Deuteronomy 6:12-18 “Be careful that you do not forget the Lord who brought you out of [Sin] …, out of the house of slavery. You shall fear only the Lord your God; and you shall worship Him and swear by His name. You shall not follow other gods, any of the gods of the peoples who surround you, for the Lord your God who is in the midst of you is a jealous God; so follow Him, or else the anger of the Lord your God will be kindled against you, and He will wipe you off the face of the earth. You shall not put the Lord your God to the test .... You shall diligently keep the commandments of the Lord your God, and His provisions and His statutes which He has commanded you. You shall do what is right and good in the sight of the Lord, so that it may go well for you.”
Continuing, Pastor Herk states that studies have shown we think to ourselves 50,000 times per day and on average 80% of those thoughts are negative thoughts. If we could turn that around, what a difference that would make in our lives. Where does a lack of confidence, a defeatist resolve, a pessimistic bent, a depressing disposition and a bad attitude come from? Proverbs 23:7 “For as he thinks in his heart, so is he.”
The enemy, the devil, lies, distracts and deceives to get us so focused on those negative things that we think about, so we are weakened and paralyzed with despair and incapable to focus on Almighty God and living the God-focused life. He knows that when you get so fixated on your problems and what you feel are your failures, then you will lose sight of Christ and totally forget about God; how great He is, how good He is to us, and how we can depend on our heavenly Father in good times and bad. Do not fall for that trick of the enemy. Have courage, not discouragement, but encouragement because sovereign God is in control. Philippians 4:13 “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” You can do it!
1 John 1:8-2:2 “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us. My little children, these things I write to you, so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And He Himself is the propitiation [the acceptable sacrificial payment] for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world.”
It is true that we need to confess of our many sins and repent of them, but understand that is in order to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness so that the focus is of our worship is God; nothing else. Psalm 103:12 tells us that forgiveness of sin means, “As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.” The focus is on God, and if we can keep our focus where it belongs, then all this stuff that the devil is feeding us with and the other ungodly junk going on around us won’t matter because when we are focused on God, we are truly worshipping our Creator Father God and our lifestyle will reflect it. IT’s what we were created for.
When the focus of our worship is wrongly on the stuff that keeps infiltrating our lives, then we are on dangerous ground because we are susceptible to the effects that the enemy is going to put upon us. So, we have to be careful that we do not base our identity on the opinions of other people, because if you do then you are worshipping their opinion and lost our vertical focus. God’s opinion is the only opinion that counts. It doesn’t matter what you think and it doesn’t matter what you feel; it only matters what God thinks, how God feels and what He has written in His book – the Holy Bible. Conformity to the world is living down but focused worship is living up.
Let's continue Pastor Herk's message on "Worship" in the next post.
In Christ, Brian
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