Be careful that your people do not become so accustomed to getting a “praise high” when they come to church that a service seems empty if they do not experience it. Many today hop from group to group, from church to church, looking for higher highs. The tragedy is...
An emphasis on what we “get out” of a worship service—above all, that we feel good about ourselves—displaces the theocentric praise of God with anthropocentric utilitarianism. Since the worship of God is an end in itself, “making worship useful” destroys it, because...
The worshiper’s journey is complete": from the broad reaches of God’s creation through the guiding lines of Scripture to the disturbing inner recesses of the heart, there remains only the prayer. May the God praised with and without speech find acceptable the words...
If you do not know the presence of God in your office, your factory, your home, then God is not in the church when you attend. I have come to believe that when we are worshipping—if the love of God is in us and the Spirit of God is breathing praise within us, all the...
The event of the resurrection, the empty tomb, and the risen Lord breaks every mold that would imprison God in the rationalism of a fallen world. But it is the starting point for a new kind of rationality, for the possibility of living hopefully in a world without...
It is sometimes forgotten that hymns are the offering of the entire congregation, not merely of the clergy and choir. In the worship of almost all Christian groups (even those with a pre-scribed liturgy) hymns are pre-eminently the part of corporate worship in which...
Almost everything about being a Christian can be faked. But there is one thing I’ve found that can’t be faked, and that’s laughter—free, childlike, infectious laughter. Going to church used to be such drudgery to me until I found out that drudgery was a sign that I...
And the Church must be forever building, and always decaying, and always being restored… What life have you if you have not life together? There is no life that is not in community, And no community not lived in praise of God. from "The Rock"
Gratitude is the healing ointment for brokenness. It is central to the entire experience and journey of the Christian faith. Gratitude and grace share the same etymology and root meaning. When we properly connect to God, our lives become an endless expression of...
Prayer is sitting in the silence until it silences us, choosing gratitude until we are grateful, and praising God until we ourselves are an act of praise.