Our Footsteps: Casual Worship

Sunday, November 29, 2009

Casual Worship

On a Thanksgiving weekend visit with family, I noticed a church sign advertising their 'casual worship' service. I assumed that they meant more laid back kind of environment, no suits, no ties, etc... While I kinda laughed out loud when I first saw the sign, the term 'casual worship' conjured up other things in my mind after I thought about it for a moment or two.

Isn't that what ails us? We have a 'worship deficit disorder'. We are too casual in our approach. I am not referring to wearing jeans or singing contemporary music. The heart of the issue is the issue of the heart. I have been in many 'church services' where we have entered into worship in a casual manner, forgetting who we've supposedly come to worship. We (me included) think at times that we are coming to hang out with 'our buddy Jesus'. We come to sing a couple of catchy tunes, we feel good with our plastic smile and we are unaware of our great sin of thinking more of ourselves than we ought to think. Instead of falling flat on our faces in reverential adoration to the Creator and Sustainer of the universe, we stumble into the pew unprepared to offer acceptable worship to the King of kings. I was convicted by seeing this 'casual worship' sign. How much of my future worship will be casual? How much of it will be unacceptable? How much heart preparation will there be? How much prayer will I have invested beforehand and how much confession of sin will there be? Will there be any thought of the glory, majesty, loftiness and beauty of the Lord as I enter the room for corporate worship? Or should I just go ahead with my all-too-often 'casual worship'.....

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I Believe...

1). I believe that there is one God. I believe God consists of three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
2). I believe that God is holy, righteous, loving, and just.
3). I believe that mankind is separated from God by sin; that sin entered the world through Adam and death through sin.
4). I believe that, because of sin, man is condemned. Because of God’s utter hatred for sin, there is an eternal conscious punishment in hell for all those who do not come to God on His terms, dealing with their sin.
5). I believe that confessing our sins and confessing Jesus Christ as Lord is the only way to properly deal with the sin that has infected everyone. Jesus Christ paid our sin debt on the cross; reconciliation by substitution. There is nothing we can do to add to the finished work of Christ.
6). I believe in the security of the believer, that once he is truly born-again, there is nothing that would cause him to lose his salvation.
7). I believe that upon the death of a true believer in Christ, that he is ushered immediately into the presence of the Lord, where he will live in everlasting joy in Heaven, experiencing eternal fellowship with God.
8). I believe in believer’s baptism by immersion. I don’t believe baptism is necessary for salvation, but it is a beautiful outward profession of an inward possession.
9). I believe in a literal 6-day creation where God created the heavens and the earth and then rested on the seventh day.
10). I believe that the words written in the Bible are truth. I believe that the Bible is inerrant in its parts and in its whole. I believe that the 66 books that make up the canon of scripture make the Bible complete and that God inspired the words written therein. The things that were written down in the Bible are sufficient for every need we have. Not only is God’s Word sufficient, but it is far superior to any other method of handling the problems that man faces, since He has given us all things pertaining to life and godliness.