Category: Character

Worship: The Ultimate Priority

Happy National Smile Day!  It’s a great day to share how a smile improves your day…and who knows, you may improve someone else’s day too?

When I think of smiling, I think of the joy, peace, and contentment I feel when worshipping God.  In 2012, Pastor John MacArthur wrote Worship: The Ultimate Priority.  In the Preface to the book, he admitted that for years, he fell far short of fully understanding what worship was and how it was to be accomplished.

Authentic worship is not a narrowly-defined activity relegated to the Sunday morning church service—or restricted to any single time and place, for that matter. Worship is any essential expression of service rendered unto God by a soul who loves and extols Him for who He is. Real worship therefore should be the full-time, nonstop activity of every believer, and the aim of the exercise ought to be to please God, not merely entertain the worshiper.

True worship is more than just music, and music—even Christian music—is not necessarily authentic worship.  In fact, Jesus spoke of truth, not music, as the distinctive mark of true worship (John 4:23–24).

Click here to learn more from John MacArthur’s Worship

He Restores My Soul

Dr. Robert C. McQuilkin once wrote, “The Lord is our Shepherd…  He refreshes us when weary and encourages us when we are cast down.”

A “cast” sheep gets itself literally turned upside down.  A cast sheep is a sad being, legs futilely flailing the air, gasses building up in the abdomen, blood circulation draining away from the extremities.  It’s vulnerable to attack and unable to take food or water. 

There’s an old shepherding maxim: “A down sheep is a dead sheep.”  Cast sheep can perish in a matter of hours unless the shepherd finds them and restores them.

The Bible sometimes speaks of people as being “cast down.”  In Psalm 42:5, David asked, “Why are you cast down, O my soul?  And why are you disquieted within me?  Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him for the help of His countenance.”

Are you cast down?  Is your world upside down?  Are you unable to right yourself?  We so frequently need this tiny phrase of four words from Psalm 23:3: “He restores my soul.”  The Hebrew word means to restore vitality, vigor, and strength.  He reinvigorates me, He revives my strength.  He gives us power in life’s trenches.

Click here to learn more from Phillip Keller, Max Lucado, and Robert Morgan