Worship is our heartfelt response to a revelation of God. It is not us stirring up our hearts to feel something for God. It is not us trying very hard to say the right words and feel the right feelings for Jesus. Biblical worship happens when God reveals Himself to us through His word and our hearts have no other recourse but to fall down in reverence to His glory. In other words, the depth of our worship largely depends on the amount of our Bible reading. The more we know our Bibles, the more powerful our worship becomes.
Author: Jojo Agot
Pastor at Victory. Faculty and adviser at Every Nation Leadership Institute (ENLI). MA in Theology and Mission at Every Nation Seminary.
Biblical Theology and Preaching
Jim Hamilton on Biblical Theology and Preaching:
Let me be frank: I have no patience for suggestions that preachers need to dumb it down. Preachers need to be clear, and they need to be able to explain things in understandable ways. But human beings do not need the Bible to be dumbed down. If you think that, what you really think is that God the Holy Spirit did not know what He was doing when He inspired the Bible to be the way it is. Not only does the suggestion that the Bible is more than God’s people can handle blaspheme God’s wisdom; it also blasphemes His image bearers. People are made in the image of God. Human beings are endowed with brains and sensibilities of astonishing capacity…
Do not discount the capacities of God’s people. They may be stupid and uninformed when their hearts are awakened, but do not punish them by leaving them there. Show them literary artistry. Show them the subtle power of carefully constructed narratives. Show them the force of truth in arguments that unfold with inexorable logic. Continue reading Biblical Theology and Preaching
Christianity and Guilt
Victory Group Lesson for Today:
Christianity is the only religion in the whole world that sufficiently deals with the issue of guilt. All the other religions either ignore, deny or dismiss guilt as if it is not important. Christianity alone teaches that guilt is real and serious but Christianity also offers the ultimate solution: the blood of Jesus that washes away the sins of the world so that those who repent can walk free from the weight of the burden of condemnation.
When Beauty Blinds
Just because you’ve cried in a worship song doesn’t mean you have repented. The emotional rush you get when you see the beauty of nature doesn’t equal repentance either. Ty Simmons says it better:
Here is my confession: I assuage my guilt with beauty. In my struggles with sin, in my struggles with addictions, in my struggles with inclinations of the heart, I have sought out beauty alone to make me feel better. Beauty whispers words into my ear of a greater story and I feel renewed. I do not continue down the narrow path because the beautiful sentence I have just read has atoned for my sin or the music I’ve been listening to brought me to tears. And in all of this, repentance goes undone.
Now some might say I’m establishing a false dichotomy, that Christ can speak through beauty and not in spite of beauty. I will not disagree. But the point I’m trying to make is that appreciation of aesthetics is not repentance. A wonderfully written song may bring about this rush of emotions but if I am not changed by it, I have not experienced God. And that is exactly the burden I place on beauty. I long for beauty to save me and she continually proves an impotent savior.
From the HOTSPOT series
One reason why we are so afraid to share the gospel is because we think we need to be very eloquent and persuasive in order for it to be effective. This is not true. The gospel has a power on its own (Romans 1:16). You only need to proclaim it and allow its power to take effect.
Underestimating Grace
The reason grace means very little to us is because we do not consider ourselves as great sinners who desperately need forgiveness. We think of ourselves as fine people with few minor character flaws that could easily be excused. We have these cute ideas about ourselves that yes, indeed, we are imperfect but at least we are honest (as if honesty absolves us of sin). In doing that, we diminish the grace of God, we underestimate the value of the shed blood of Jesus and we brush off Jesus’ sacrifice as something trivial and probably unnecessary.
Jojo Agot 