WORSHIP

Based on my comments this morning at the Men's Thursday Bible Study, hopefully I can accurately share some insights from the 9 am Tri-Lakes empty nesters Bible group with respect to how "people" worship.

Essentially, but not intended to be all inclusive, people tend to worship in two ways:
1. Response
2. Negotiate

An example how people would worship in "response" mode is when they give thanks to the Lord for their blessings, or in the context of establishing a personal relationship with our Lord or Savior.

On the other hand, another observed form of worship is a "negotiate" mode where we tend to offer to obey God's commands or do something with expectations of some positive respond from our Lord. This is sort of an imposed covenant from the bottom up, and the potential risk is what those imposed "expectations" may be beyond salvation. That said, the point was that for the obvious reasons or maybe not so obvious, this form of worship is shallow at best, or questionable. Just because I got up on Sunday to attend a worship service, it would be self centered of me to think that God owes me for attendance. I will confess I have been guilty in this type of worship in the past to some degree, and hopefully, am sufficiently enlighten now to avoid this type of worship. Of course, worship based an existing covenant offered from our Lord (i.e., Salvation through Christ) would not be subject to negotiation. Also, this observation was not intended to apply to our prayer life, where we can ask our Lord to help us.

Jim asked a couple of weeks ago what did it mean to each of us to worship. The points made above was not intended to define or dictate how we as believers should worship, but rather make us rethink why we worship.

It was a great Thursday study, and as ended, we prayed for our brothers in attendance and not in attendance that the Spirit would be there to help us all with our burdens of this day and during the pending week. May we live the WORD. God bless you all.

5 Solas

Here are the "5 Solas" of the reformation that we talked about.

Sola Scriptura (Scripture alone)
Sola Gratia (Grace alone)
Sola Fide (Faith alone)
Solus Christus (Christ alone)
Soli Deo Gloria (Glory to God alone)

And here is one man's definition of what it means to be "reformed."

http://www.challies.com/archives/articles/reformed-theology/what-it-means-t.php

Oh, and I think we missed "Holy Orders" as the seventh sacrament.

Jelly Fish Christianity?

I read this post this morning and thought it applied well to some of the concerns we have for the state of teaching in many churches. J.C. Ryle lived in the 1800's but the words seem pretty timely.

http://www.challies.com/archives/articles/quotes/dislike-of-dogma.php

Authority - LUKE 20

"One day as he was teaching, the people in the temple courts and preaching the gospel, the chief priests and teachers of the law, together with the elders, came up to him, "Tell us by what authority you are doing these things," they said, "Who gave you this authority." (Luke 20:1-2)

Question: Should this question be part of our discernment in our everyday spiritual life?

An Open Question ...

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Does Jesus weep over His church because it is so divided?
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