A Week of Worship

My Spiritual Formation Class has been moving along, as has been my life.  Our theme for this past week has been worship.  I have been practicing it, and here goes my report.

When I was a boy, my parents would bring me to church.  I would witness the gathering of the church, and when I wasn't daydreaming, would sing along in the hymns and listen to the sermons.  Nevertheless, the experience did not feel fulfilling or transformative.

As I grew, I began to understand the Gospel that Christ died to save sinners like me and wanted to live my life for him, and when I was 13, I made that confession with my whole heart.  After that I came to understand that worship was a response to God's love.  It is my duty to thank God with my outpowering of praise seen in worship.

Throughout my biblical education in bible studies and college, I have come to understand that worship is more than just an hour and a half service where you "do the right things" and "say the right words."  After all, Jesus called the Pharisees "Whitewashed tombs" because they tried to look perfect on the outside by following all of the laws while really on the inside they were self-righteous, judgemental, and greedy. 

I will be straitforward and list my observations and things that I learned from worship this week.
1. It was a challenge to be well-rested for the worship service and to stay attentive through the sermon.
2. It was a challenge to want to socialize with brothers and sisters in Christ after the service when I would rather go home to my room and do--nothing?  Why?
3. It was a challenge to put my heart into a Psalter whose tune and words I have never heard before.
4. It was difficult for me not to judge people based on a multitute of reasons, while the reason I am at church is because God has judged me righteous because of His son, and therefore I have no need to judge others who are just as guilty as me.
Some of these pitfalls can be corrected by a change in scheduling, others go deep into my attitude and heart intentions. 
      Worship is such an important of not only Sunday, but every day of the week, and everything I do.  It is so important, that if I do not conscientiously commit my activities to God, I find myself thinking and acting selfishly or falling into sin.  I find myself challenged to sacrifice my time, my words, and my thoughts to God, and give them as worship.

Prologue

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding.  In all your ways acknowledge Him, and he will direct your paths. Proverbs 3:5,6

These verses have been a heart's prayer since my high school graduation.  First, I simply want to know God more, and to reap the benefits that spawn from trusting Him in all I say do.  Secondly, I am one who is yearning to know where to go, and I can find directing by trusting God and acknowledging His presence in my life.  I cannot start any writing about my life without confessing that my life is found only in Christ, and that I am living for him. 

We are on an adventure.  Twenty years ago, my most beloved songwriter of my life-time, Steven Curtis Chapman released the song and album "The Great Adventure."  From a very young age, I have listened to Steven Curtis Chapman.  Whenever we would go on a family road trip to visit relatives or to our favorite camping destination (Indian Hollow,) The Great Adventure would be blasting in our red Dodge Sport Caravan.  As fields and forests flashed by, I would feel a sense of hope, excitement, anticipation, and also assurance that I was meant to be on that particular journey with my family.  We are on a greater adventure, a spiritual one.

My adventure started on Christmas Eve of 1991.  I grew up in a wonderful home in Massachusetts with three (one older, two younger brothers).  I came to know God when I was a teenager, and lived a deceptively stable life until my private christian classical school closed in 2008.  I checked my goals for education and my faith and went forward.  I was home schooled till 2009, and then graduated from public high school.  In 2010 I set out on one of my greatest adventures, Kuyper College.

I wondered how Kuyper was different from the other colleges I had visited when I cam in May for pre-semester orientation.  I found immediately that it was the people who genuinely cared about me and my life. I have stayed for two years, studying, playing sports, becoming involved, and making some close friends.  A third year begins, and I look back on my life to see where I am and from where I have come.

 There is hope that God is directing my steps as I continue to trust Him.  There is excitement, for in every day I am encouraged by my brothers and sisters around me, and can laugh in the joys, cry in the sorrows, and persevere in our journey.  There is antipation of what I can become, what I can achieve, and how the world can be changed.  Finally there is assurance.  I can claim every promise of the Bible as mine, and know that God will never leave me.  This blog is an adventure in the midst of my greater adventure.  I am meant to be here, living this adventure, as are you, meant to be here reading this adventure.  As God acts in my story, I pray that even in the smallest extent, he would act in yours.

In Steven Curtis Chapman's words,
Saddle up your horses, we've got a trail to blaze