A Quote by Sinclair B. Ferguson
Where God is at the center of things, worship inevitably follows. Where there is no spirit of worship, there God has been dethroned and displaced.
Related Quotes
Where God is at the center of things, worship inevitably follows.
To worship God 'in spirit and in truth' is first and foremost a way of saying that we must worship God by means of Christ. In him the reality has dawned and the shadows are being swept away (Hebrews 8:13). Christian worship is new covenant worship; it is gospel-inspired worship; it is Christ-centered worship; it is cross-focused worship.
God as we ought to worship Him. God is Spirit, so we must worship Him in spirit and truth, that is, by a humble and true adoration of spirit in the depth and center of our souls.
Worship is a meeting at the center so that our lives are centered in God and not lived eccentrically. We worship so that we live in response to and from this center, the living God. Failure to worship consigns us to a life of spasms and jerks, at the mercy of every advertisement, every seduction, every siren. Without worship we live manipulated and manipulating lives. We move in either frightened panic or deluded lethargy as we are, in turn, alarmed by specters and soothed by placebos. If there is no center, there is no circumference.
Our heart's desire should be to worship God; we have been designed by God for this purpose. If we don't worship God, we'll worship something or someone else.
It is God who gives us the spirit of worship (Psalm 133:3), and it is what we know of God that produces this spirit of worship. We might say that worship is simply theology, doctrine, what we think about God, going into top gear! Instead of merely thinking about Him, we tell Him, in prayer and praise and song, how great and glorious we believe Him to be!
My god is all gods in one. When I see a beautiful sunset, I worship the god of Nature; when I see a hidden action brought to light, I worship the god of Truth; when I see a bad man punished and a good man go free, I worship the god of Justice; when I see a penitent forgiven, I worship the god of Mercy.
Jesus Christ was God - the Personal God become man. He has manifested Himself many times in different forms and these alone are what you can worship. God in His absolute nature is not to be worshipped. Worshipping such God would be nonsense. We have to worship Jesus Christ, the human manifestation, as God. You cannot worship anything higher than the manifestation of God. The sooner you give up the worship of God separate from Christ, the better for you.
We can expect God to provide everything necessary to make worship possible. We children of God must ever be dependent upon God, for we have no resources of our own. We are as impoverished in worship times as a baby unable to provide its own bottle at feeding time. God, the object of our worship, also becomes the inspiration of that worship. He has imparted His own Spirit into our hearts to energize that worship. All that is due Him comes from Him. His glorious Person evokes admiration for and honor of Him, as He imparts His nature into me.
But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him. God is a spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.
God is not a person at all. You cannot worship God. You can live in a godly way but you cannot worship God - there is nobody to worship. All your worship is sheer stupidity, all your images of God are your own creation. There is no God as such, but there is godliness, certainly - in the flowers, in the birds, in the stars, in the eyes of the people, when a song arises in the heart and poetry surrounds you... all this is God. Let us say `godliness` rather than using the word `God` - that word gives you the idea of a person, and God is not a person but a presence.
For worship is, essentially, the reverse of sin. Sin began (and begins) when we succumb to the temptation, "You shall be as gods." We make ourselves the center of the universe and dethrone God. By contrast, worship is giving God his true worth; it is acknowledging Him to be the Lord of all things, and the Lord of everything in our lives. He is, indeed, the Most High God!
If you do not worship God seven days a week, you do not worship Him on one day a week. There is no such thing known in heaven as Sunday worship unless it is accompanied by Monday worship and Tuesday worship and so on.
The content of worship comes from the Bible, the goal of worship is to give praise to God, and the basis for worship is the saving work of Jesus Christ. Put more simply, true Christian worship is Word-communicat ing, God-glorifying, and Christ-confessi ng.
The God of Islam is not the same God of the Judaeo-Christian faith. The God that we worship in Christianity is a God that has a Son. To Islam, that is blasphemy, to say that God has a son. Therefore, they do not worship the God that we worship.
One does not structure the church to meet the felt needs and desires of the tares. The purpose of corporate assembly, which has its roots in the Old Testament, is for the people of God to come together corporately to offer their sacrifices of praise and worship to God. So the first rule of worship is that it be designed for believers to worship God in a way that pleases God.
Related Authors
Adam Smith Quotes
Scottish
Economist
Annie Lennox Quotes
Scottish
Musician
B. C. Forbes Quotes
Scottish
Journalist
Craig Ferguson Quotes
Scottish
Comedian
David Byrne Quotes
Scottish
Musician
David Hume Quotes
Scottish
Philosopher
George MacDonald Quotes
Scottish
Writer
Gordon Ramsay Quotes
Scottish
Chef
Irvine Welsh Quotes
Scottish
Novelist
Nicola Sturgeon Quotes
Scottish
Politician
Oswald Chambers Quotes
Scottish
Theologian
Robert Burns Quotes
Scottish
Poet
Robert Louis Stevenson Quotes
Scottish
Novelist
Samuel Smiles Quotes
Scottish
Author
Thomas Carlyle Quotes
Scottish
Philosopher
Walter Scott Quotes
Scottish
Novelist