Worship Matters

“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matt. 11:28-30) I recently [...]

This is my last post (for now) on the topic of bodily expression in corporate worship. Let me say again that in issues regarding our faith, physical expressiveness in corporate worship is an important but secondary issue. I have no problem worshiping God with a church that may be more enthusiastic or reserved than I’m [...]

I’ve been talking about how to help a church grow in physical expression that draws attention to the greatness of God’s glory in Christ. After teaching on the appropriateness of that expression in worshipping God and the importance of the heart, I’d move on to: 3. Address the different reasons people might be reserved in [...]

Last Friday I started to answer this question from a pastor: “Exactly how, and how much should we encourage our people to follow the numerous commands throughout Scripture of bodily expression (as a natural outpouring of the heart)?” I began by saying we must teach our people that physical expression is appropriate in biblical worship. [...]

Christians are to be passionate about the truth, especially the Gospel. However, sometimes, our feelings can race ahead of our reason and obscure the portion of truth we’re trying to communicate. When I was in college, I was profoundly affected by being baptized in water. I was so affected that I tried to persuade everyone [...]

After the Together for the Gospel conference, I received a lengthy e-mail from a worship pastor in attendance who shared a current dilemma his pastoral team is facing. They have been “wrestling with how to best be obedient to Scripture in our corporate worship through song.” His church contains people who are “naturally NOT very [...]

In 1971, the great 20th century preacher, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, brought these remarks to an annual Minister’s conference: “We must not be content until we have had some manifestation of the activity of God. We must concentrate on this. This is my plea, that we concentrate on this, because it is the great message of the [...]

I’ve appreciated all of you who put your search engine to work and found out the answers to the Giveaway #2 contest related to GLAD trivia. We’ve found our twenty winners. There were even some actual GLAD fans among them, although a few people were honest enough to say they had never heard of GLAD [...]

Praise the Lord from the earth, you great sea creatures and all deeps,     fire and hail, snow and mist, stormy wind fulfilling his word! Mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars! Beasts and all livestock, creeping things and flying birds! Kings of the earth and all peoples, princes and all rulers [...]

This question came from a gentleman who works at a Christian school. Every Friday a 4-5 piece band has been leading the 6th through 12th graders in a time of “praise and worship.” However, most of the students aren’t Christians. The leadership is changing so he wrote in: “This year the students have really got [...]

Thanks to all of you who e-mailed me to review the Worship God Live CD. We’ve now received 50 responses. I particularly enjoyed the honesty (manipulation?) of this note: "If I’m not too late to qualify for the CD giveaway, here’s my entry. I failed to check your blog yesterday and I missed this offer. [...]

Okay, okay. Maybe I set the bar too high. We gave away 50 Worship God Live CD’s to pastors and worship leaders who would review them on their blog by June 15. But for those who didn’t fit into that category, I offered to send a CD to the first 20 people who could correctly [...]

For those of you who missed out on a free CD because you’re not a pastor or a music pastor or you don’t write your own blog…I wanted to make another give-away offer. This week I was honored to receive the King of the Week award from blogger extraordinaire Tim Challies. Thankfully, I guess that [...]

Last year Sovereign Grace Ministries took two nights in February to record a live project entitled, Worship God Live. I was privileged to be one of two leaders on the CD, along with my good friend, Pat Sczebel, who is a pastor at the Sovereign Grace church in Vancouver, B.C. We were attempting to accomplish [...]

After 33 years of being a Christian, I’m learning that many of my godly acts and thoughts are accompanied by a corresponding danger of imbalance or deception. That means that when I’m pursuing obedience in one way, I may also be pursuing idolatry in another. Because I’m tempted to rest in my own righteousness before [...]