Would you be happy in heaven if Jesus were not there?

In his book, God is the Gospel, John Piper poses this question:

The critical question for our generation --and for every generation is this:
If you could have heaven, with no sickness, and with all your friends and loved ones there, and all the food you ever liked, and all the leisure activities you ever enjoyed, and all the natural beauties you ever saw, all the physical pleasures you ever tasted, with no human conflict, no human disasters, no physical pain or suffering, and even a new resurrection body, could you be satisfied with heaven--if Christ were not there? 

Would you be happy in heaven if Jesus were not there?  

John 17:3 says, "This is eternal life, that we might know the one true God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent." What is eternal life? KNOWING GOD. Beholding God. Eternal life is NOT having your sins forgiven. Eternal Life is being reconciled to God, the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ. Eternal Life is being in relationship with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the Eternal Godhead.

By the number of hits on my last post, it appears that this is NOT a popular topic, or maybe I'm not putting this good news across in such a way that it can properly be understood.

Regardless, my reason for attempting to write on this subject is because I don't want to miss out on the Good News and I don't want that for you either. And the Good News is God Himself. I think that I and so many others get sidetracked and miss the fact that we're saved not for all the gifts and benefits, but we're saved to fall in love with Jesus, to let Him love us and to love Him right back. He is the greatest gift, and for many of us, He is the gift that remains unopened, unseen, unknown, not even sought after.

Maybe that's why worship is so hard and so few believers enter into real worship of the Lord, because you can't worship what you don't know. That's what Jesus told the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4 and it's true for us today as well. If we don't KNOW Him, we have NO desire to worship Him. We may love the trappings of Christianity, love going to Church, love serving in Church, but if we don't worship Him, then we don't love Him and don't know Him.

Consider what Paul writes in Philippians 3:7-9 (NLT)

⁷ I once thought these things were valuable, but now I consider them worthless because of what Christ has done.

⁸ Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ

⁹ and become one with him. I no longer count on my own righteousness through obeying the law; rather, I become righteous through faith in Christ. For God’s way of making us right with himself depends on faith.  

Paul's heart desire is to become ONE with the Messiah, Jesus, Our Lord. His goal is not going to heaven, or having peace with God, or receiving any of God's other gifts, his goal is Jesus Himself. As Matt Redman writes in "The Heart of Worship",

"I'm coming back to the heart of worship, and it's all about You, all about You, Jesus....I'm sorry Lord for the thing I've made it, when it's all about You, it's all about You, Jesus."

My New Year's Prayer

I wanted to kick off 2013 with a rant based on an encounter I had with my local police yesterday, but instead, I'll post on that next time.

Today is January 1, and it's halfway over. In fact, you may not even see this post until January 2 or 3, but that's ok, because it will still be fresh and relevant.

I was reading the Psalms this morning and as usual, I was praying certain portions of scripture back to the Lord. That inspired me to want to launch the New Year on a positive note with a prayer for this year of 2013. So here is my prayer (cobbled together from Psalms 24-26):

Lord, I start off this new year by declaring that it is in You that I trust. Even as I say that, I know that all too often, I don't really trust you or lean on You. Help me to trust in You this year. Make me to know your ways, O Lord. Teach me your paths. Lead me in your truth and teach me. Help me to walk in faithfulness to You, O Lord.

Test my heart and mind and show me what I am made of. Help me to walk in integrity and uprightness this year. Lord, decimate all the religiosity and hypocrisy from my life so that I can truly be a man of integrity. Fill my heart and mind with your words of truth and cause me to be a doer of your word and not just a "hearer." Help me to put Your words into practice daily.

O Lord, You are the King of Glory. You are the Lord who is strong and mighty, mighty in battle.

Show yourself strong to those who are weak and needy, to the lonely and fainthearted, to those who have been persecuted, to those who are in pain and need your healing touch. Lord, show yourself to be their Healer, their Savior, their Deliverer, a Strong Tower to run to in times of trouble and despair.

Lord, as the Word declares, "The earth is the Yours and the fullness thereof." It all belongs to you.
Lord, raise up a generation that will seek your face, a generation that will worship You and want to be in your presence. Raise up a generation that will give you the glory and honor that You so rightly deserve. Lord, I want to be part of that generation.

Lord, I get so caught up with material things, wanting this new toy and that new thing, but Lord, work in my life so that I am satisfied with You. That You would be my daily portion. That You alone would be the One I seek to satisfy and give my life worth, value, purpose and enjoyment!
You are El-Shaddai, the God of more than enough. Lord, I want to daily know you as the God who is more than enough to meet my every need, to help me face the challenges of 2013. Lord, You alone are able to save me and keep me.

Finally Lord, as I learn to wait on You this year, I pray that you would redeem Israel out of all her troubles. Deliver Israel from all her enemies, those who surround her and are bent on her destruction. Lord, I pray that you would turn the hearts of the Jewish people back to You, that they would trust in You as their Shield and Defender, and their God and Savior.

My Easter "Show & Tell" on what worship sounds like....

What does worship sound like? Jesus says, "Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks" (Luke 6:45).

As we approach Resurrection Sunday, it's all about worship. What do you think the disciples did when they saw their resurrected Lord? They worshiped Him. You have to get to KNOW Him to really worship Him. Today's final post in this series is my "show and tell." Here is a guy who really knows Jesus and really knows how to worship Him.

Dr. S.M Lockridge was a Baptist minister who pastored in San Diego, CA. I first heard him on the Don Imus radio show. The soundtrack of this video below has been played several times on Imus' radio and TV show. That in itself is unbelievable in this day of political-correctness!

Watch this video and tell me if you think this guy really knows Jesus. Of course he does. Have a blessed Easter and spend some time getting to know Him so you can worship Him. BTW, if you are reading this from an email, the video may not show up, so you will need to go to my blogsite to view this really awesome video.

The Essence of Following Jesus is this.....

Hope Chapel Hermosa Beach, CA.

I was talking with a friend about church recently. He and I had been on staff at the same church (only at different times). Both of us are a bit worn-out with the church scene--and don't take this the wrong way because I KNOW there are AWESOME churches out there. Really, I do. Often, I think back to some of the churches that Renee and I started in So. California as well as NH, where we engaged in loving God and loving one another. We had real life-transforming fellowship.

I am also reminded of my time spent at Hope Chapel in Hermosa Beach where my wife and I experienced healthy, vibrant Christianity. It made me want to spend my life serving as a Pastor because I saw what a functional (as opposed to dysfunctional) church really looked like. It was and still is an amazing community of people under the leadership of Zac Nazarian that has made an impact on the South Bay in Los Angeles as well as around the world!

But it's hard to find a church like a Hope Chapel in Paducah, Kentucky. Churches here are mostly Baptist and often worship is nothing more than 3 hymns with announcements sandwiched in the middle somewhere.

So my friend told me that he had boiled the essence of Christianity down to the answer Jesus gave to a lawyer who was trying to justify himself:

Matthew 22:35-40 (NIV)
³⁵ One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question:
³⁶ "Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?"
³⁷ Jesus replied: "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.'
³⁸ This is the first and greatest commandment.
³⁹ And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'
⁴⁰ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."

Jesus boils all of Christianity down to 2 simple requirements:

1. Love God which includes worshiping the Lord with our words and actions (from the heart).
2. Love your neighbor which includes fellowship, servant evangelism, loving those who are strangers in our midst, etc. (Acts 2:42, 46). How much real fellowship do we have on a Sunday morning? IMHO, real fellowship happens around a meal that is shared together as we see Our Lord doing so often in the New Testament. Hospitality was part of the Jewish life (Romans 12:13)

As far as loving God, I believe that first and foremost, we are to be worshipers. In the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples to pray which was basically giving them them the order for what should be included in our prayers, he starts off with "Our Father in heaven, Holy is Your Name. Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven."

Today, I leave you with this: If we want to worship the Lord, we have to KNOW the Lord. The sad truth is that too many Christians know very little about Yeshua, the Messiah, Our Lord, the King of kings. The only names that most Christians know for Jesus is Savior or Lord. But as Jesus tells us in John 17:3,  

³ Now this is eternal life: that they may KNOW you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.

How well do you KNOW the One True God? When it comes to worshiping the Lord, what names do you call Him? For example, in Hebrews 1:2-4, here are the 7 titles given to Jesus. Meditate on these titles and incorporate them into your worship. I don't know as much about the Lord as I should--but my desire is to get to know Him better and to know the names and titles that have been given to Him. I'm convinced that those who are truly saved will spend time "getting to KNOW HIM." Here in just 3 verses of Hebrews 1, we are told that Jesus is:

1) heir of all things
2) creator
3) reflection of God's glory
4) exact representation of the Father (stamped with God's nature)
5) sustainer of all things by His Word
6) redeemer: cleansed us from our sins
7) superior to the angels in rank and rule

I'll continue this with one last post on worship this Thursday....stay tuned and have a great week!

Confessions of an Idol Worshiper

Here I am at 62 yrs of age and I have to confess that I have been an "idol worshiper." I have worshiped worship. Having grown up in the Pentecostal tradition, and living in the South where everything is "Baptist," I go to church and I am bored. I'm not bored with just Baptist churches, but I'm bored with church in general. What is wrong with me? I have been raised to have all the answers but what is the answer for the state of my soul at this point in time?

In the past, I have been guilty of worshiping worship. I have led churches where "worship" is the be all and end all--and at times, I realized that we were all worshiping "worship." I have prided myself on having the best worship band, best worship leader, and devoting 30-min or more to awesome, dynamic worship. So, what is the problem? What's wrong with all this?

The problem is simply that I and many others have fallen prey to worshiping worship, to getting into the zone and feeling good, but failing miserably at worshiping the Almighty God. Worship became an idol because I found that I could "worship" God and still remain on the throne of my life. That's the problem: I was still in control of my life.

Who is on the throne of your life?

Romans 12:1 (ESV)

¹ I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

Worship is a spiritual endeavor. Maybe that's why many churchgoers walk in half-way through the worship service, because our flesh HATES worship. Our flesh rebels at the act of worshiping Almighty God. Even unbelievers can enjoy a sermon and find something of value in it, but if they are confronted with real worship, they feel great discomfort because authentic worship doesn't appeal to our flesh, but rather to our spirit.

If we are going to offer true worship & praise to El Shaddai (Almighty God), we must begin by presenting ourselves to Him as a living sacrifice. 

My eyes were opened to the fact that I was on the throne of my life and that was keeping me from entering into real worship. The starting point for worshiping God is to humbly come before Him with a heart attitude that says "Here I am Lord. Whatever you want me to do, wherever you want me to go, whatever you want to do in my life, Lord, have you way." That's the starting point to worshiping God. A "living sacrifice" has NO will of his own.

I'll continue these thoughts in my next post. But before you leave, check out this humorous but powerful video, "Sunday's Coming"--a spoof on how we approach worship in many of our "contemporary" churches today. (if you're reading this as an email, for some reason the video doesn't work. Go to my blog site to watch this video. This video is a must see! )

My Take on Ezra: The Hard Work of Worship

I’ve been reading the book of Ezra, in the Old Testament and of course, the Hebrew Bible.

The Book of Ezra opens with a decree of Cyrus (king of Persia) which permitted the Jews to return to Judah to rebuild the Jerusalem temple (Ezra 1:1-11). Isaiah, the prophet, prophesied about 300 yrs earlier that a king named Cyrus would fulfill God’s will and allow the Jews to go home to Jerusalem and sure enough, three centuries later, God puts the idea into Cyrus' head to let the Jews return to build the Temple.

Once again, we see God providentially at work behind the scenes orchestrating His will and good pleasure. He's been doing this from the very beginning and He's doing it where you live and work right now as well.

Even though Cyrus the Great allows the Jews to return to Jerusalem, not everyone packs up and leaves. In fact, very few do, and those who ultimately return don’t do it all at once. Most of the Jews in Persia are well-established having been there for over 60 yrs. already. Many followed Jeremiah’s advice and bought property in Babylon and settled down.

The Jews who decide to return to Jerusalem do so ultimately under the leadership of Sheshbbazzar and this first group doesn’t seem to have been very large. But they had the financial backing of those who remained in Babylon. It seems that Sheshbazzar and his fellow returnees began laying the foundations of the Temple (Ezra 5:16).

Eighteen years later, Zerubbabel, the grandson of Jehoiachin, king of Judah, arrives in Jerusalem (520BC) with 42,360 Jewish returnees to rebuild the Temple. They start by rebuilding the central altar, which allows them to offer sacrifices to God. They then begin work on the Temple itself. When the foundation is laid, most of the people shout for joy. However, those familiar with the first Temple see the diminished size of the new foundation and they weep out of sadness, realizing that this Temple will in no way compare to Solomon’s glorious structure.

The Bible says that only those whose hearts were moved turned their hearts toward home, and that number was 42,360. The rest of the Jews had grown comfortable. Why go back and face such hardship? Only those upon whose hearts God moved were willing to make the commitment. And their desire was to get back to Jerusalem to rebuild the Temple which was their central focus of worship where sacrifices and offerings to the one true God would be offered once again and where God would dwell in the midst of his people.

In reading Ezra, I've been struck at the importance of worship in the lives of these Jewish exiles.  Here they had spent 70 yrs in captivity and even though they were treated well and had a comfortable lifestyle, their hearts were drawn back to Jerusalem for one reason: to rebuild the Temple and to worship Yahweh.

Worship is what it’s all about, and sadly, it’s the hardest part of being a Christian. To truly worship God is work. It’s a sacrifice and we seldom do it. Even at many of our Sunday worship services in churches across America, I doubt that God is truly worshipped. We sing three or four hymns and think we’ve given God His due but in reality, we’re just going through the motions. Real worship is life-transforming. Real worship leaves you in awe. Real worship brings God’s presence into the picture and when He shows up, who knows what will happen? We could speak in tongues, or spend hours praising His name, or fall on our faces in silence. One thing is for certain, when God shows up, we aren’t checking our watches wondering if we’ll get to our favorite restaurant before the church crowd shows up.

Jesus speaking to the Samaritan woman said this:

²³ But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him.²⁴ God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” (John 4:23-24 ESV)

Worship is a big deal with God. I’ll continue this in my next post.