Wednesday 10/23/13
Topic: The Fear of the Lord & Healing
Series – And He Healed them all:
The Fear of the Lord and our Worship.mp3
Key Text:
2 Peter 1:1-14
Heb. 6:1-7
John 15:1-11
The Fear of the Lord and our Worship…
Tonight we deviated off of our normal course and we may not return. We may be done for now with our series on healing. But tonight we took a look at our lives of worship. Worship is a form of the Fear of the Lord in that it means to hold in reverence.
Beginning in 2 Peter chapter one we began to read what it was that Peter saw as necessary for the early church to keep them on course even though they were currently established in the truth. As we read we saw that stirring them up by causing them them remember their spiritual roots was his spirit-led way.
Peter spoke of fruit and his concern over the lack of it in a believers life.
- Heb. 6:6,7
- John 15:4-6
Fruit is the unavoidable result of living in joyful union with our Lord. It cannot be “produced” by self-effort or personal diligence. In fact, the harder a Christian works at fruit-bearing the less joy they will experience int heir lives. Fruit is a produce of union!
As Christians, we NEED joy to live out our union life with Him. Without it, we will become short-sighted and forget the very things Peter was stirring up the early church to not forget.
This message took a very personal turn in that as an elder I found it necessary to turn a objective bright light on ourselves as a church to examine our hearts of worship as an assembly.
Where are our hearts?
Do we long to time together as a church?
What does it take to keep us away?
What led us to the place we are now?
This led us to looking at our worship and our fruit.
Worship is a life-style, not a thing we do to “gospel music”. It is the reverence we have for and express in our lives towards Christ in our intimacy with Him.
Union, we learned, was a product of relational trust in Who He is revealing Himself to be in our lives. We all know Him as Savior, but there are times when in order to grow us in grace God needs to reveal Himself more to us in other areas. For those whose default “idol” is insecurity over money, Christ is revealed to us as our all-sufficiency. For those who struggle with covetousness or lust, He is revealed to us as our great desire.
As we receive the image of Himself that He reveals to us, we find ourselves talking with Him, sometimes wrestling with Him over these Self-revelations and if we will persevere we will arrive at a state of resting in Who we’ve learned Him to be – we are finally in a state of genuine faith. As we rest in Him – meaning Who He has revealed Himself to be, we allow His word to abide (take up residence) within us – resulting in bearing fruit consistent with His image in us…our glory.
We covered this MUCH more clearly and thoroughly in the audio. To learn more about the Fear of the Lord and our Worship, please listen to the above recording.