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 TAKE CARE, IDOLATRY IS SNEAKY

There are a number of ways that followers of the Triune God worship. The point is that when the Body of Christ, whether it's the Orthodox believers or the Pentecostal disciples, the Lord God is the focus, His Word and His Presence.

We do not summon the Lord to come among us. That is thinly veiled paganism as if the Lord is somehow off somewhere and needs to be contacted to let Him know we ae ready for Him to "show up."

Think clearly. Jesus Christ has become Life within His disciples. He never leaves us and will never forsake us. He is always present since our bodies have become temples of the Holy Spirit. We are the ones who get distracted, dulled to His Presence by so many things, even "good" things. The Lord wants us more than He needs our work for Him. We come together because He is Who He has declared Himself to be, the Way, the Truth, and the Life. We come to give Him thanks and praise, to acknowledge His sovereign right to all we are by virtue of being His creation and because of His redemption by Jesus' life, death, resurrection and ascension. 

There are so many traditions that have grown up among believers in Jesus Christ. Some may have rather shallow roots, not grounded in God's Word. The traditions of the Pharisees and Sadducees in the days of Jesus Incarnational ministry and mission got the emPHASIS on the wrong syLLABLE. Their worship and actions were about the rule and regulations. Those rules and regulations were meant to point to the fact that God alone saves; we can add nothing. Ours is to receive, never initiate. The religious authorities had begun to "worship their worship."

Worship that has become focused on the exactitude of phraseology, religious gesturing, vestments and flummery to verify its authenticity has become idolatrous. Worshipping our worship is not the same things as worshipping the Lord Jesus who called us out of sin and death, out of darkness into His Light and Life. Whether in a cathedral or under a tree, if Jesus is not the reason for gathering and the focus of said gathering, it is not worship.

True worship is a seeking of the Lord, a passion to experience His Presence corporately as His Body gathered, to heard His Word read and proclaimed and to come to His table where He gives Himself in covenantal meal to His own in the creatures of bread and wine set apart by the Holy Spirit to be the sacrament of the New Covenant in His body and the blood .

True worship is focusing everything on the Lord Jesus, giving Him thanks and praise, letting His Word fill us displacing any darkness bringing about change in us by the Holy Spirit. If the focus isn't on the Lord God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, then who or what are you worshipping?

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