Skip to main content

WORSHIP STARTS A FIRE

“I don’t need to go to worship to experience God.  God is everywhere, so I can experience God anywhere – in the park, on a golf course or resting in my bed on Sunday morning.  It doesn’t matter where I am or who I’m with.  I can experience God anywhere I want and any way I want.”

I’ve heard people say something like that many times.  It sounds so right and so true – and I believe parts of it are right and true. 

It’s true, I believe – God is everywhere.

It’s true, I believe - you can potentially experience God anywhere.  (God is not confined to little boxes called church buildings.)

However, just because something is everywhere doesn’t mean that you can experience it the same way everywhere.

Take the sun, for instance.

I think it’s fair to say that the power of the sun is pretty much everywhere.  (If it weren’t, we’d all be ice cubes!)  However, there are certain things which can intensify that power for us.

Walk outside on a nice day.  Put a piece of paper on the ground.  Wait.  Nothing happens to the paper.  The power of the sun is there, but it’s not affecting the paper.   Then, hold a magnifying glass up to the sun and point it at the paper.  Hold the magnifying glass there long enough and a spot will appear on the paper.  Hold it even longer and the paper may catch on fire.

The magnifying glass didn’t increase the presence of the sun.  The sun was no more or less powerful because of the magnifying glass.  What the magnifying glass did was focus that power to the point that it made a noticeable difference.

Worship is like that.

Pastor Blaik, are you saying that you believe worship is an event designed to enable us to experience God in a concentrated way?   Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying – and I believe it was designed that way by God.   My conviction is that worship is the main “lens” used by God in helping people experience the power of the divine presence – not because God’s presence doesn’t exist anywhere else, but because worship intensifies that presence.

Do you want to warm up, spiritually?  Come to worship.  You may just catch fire!

Blessings on All,

Pastor Blaik

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Avoiding Devilish Glitches and Maintaining Godly Control   When I was a young boy, I built and flew radio-control model airplanes with my father.   You would stand of the ground with a little box in your hands that had an antenna out of the top (for transmitting radio waves) and two metal sticks on the one side.    You moved the sticks to fly the airplane.   It was amazing how much control you could have with this kind of a system.   Every now and then we would experience what is known in radio-control speak as a “glitch.”   Being radio-controlled, each plane operated on a certain frequency - a certain kind of radio wave.   Anyone operating a radio device nearby with too much power could cause your system to go haywire.   Such lapses in control were known as glitches.   When encountering a glitch, some planes would just keep flying straight, no matter what the person did to try and turn it.   Sometimes, planes would j...
Post a Comment
Read more

DUST, DEATH AND DISCIPLESHIP

Lent is that forty-day period before Easter that many churches have set aside as a time of reflection upon Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross and our response to that sacrifice.   Lent, basically, is a season of spiritual inventory. In Genesis 2:4b-7, we read how God created us out of dust.   In Genesis 3:1-19, we read how we will return to that dust.   Physically speaking, our origin and our destination are one and the same – dust! Do you know that household dust is made up mostly of the discarded skin cells of the occupants of that house?   Sometime, when you’re brave and you can handle a sobering dose of biblical reality, lift up the bedspread from where it touches the floor, get on your hands and knees and stare your mortality square in the face! Doing so is part of what Lent is all about.   That’s why some people have cross-shaped smears of ashes put on their foreheads on Ash Wednesday.   Those smears are a reminder that we are all returning t...
Post a Comment
Read more