

Daily I’m constrained to be

Let Thy goodness, like a fetter

Bind my wandering heart to Thee

Prone to wander, Lord I feel it

Prone to leave the God I love

Here’s my heart Lord, take and seal it

Seal it for Thy courts above

The Downward Spiral of Sin

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One of the best messages I have heard (and I wish I could remember the speaker’s name) was entitled “Cain at the Guggenheim – the downward spiral of sin”. The speaker used the famous New York City museum, which spirals ever downward, as an illustration of what sin entices us to do. On every level of the museum there is an exit. It may be hard to find, but it is there. In the same way, through every temptation we face there is an exit, if we will discipline ourselves to look for it and take it. If we do not, we find ourselves digging a hole deeper and deeper into despair.

Sin so easily entices us. It is easy, attractive, fun for a season. The ramifications of sin, though, are destructive and entangles us so thoroughly that once we are snared it takes a miracle of God to set us free. Stop and think is one of the Bible’s overarching themes, although couched in different terms. Stop and think, is this going to please God or anger Him? Stop and think, will this build someone up or tear them down? Stop and think, is this a wise course of action or a foolish one? Stop and think, will this draw me closer to God or push me farther away? Stop and think, is this what God has commanded or simply what I want to hear?

We tell our children all the time, stop and think. Think through the consequences of any action. What will happen if I do this, what will happen if I do not do this. It is amazing to me, that God gave us this wonderful, reasoning organ we call the brain and how little we use it.  Stop and think. No one “falls” into sin. We choose it. Deliberately. Because we like it, we like how it makes us feel, we think the potential consequences are worth it. Stop and think. That kind of reasoning will put you on the broad ramp spiraling down to destruction. Sin crouches at your door seeking to master you, like it did Cain. Rise up, put on God’s armor, seek His will and He will help you to master yourself and to throw off the shackles of sin.

Is Jesus Enough? Excerpt

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One of the songs we often sing at our church has a line that goes like this:

He gave His life, what more could He give?

 Oh how He loves you, oh how He loves me, oh how He loves you and me!

When we come to Jesus Christ in saving faith, we are acknowledging that He gave His life to pay the penalty for our sin. That act of supreme sacrifice makes Jesus worthy of our love and worship. Even if Jesus never does anything else for us, His procurement of salvation for our souls is more than enough. Any other blessing we receive from Him is simply extra gravy on an already overfilled plate.

When we start to live our lives based on conditional requirements rather than on the finished work of Jesus Christ, we are, in effect, saying that His death was not sufficient for all our needs. We are saying that we need more proof, more tangible benefits before we will give Him the honor He is due. Can you see how arrogant that way of thinking is? Can you see how are attitude has shifted from gratefulness of being a recipient of God’s mercy to one of an expectation of God existing to serve our wants?

We all know of people who started out on fire for the Lord and who dropped out along the way. Many became angry with God for His not answering their prayers a certain way or for not protecting a loved one from harm. If we are honest we must admit that we, too, have become disappointed in God for failing to meet our expectations.

Discouragement sets in when we become disappointed. Disappointment comes from unmet expectations. Our expectations and reality often collide and rarely do we blame ourselves as having expectations that were misguided, ill-founded or unreasonable. We blame either the reality around us or God for not changing the reality to suit our needs.

When pressed by adversity our hearts reveal the truth about us and about our relationship with God. Many believers are in love with the things of the Lord but not the Lord Himself. Despite what our lips may profess, our hearts show the shallowness of our faith. We act more like the crowds who followed Jesus for the miracles of food than the disciples. After all, when one becomes disappointed in God, is it His fault for not catering to our whims and desires or ours for not understanding His ways and trusting in His goodness?

God is good. When we cease to believe that foundational principle we open ourselves up to despair and hopelessness. Even when we do not understand the reasons why things are happening to us, we must cling to that one assurance. Job did. Job was greatly disappointed. Job could not understand why all those calamities had occurred in his life. Job, though, held onto his faith that God was good. Through everything Job never lost his faith in that aspect of God’s character.

One of the ironies of the Christian life is that so many of our prayers center on God healing or delivering us from a life-threatening situation – in effect delaying our arrival at the very place of our reward! How angry people get at God for transporting their loved one to glory instead of leaving them here to endure this sinful, broken earth. It seems that we have lost sight of heaven, that death has somehow regained her sting. Dying has become less than an entrance into eternity and our selfish desires to cling to more time on earth with our loved one trumps our desire to let God determine what is best for them.

The ultimate healing, the ultimate deliverance is from this body of decay and sin and to be with the Lord in heaven. When we take a lesser view on this it diminishes our faith and trust in a God who is good. This lesson was driven home to me in a dramatic way.

The day before my son, then 17 months old, was to have open-heart surgery, my wife and I were passing through the halls of the Ronald McDonald house where we were staying. People in those places get close to each other since all there are in similar situations. One lady we had spoken with quite often was packing her clothes. “I’m going home”, she said in response to our inquiry.  Knowing that her little boy was very ill and could not have possibly been released, we asked her why. “My boy died last night”, she answered. Seeing our hurt, embarrassment and shock plastered on our faces, she took us aside and said, “You’re not ready for your child to die, are you?” We shook our heads no.  “You need to be. Come in here and let me tell you something.” For over an hour she talked with us about how she knew her boy was in heaven, “doing that little shuffle-step dance for Jesus like he did in church on Sundays.” She told us that she was thankful for the years Jesus had loaned her boy to her and that he wasn’t suffering anymore. She thanked Him for His deliverance and healing of her boy. She praised Him for His goodness and mercy. At that Ronald McDonald house I learned that God loves my children even more than I do and that when we pray for complete recovery and healing it may be that God takes our loved ones to heaven to accomplish just that. God is good in all He does because goodness is a central characteristic of Himself.

Our faith grows deeper when we mature enough to understand that our belief at how God can best answer our prayers is different than His knowledge of how best to answer our prayers.

To be honest, even the depth of a faith that acknowledges that God is worthy because He made a way to provide for our salvation is not deep enough. You see, God is worthy because He alone is God. Even if He had not made provision to save mankind, if He had allowed us to enter eternity forever separated from Him because of our sin, He would still be worthy of praise. He did not have to save us. He made us. He made the earth for us to live on. He made colors and sounds and our senses to enjoy them. God made a universe and populated it with myriads of wonderful and incomprehensible things. He is God. He is the Creator and Maker of All Things. He is Good and Holy and this makes Him worthy to be praised.

Now, the fact that He made us with a redeemable soul and sent His Son precisely to redeem that soul is, indeed, good news. The character of who God is, though, is what makes Him worthy of praise and adoration. His holiness is the reason that He is worthy.  A faith that worships God and gives Him praise and adoration based only on what He has done for us, whether it is a family, a job, a car or even salvation is a deficient faith. God is worthy because He is God.

This was a critical point in my walk with Christ. I loved the fact that He had sent people into my life to share the gospel with me. I loved the fact that His Spirit had drawn me to saving faith in His redemptive act.  I loved the family He had given me. I loved being a minister of the gospel and leading others to faith in Jesus. But I had to ask myself if my love for Him was deeper than even that. Did I love Him just because He is?

In his book, The Painful Side of Leadership, Jeff Iorg makes this profound statement:

Most leaders easily forget their primary reason for being placed in their leadership role. The primary reason isn’t for you to do things for God. It’s so God can use your leadership setting as a laboratory for shaping the image of Jesus in you. (Iorg, 2009)

 

Excerpt from Is Jesus Enough? available in print and Kindle editions from Amazon.com and our sister site, http://www.discernmentministries.webs.com

Biblical Hospitality

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In a nutshell, biblical hospitality is opening up your life and sharing it with those you meet, whether they are people you know well or complete strangers. It isn’t hosting a party, giving a donation to charity or buying a bum a meal. It is sharing what you have – your food, your home, your clothes, your resources – both material and spiritual with other people. The people of God are aliens and strangers whom God has welcomed into the household of faith. In turn, God’s people are to “make room” for the stranger, not only in the community of faith, but in their personal households.

In a very real sense, a person who has a difficult time sharing material possessions with the stranger will have an even more difficult time sharing their spiritual possession (faith in Jesus Christ) with them as well. The New Testament writers Paul, Peter and the author of Hebrews all command the followers of Jesus to show hospitality. A person could not serve as a church leader without having a life characterized by hospitality, widows in the church were not even eligible for benevolence unless they were hospitable to strangers, that is how serious God commands us to practice this.

Is your life characterized by hospitality?

 

Hymn Devotions Day 7 – Standing on the Promises

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DAY 7  – STANDING ON THE PROMISES

The second verse of this hymn strikes me profoundly. God’s promises cannot fail. The omnipotent, all-knowing Creator God is able to keep every promise He makes. He is trustworthy, He is true. Whenever the storms of doubt and fear howl at me, whenever I am assailed by the knowledge of my own inadequacy, I can stand on God’s promises because He never fails.

There are over 3,000 promises in the Bible. 2 Peter 1:3-4 says this about those precious promises:

“God’s divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us to His own glory and excellence, by which He has granted to us His precious and very great promises so that through them you may become partakers of His divine nature”

Oh, what a great passage. God gave us these promises of His so that we can partake of His divine nature. He gave them to us so we can live a godly life through our relationship with His perfect Son!

Truly, I am bound to Him eternally and can overcome each day the doubts and fears Satan throws at me by using the Spirit’s Sword, the Holy Word of God. I will resolve to know these promises and to stand on Him. Will you?

 

Lord, help me to study Your Word and find your promises. Help me to hide Your Word in my heart so I will live a godly life and not sin against you. Help me to stand on Your Word.   Amen.

 

STANDING ON THE PROMISES by R. Kelso Carter

 

Standing on the promises of Christ my king

Through eternal ages let His praises ring

Glory in the highest I will shout and sing

Standing on the promises of God

 

Standing on the promises that cannot fail

When the howling storms of doubt and fear assail

By the living Word of God I shall prevail

Standing on the promises of God

 

Standing on the promises I now can see

Perfect present cleansing in the blood for me

Standing in the liberty where Christ makes free

Standing on the promises of God

 

Standing on the promises of Christ, the Lord

Bound to Him eternally by love’s strong cord

Overcoming daily by the Spirit’s sword

Standing on the promises of God

 

Standing on the promises I cannot fall

Listening every moment to the Spirit’s call

Resting in my Savior as my all in all

Standing on the promises of God

 

REFRAIN

 

Standing, standing, standing on the promises of God my Savior

Standing, standing, I’m standing on the promises of God

Hymn Devotions Day 5 – Dare To Be A Daniel

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DAY 5  – DARE TO BE A DANIEL 

Written by Phillip Bliss for his Sunday School class, this hymn has been a favorite of mine since I was a boy. Both inspiring and challenging, Bliss throws down a gauntlet in urging believers to stand firm for the truth and to be active in conquering evil. In a day when a false definition of tolerance is making its way though society, the words of this song encourage us to act like one of the heroes of the faith.

Like Daniel, we are encouraged to live faithful lives by standing firm in obedience to God’s commands, even when the rest of society is compromising. We are urged to be brave and not to shirk from our duty. Though others may fall away, though we alone may seem to be remaining faithful, we must stand firm for our beliefs as Daniel did.

I often wonder, as I read the book of Daniel, how many other captive Jews just blended into Babylonian society. Apparently he was the only one who took praying to God seriously. The rest, well, it wasn’t politically correct to be seen worshipping God. How many of us fall into the trap of being politically correct instead of obedient?

We can accomplish great things for God when we walk in the might of His power and share the gospel message. May we go before the Lord today and pray that we will have the courage to stand for our convictions as Daniel did.

Lord, grant me conviction of heart like Daniel. Help me to stay the course, to be true and faithful. May it start today, let me not shirk from sharing the gospel with one who needs to hear Your message.

 

DARE TO BE A DANIEL by Phillip Bliss

 

Standing by a purpose true

Heeding God’s command

Honor them the faithful few

All hail to Daniel’s band

 

Mighty men are lost

Daring not to stand

Who for God had been a host

By joining Daniel’s band

 

Many giants great and tall

Stalking through the land

Heedlong to the earth would fall

If met by Daniel’s band

 

Held the Gospel banner high

On to victory grand

Satan and his hosts defy

And shout for Daniel’s band

 

REFRAIN

 

Dare to be a Daniel

Dare to stand alone

Dare to have a purpose firm

Dare to make it known.

Hymn Devotions Day 3 – O Worship The King

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DAY 3 O WORSHIP THE KING 

This majestic song lifts you up in praise to the One seated on the Everlasting throne. The use of adjectives such as shield, defender, friend, maker and redeemer tell us of God’s character.

Here is no aloof God, watching from way off in space. Here is a God intimately involved with His creation. This is, make no mistake, a hymn about the Creator and His creation. It was based on Psalm 104. In a day where evolution is held to be absolute truth, this hymn helps us to unashamedly sing out our belief in a personal Creator God.

The third stanza unapologetically states that God formed the world. The writer has in mind both the Genesis account of Moses and the book of Job, where God tells Job that He put boundaries on the waters.

God’s love and providence for His creation is evident throughout the song. It is because He cares and desires so deeply for us to have a relationship with Him, that we are able to sing of His glory and might.

God is our shield, an ever-present help in times of trouble. He defends us against the slanderous attacks of our adversary. He is our friend as well as our Lord, a mind-blowing concept is ever there was one. Most of all, He is our creator and our redeemer. He made us for Himself and redeemed us for Himself. All praise to the King of Kings, who is worthy of all glory and honor.

As you pray today, thank God for the ways He manifests Himself to you – a shield, defender, redeemer. He is not only your maker, but He will be your friend if you would yield your life to Him.

 

Thank you Lord, for creating us and the beautiful world we live in. We worship You, King of the Universe, and give you all glory and honor and praise.

 

O WORSHIP THE KING by Robert Grant

O worship the King, all glorious above

O gratefully sing God’s power and God’s love

Our Shield and Defender, the Ancient of Days

Pavilioned in splendor and girded with praise

O tell of His might, O sing of His grace

Whose robe is the light, whose canopy space

Whose chariots of wrath the deep thunderclouds form

      And dark is His path on the wings of the storm

      The earth with its store of wonders untold

      Almighty Thou power hath founded of old

      Hath established it fast by a changeless decree

      And round it has cast like a mantle, the sea

      Thy bountiful care, what tongue can recite

      It breathes in the air, it shines in the light

      It streams from the hills, it descends to the plains

      And sweetly distills in the dew and the rain

      Frail children of dust and feeble as frail

      In Thee do we trust, nor find Thee to fail

      Thy mercies, how tender, how firm to the end

      Our Maker, Defender, Redeemer and Friend

Podcast – 2 Sides of the Same Coin

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Confession and Testimony make up 2 sides of the same coin. A testimony is defined not just as what God does for us, but what we do well for His Kingdom. Confession would be the admission of what we are doing wrong for His Kingdom.

 

Preached at Immanuel Baptist, Havre in July, 2012

In Spirit and In Truth – Excerpt from A Heart Hungry to Worship

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Worship is not about us and how we feel; it is about giving God the honor due His name. His Word, not our feelings, define that “honor”, which is due Him.[1]

In Spirit and in Truth

            At the end of the second chapter, a question was raised: “What does it mean to worship God in spirit and in truth?” Subsequent chapters have helped to lay the foundation for the answer to that question, which we will now consider. We will look at each of the terms Jesus used: worship, spirit, and truth, in order.

Worship

The word Jesus uses  for worship in John 4:24 is proskuneo in Greek (or shachah in Hebrew). It means to “bow down” or “prostrate” oneself. The connotation is to engage in an act of humility, submission and reverence toward God.

In His conversation with the Samaritan woman, Jesus pointed out to her that the Samaritan’s idea of worshipping God was wrong. “You worship what you do not know, we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.”[2] The Samaritans worshipped God through ritual. For them, God was not personal. He was viewed as the Creator but not as their Father. Jesus was very deliberate in addressing God as Father (3 times in a row) emphasizing the personal nature of the relationship. He was trying to show her what was missing in her worship – a personal touch.

The only way true worship of God can take place is for a person to enter into a personal relationship with Him. God has to become their Father and they His children. The Samaritans knew God’s name, but not His character, personality or purposes. This is true of many people today. They know of God, but they do not know God personally for they have never experienced His salvation.

Unless a person accepts God’s salvation, he or she cannot enter into a filial (family) relationship with Him. Without this personal relationship, one cannot worship Him correctly. “In other words, one can know and worship God by experiencing His salvation which is in Jesus and which enables the worshipper to call God “abba”, Father.”[3]

This is one reason why Jesus Christ came to Earth. He came to personalize God and to model the type of relationship with Him that God desires.

In Spirit

Christ, in the statement He made to the Samaritan woman, makes worship a matter of the heart, not ritual or tradition. Worship has sincerity at its core. It is the response of one’s spirit to the Spirit of God, a communing of one to the other. While worship can be planned, most often it is spontaneous, a response to proximity with God.

The New Testament uses different phrases to illustrate what it means when a person submits their life to the Lord Jesus Christ. Phrases such as “born again”, “born from above,” or “becoming a new creation” serve to convey the idea of what it means to become a child of God. The language of adoption is also used, with God the Father shown as adopting sons and daughters into His Kingdom, out of the kingdom of this world.

Those who have experienced this adoption, this being “born again”, are the only ones who can worship God in spirit because the spirit now in them is the Spirit of God. You see, at the moment of salvation a wonderful event occurs. God recreates us spiritually (we are born anew) which allows us to interact with Him intimately. This is what Jesus was telling the Samaritan woman. She did not need to worry about where to worship. She needed to understand how to be able to worship. She needed to experience a rebirth, spiritually. Jesus had a very similar conversation with a man called Nicodemus in John, chapter 3.

Intellectual, erudite, skilled in rhetoric and theology, Nicodemus came to Jesus seeking answers. Nicodemus was “the” teacher of Israel, their premier religious instructor. He had heard Jesus speak, he had seen the miracles Jesus had performed, and he accepted the truth that Jesus was a man sent by God, yet he was not a Christian. He did not accept that Jesus was more than a man sent from God, that Jesus was God in the flesh.

When Nicodemus approached Jesus, he gave him a very sincere compliment. He was met by a very confrontational reply, “Unless you are born again, you will not see the kingdom of God.”  Jesus tells the premier religious teacher in Israel that he is not going to be in God’s Kingdom unless he experiences a spiritual rebirth. The word Jesus uses for rebirth means a transformation so complete that it will allow a person to enter another world and adapt to its conditions. He is telling Nicodemus that he needs to undergo a complete metamorphosis in order to enter the Kingdom of God. He is saying to Nicodemus, “Unless you allow me to spiritually transform you, you will not be able to survive in the kingdom of God.”

Jesus is insisting that Nicodemus undergoes a spiritual change from who he is currently, to what he needs to be. To Nicodemus, this statement is staggering. He understands what Jesus is implying, that his religion was futile. Nicodemus was a Pharisee. Pharisees tended to be hyper-legalists who externalized religion. They pursued a form of godliness that had no basis in reality. They were fanatically religious, striving to obey over 600 laws. For a Pharisee, salvation was obtained by works, doing things that they believed were pleasing to God. Being born again is something Nicodemus cannot do. Being born is something that happens to you, not something you do for yourself.

Nicodemus and Jesus did have something in common. Both were Jewish teachers. Jewish teachers taught spiritual truths in symbols. Nicodemus understands Jesus’ symbolism and answers back in kind. “How can a man, whose habits and ways of thinking have been fixed for so long, really be expected to change radically? Physical rebirth is impossible so is spiritual rebirth any more feasible? I can’t start over again. It’s too late. I’ve gone too far in my religious system to change now. I’d have to start all over again. My case is hopeless.”

Many people feel that way. Unlike Dinah, from chapter 3, they are too steeped in their religious tradition to be willing to change. They feel trapped and hopeless by beliefs that they have held all their lives and yet they are unwilling to change. It is not that they cannot change; it is that they will not change unless they allow God’s Spirit to convert them.

In order to satisfy the hunger of their hearts, in order to worship God correctly, they must allow God to transform their life spiritually. The new birth must come from the Holy Spirit of God. A person needs to be spiritually purified and spiritually reborn, and only the Spirit of God can only accomplish this.

We aren’t told how Nicodemus reacts to what he is told. He understands that Jesus is telling him that the new birth must be experienced in order to be understood. None of his scholarly wisdom will explain it. Only by immersing himself in Jesus will he be able to understand salvation.

Nicodemus knew about Jesus, had listened to Jesus, admired Jesus and complimented Jesus, but he did not know Jesus. He needed Jesus to transform his life through being born again.

Those whose hearts hunger to worship God must allow God to transform their life first. Then, they will be able to worship Him spirit to spirit. They will be able to hear Him and understand Him when He speaks. They will experience closeness, a sense of belonging, a kindred-ness with God that surpasses anything they could have imagined.  This is what Jesus means when He tells us we have to worship in spirit.

In Truth

The second criteria Jesus says is necessary to be able to worship God is found in the phrase, “and in truth.” Knowing whom to worship, Jesus, is of supreme importance. To worship in ignorance makes a sham of religion.

Truth, in biblical terms, is whatever is in harmony with the nature and will of God. The essence of true worship must be on God’s terms and He has revealed that the only worship He will accept is that which is based through Jesus Christ. The revelation of God in Christ is absolute truth.

The issue is not where a person worships, but how they worship and whom they worship. The how is in spirit. The who is Jesus. Worship is more than just emotion. Too many people confuse the terms praise and worship. Praise is rooted in emotion. Worship is grounded in knowledge – the knowledge of God’s Word and the knowledge of God’s Son.

By gaining a proper understanding of what Jesus said to the woman at the well, a person can come to worship God properly. A person can no longer sustain the argument that the format or form of worship does not matter. Jesus clearly states that it does. It must come from the spirit and it has to be rooted in God’s revealed truth. Not truth as a person feels it should be (subjective), but as it actually is, measured by divine revelation via the Bible (objective). When knowledge of God is deficient, worship of Him will also be deficient.

Since God has decreed that He will only accept worship that is grounded in and which flows through Jesus, this makes Christianity the only religion accepted by God. No other form of worship is accepted. A person cannot decide to worship God in whatever way he or she wants to. They did not make the standard. No religion can develop rules that make worship to God possible, because worship is rooted in and through the person of Jesus. Truth cannot be found in the Koran, Baghivad Gita, Pearl of Great Price or other religious works, because they do not contain the historical record of Jesus Christ and the truth of His life. Truth is not perception. Truth is an absolute.

To worship God in spirit and in truth requires a person to come to God on His terms, surrendering their life to His Son Jesus, accepting His forgiveness and cleansing from sin. At that moment, the heart is renewed, God’s Spirit comes in, and fellowship begins with God that will last for an eternity.

It is a wonderful thing to experience the transforming person of Jesus Christ. Just ask the Samaritan woman and her neighbors.

A Heart Hungry to Worship is available in print or Kindle editions from Amazon or from the author at http://discernmentministries.webs.com 

[1] Dean G. Thomas

[2] John 4:22

[3] Jey Kanagaraj: Worship, Sacrifice and Mission:Themes Interlocked in John, Indian Journal of Theology V.40.1&2 1998