The Heart - The Bedrock Of Worship!

I had a friend who was/is a believer, depending on how he feels on a particular day and your perception of who a believer is, since there are now many descriptions of who a “born again believer” is these days but if we go by what the bible says, you may not think he is a believer though he is in church often. So, this friend of mine would cry in worship – I mean when we are in church singing songs of worship, he would lift up his hands to God in worship and you would see tears roll down his cheeks and he looked totally in tune with God, lost in adoration and maybe He was because I know God can reach anyone; he has even been known to reach a donkey - Balaam’s donkey, but certainly that did not make Balaam’s donkey a believer. There is only one way to become a believer, according to scripture, and Jesus says to retain the right to continue to be a believer, you have to continue to obey His word; reality is that we cannot obey what we don’t know which suggests that we are expected to know His word.

 

Romans 10: 10 “for it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with God, and it is openly declaring your faith that you are saved.”

John 8: 31 “Jesus said to the people who believed in him, ‘you are truly my disciples if you remain faithful to my teachings.”

So this friend of mine would lift up his hands “in worship” and immediately after service, he moves on to lying, fornication, adultery and every evil work; I seriously mean every evil work. O! Sorry, I don’t think murder was part of it except if it was murdering with the mouth which he did well when he felt he needed to. Not that it was his intention to hurt anyone but he felt compelled to do it to get out of some sticky situations. I tell you, some situations really do get sticky like you would find in the book written by Onyinye Chidiebere Nwokeocha “sticky Situations.” So I guess he felt very justified when he had to lie because there was no other way out and for him, telling the truth was not an option in these situations yet He was not just a believer but the type we call “worshipper” because tears rolled down his eyes as he worshipped. Interestingly, he knew that people noticed and he used it to his advantage so that on the rare occasions when the tears did not flow readily, he would make it happen.

Galatians 2: 4 “Even that question came up only because of come so-called believers there- false ones, really-who were secretly brought in.”

One thing is certain, worship is more than singing. It is a way of life which begins in the heart. According to Nathaniel Bassey, who will by the way, be ministering again at our WCO Prayer Conference “God is more interested in where the worship emanates from than the words we sing.” The bigger thing is that if it emanates from the right place, it will impact on one’s entire life because indeed a man is who he is in his heart. God is searching for true worshippers which suggest that there are fake worshippers and also that the true ones are few. Worshippers love and lay their own lives in love. They give everything like Abraham did when he gave Isaac; God never forcefully takes their lives nor does He compel them to give it. Such believers are in a love relationship with God and what makes His heart bleed also makes their hearts bleed. Their love relationship with God is real and means the world to them and their lives are built around that relationship; their confidence, rooted in God so that they know that they cannot afford to be carnal. His is the most precious relationship to them. Whenever they are more carnal than spiritual, they become uncomfortable because they feel disconnected from their lover.

Song of Solomon 1: Kiss me and kiss me again, for your love is sweeter than wine. How fragrant your cologne; your name is like its spreading fragrance. No wonder all the young women love you! Take me with you; come, let’s run!

Mathew 6: 21 “Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be.”

Now when such worshippers gather, I do not think anything can stand against them. No wonder the bible says when we agree concerning anything on earth, heaven consents. They rub minds with God so they think alike so that it is a coming together of like minds whose minds are tied to God's mind. Just imagine the gathering of such people. When they gather in worship, God will surely be in their midst. No wonder the gathering of believers is like precious ointment. Deep will call unto deep and iron will sharpen iron and all this, even without singing. Worship cannot be faked. If you think you are faking it well, you deceive yourself alone because the God with whom we have to deal, sees the hearts of men; indeed nothing is hidden from Him.

Just like in the Days When There Was No King

I went to a company yesterday where the staff were so polite I almost thought I was in another part of the world. They looked and acted like believers would and when I heard one of them humming a gospel song, that was it for me – they were definitely believers and that explained their behavior but maybe not. Soon after I left the place, I spoke to a believer on the phone and was reminded that we have mostly lost those values that marked us and made me think those people must be believers. In contemporary times, we are mostly unrestrained and without any form of discipline (so we more often than not come off as people who are not cultured), and as a result, we no longer exude the confidence and joy believers exuded, at least in my environment, but not so much now. We have followed after the values of the world leaving behind the values taught by scriptures. We are now excellent students of the world carefully studying and mentored by the ideals and ideas of the world and forgetting the scriptures. Today’s church is in trouble, at least where I live. Words like discipline, self - control and several other words that speak of any sort of restraint are almost non-existent to us. We do anything we feel like when we feel like it despite God’s opinion and our argument is often “he knows me just as I am and will use me just as I am” forgetting that if He thought of us as useable the way we were, then we won’t need to be saved and transformed. I dare to suggest that we are dissatisfied with the life Christ offers and desire a blend of both – the funk and fun of the world and the assurance of life in heaven hereafter, but we cannot serve two masters at the same time.

 

Mathew 6: 24 “No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”

 

The other day I heard about a young man in church watching a porn movie whilst the sermon was preached. I guess that is how he felt at the time but I wonder - can it ever be right to attend an event and watch a movie while some one is on their feet speaking or isn’t there anything like etiquette and/or decorum anymore? Even worse is the fact that this young man was watching this porn movie in church as the word of God was preached. Really? How right can that really be? If this young man elected to be in a service then he ought to have acted appropriately. I know that a lot of people believe the house of God is that place where they can “be themselves” which usually means “misbehave” but the bible does talk about conduct which is acceptable in the house of God suggesting that there is some code of conduct in the house of God. There is definitely a way to carry oneself in God’s house. We very often blame all the decadence in the church on the higher church echelon but on that day when we meet with our maker we shall all give individual accounts of our stewardship and the issues with our leaders will not be good enough excuse to escape hell. The bible is available to all of us so that we all can read it and God reveals Himself to as many as desire Him whether church leaders or congregation. I am not exonerating the church leadership but my point is this - at the end of the day, you owe it to yourself to live right. God demands that we have character which speaks of discipline and self- restraint and the bible teaches, very simply, acceptable conduct.

 

Judges 21: 25 “In those days Israel had no king; all the people did whatever seemed right in our eyes.”

 

1 Timothy 3: 14 – 15 “I am writing these things to you now, even though I hope to be with you soon, so that if I am delayed, you will know how people must conduct themselves in the household of God.”

 

It would appear like we are, today, exploiting what we consider the wrongs of our leaders for what we think is “our good.” At the end of the day, we will all have to take responsibility for our actions. The excuses we have will not impact on the consequences of these things we do. We cannot erase lines nor can we pretend like they are so blurred we don’t see them; the flesh and the Spirit are very different and the differences are clear. We must bear in mind that God sees our hearts so that our thoughts are open to Him; please do not be deceived, God is not mocked. We deceive ourselves if we think we are acceptable to Him conducting ourselves in the way we want. It is not enough to accept the existence of Christ, satan does; we have to not only invite Him into our lives to be Lord and Saviour, His presence in our life must be evidenced by the changes that will be manifest in our lives as a result of our yielding to His word. We lose the right to just “act it because we feel it” when we become believers. We need to ask ourselves if ‘it is acceptable to God.” Indeed “What would Jesus do?” It may appear like we do not have a King because we don’t see Him but we do and He is The Only Living God.

THE WORD OF GOD IS LIKENED TO A SEED

There is no doubt that the miracle of creation started with a word from God. The bible goes on to reaffirm this in the gospel of John where it states that everything God made was done by His word who is still God’s instrument for creation even today. There is therefore, no end to the capacity of the word to create anything that is spoken except the word chooses not to. The scriptures then go on to tell us that God’s word is fully represented in the person of His son – His word in flesh. So we know that the word of God truly has life and is able to give life. For God to make all this effort for us to understand that His word is living and The Creator, it suggests to me that having and accepting that truth must make a difference in the life of a believer. One thing I can say for certain is this - until one realizes the importance of this word, there is a high tendency to treat it like any other word yet therein lies the salvation and hope of mankind. Only God would put something so great in something so little whilst still retaining its power and ability so that it is hard for man to understand and accept the concept. For man is used to treating word as just mere word. Yet, if he treats the word of God as mere word, He would suffer loss untold missing out on most of the things God ordained for him. The answers to our prayers are revealed in the word of God, so we cannot afford to treat the word with the level of carelessness that we would normally treat mere words. We don’t do God a favor by taking His word seriously; we actually do ourselves a lot of good.

John 1: 1, 3 – 4a “In the beginning the word already existed. The word was with God, and the word was God… God created everything through him, and nothing was created except through him. The word gave life to everything that was created,”

Whilst it is true that times have changed and almost everything is fluid, we have a God that never changes so that in all the change going on in life, we must accommodate the reality of our God remaining the same. Our God has chosen to send everything through His word. In a world where we only believe when we see, God is asking us to believe when what we have cannot be seen or touched. It is almost unreal but it is truth. If we must succeed in life and fulfill our destiny then we must accept this reality instead of what we were used to before we came to Christ. This is a real struggle for us so a number of us tend to desperately seek information about the future just to make it easier to hold on to the word. This is leading several believers to several wrong places; they just want this information about their future. They don’t want to leave Christ but they feel a need to know a lot more than God is willing to tell us and they argue that it makes it easier to wait on God but the truth is most of this information comes from familiar spirits who disguise themselves as believers. I guess these believers who operate with familiar spirits are some of those Jude refers to as false brethren. The truth is many of us that go to such believers already suspect that there is something not right about them but we are so desperate to know what God chooses to withhold that we ignore the knowing we have inside. The familiar is a very big problem to us when it comes to receiving miracles because we are set in the way we believe things ought to happen. We need to make urgent adjustments so we don’t miss the appropriate timing for our miracles because God works with times and seasons. When the season rolls away, He who causes the harvest has moved on and without Him, one can do all and yet have zero harvest.

Mathew 9: 38 “So pray to the Lord who is in charge of the harvest.”

Isaiah 55: 11 “It is the same with my word. I send it out, and it always produces fruit. It will accomplish all I want it to, and it will prosper everywhere I send it.”

Jesus often likened the word of God to a seed and I believe that is deliberate. Every seed carries life in it despite that it is little and appears lifeless. The purpose of each seed is already settled just like the word that God sends into our lives. That the seed will do well or die when it is sent, is dependent on other factors like the soil and everything it needs to be nurtured. God always does His part but do we recognize the word He sends as answers to our prayers? It cannot be planted if we do not recognize it as God’s answer to our request. If we treat it as just another word, so it will be but if we take it in and nurture it providing the right environment, it will accomplish its purpose. When God sends His seed, He expects a harvest but we must not frustrate the seed. Our hearts are a major part of what the word becomes in our lives. If we do not recognize the word that is sent to birth our miracles, we may reject it thereby unknowingly, rejecting our miracles also. We must learn to patiently wait on God that we do not miss Him. Patiently waiting on Him does not mean one does nothing at all but that one is attentive to Him even in all that one does. The day is far sent and the return of our Lord is closer than we think. Please let us work while it is yet day and every blessing is meant to help us complete our work; we can’t afford to be so careless that we loose them.

Have Faith In God – A Must For Pleasing Him

I respect people especially those older than me because I was taught to do so; but some I respect even more because they actually earned my respect so that whether older or much younger, I would have respected them anyway and my friend in this story is one of such persons. He earned my respect for his attitude and strength in the time he waited on God to make good His promise of a child to him and his wife. In that period when he waited we would sometimes talk about it and one day I broached the topic of the several medical options available and wondered why he won’t try any of them. In my opinion, God made them available, but he insisted that he won’t. I asked him why, certain that I knew what he would say and my argument was ready, but he surprised me. He, very calmly, explained to me, how God had promised that He would give them a child without medical assistance and in due time and that he preferred to wait on God for the manifestation of that word. He said to try any other method, would be tantamount to disbelieving God. He said it with such confident assurance that I knew he believed what he said and he believed it so much that he stood by it. For me, that topic was closed; I understood him well. He had chosen that path which a man has to choose for Himself – waiting on God‘s word as he believes he heard and it was in my best interest to let the matter die there and then which I did until the word eventually came to pass. God gave them a beautiful child according to His word and she arrived just when she should not be expected any longer but the word of God to Him did not fail; it prospered in the life of the couple long after it was sent.

 

Isaiah 55: 11 “It is the same with my word. I send it out, and it always produces fruit. It will accomplish all I want it to, and it will prosper everywhere I send it.”

 

Waiting on God is more than a “cliché”; it is what it is. It is that a man believes he has received a word from God and holding onto that word waits on God to bring it to pass doing nothing but what God says to do making no attempt to facilitate the manifestation of the answer. It is tough and even more so in the times that we are in when everyone wants to counsel even without your asking their opinion. Everyone seems to know what the other ought to be doing even without first seeking to know the mind of God concerning that other person. Meanwhile all one has against all the tremendous pressure is a word from God; a God that you don’t see and have never seen but you have elected to trust. It is tough when God hides a huge part of one’s life or some major occurrence in something seemingly small – His word. Meanwhile satan is busy throwing darts of doubt and fear so that one begins to wonder – how do I even know that I heard God initially or how do I know that God will still do it because whether He does it or not, He will still be God; it can get so bad that you sometimes want to question God’s existence but you don’t want to talk about it because no one must know that you have those questions so you struggle to put away the thoughts very quickly as you trudge on. It definitely cannot be easy and the longer the timing, the greater the risk of getting weary but God knows that so He makes fresh strength readily available to us. At some point it is almost like the voice you heard or the scripture through which you heard His voice begins to deem in your memory because everything seems so contrary. You know and believe but it is a struggle to put that word in that uppermost place in your mind where you would always see it and be reminded but you recall to mind the several victories He has won for you and then you are able to rejoice and strength is restored to go on. Such was the story of my friend and the word of God eventually came to pass.

 

Isaiah 40: 31 “But those who trust in the Lord will find new strength. They will soar high on wings like eagles. They will run and not get weary. They will walk and not faint.”

 

We indeed have to believe God. I realize now, more than ever before, that it is impossible to please God without faith.  It is not just scripture to me now but I can tell from experience. At the end of the day, without faith in God, we will do things that will definitely displease and dishonor God. You just have to trust Him otherwise you will give up on Him. He certainly does not work in the way that we know to work on this side of eternity. It is not unusual to want to faint but if you keep renewing your strength then you won’t die and you will carry the seed of the vision until it comes to maturity and then birth it. You have to know deep inside you that you will not survive in your own strength but the grace of God. I think a lot of the time, the scripture that says we will be tested more than we can handle is often misinterpreted. We often interpret it to mean we would not be tempted more than we think we can handle but the God that knows what He has put inside each person knows how far each person can go which is often more than the person thinks they can. So that sometimes we are indeed faced with tests that ordinarily seem too much for us to bear but that is how God brings “us out of us” – the real person He made begins to unfold and unravel. That which we always had buried inside of us is provoked to life. If one gives up before they come through then one may never discover what lies deep inside them and may indeed go through life without realizing their full potentials. Hence, faith is required to please God because in truth, it is easier to “curse God and die” like Job’s wife suggested to Him because the journey gets really tough but it is worthy of note that the same wife lived to enjoy the benefits that followed Job’s pain.  We must honor God; we have to trust Him. To do otherwise is to call Him a liar which He is not.