J. S. Bach said, “All music should have no other end and aim than the glory of God and the soul’s refreshment; where this is not remembered there is no real music but only a devilish hubbub.” He headed his compositions: “J. J.” “Jesus Juva” which means “Jesus help me.” He ended them “S.D.G.” “Soli Dei gratia” which means “To God alone the praise.”
Source unknown
D.H. Lawrence was right when he said the deepest hunger of the human heart goes beyond love—Jesus called that “beyond” worship.
Can Man Live Without God, by Ravi Zacharias, Copyright 1994, Word: Dallas, Ch.10
If you were to seriously engage any religious philosopher in conversation on the concept of love in other religious teachings you would probably be surprised by what surfaces. In Buddhism the very founder, Gautam Buddha, renounced his wife and family in search of inner peace. In Hinduism the concept of love is more that of pity. In Islam, at best, submission is demanded to a compassionate god, but the more one reads the workings of this compassionate god the more compassion seems a vacuous term. Only in the Christian faith is life with God always portrayed as a relationship of love. However, in Christian terms, love does not stand merely as an emotion or even as an expression. In a relationship with God it ultimately flowers to worship. All earthly relationships as we know them will someday end. It is in worship alone that wonder and truth coalesce and our hearts become enriched by His love. That enrichment which results from worship feeds all other relationships and helps us to hold sacred our commitments.
Can Man Live Without God, by Ravi Zacharias, Copyright 1994, Word: Dallas, p.112
“You have turned for me my mourning into dancing.” —Psalm 30:11
It was the worst of times. In the first half of the 17th century, Germany was in the midst of wars and famine and pestilence. In the city of Eilenburg lived a pastor by the name of Martin Rinkart. During one especially oppressive period, Rinkart conducted up to 50 funerals a day as a plague swept through the town and as the Thirty Years’ War wreaked its own terror on the people. Among those whom Rinkart buried were members of his own family. Yet during those years of darkness and despair, when death and destruction greeted each new day, Pastor Rinkart wrote 66 sacred songs and hymns. Among them was the song “Now Thank We All Our God.” As sorrow crouched all around him, Rinkart wrote:
Now thank we all our God
With hearts and hands and voices,
Who wondrous things hath done,
In whom His world rejoices;
Who, from our mothers’ arms,
Hath blessed us on our way
With countless gifts of love,
And still is ours today.
Rinkart demonstrated a valuable lesson for us all: Thankfulness does not have to wait for prosperity and peace. It’s always a good time to praise God for the “wondrous things” He has done.
—Unknown
1. Is it scriptural? We dare not allow experience to become the touchstone of truth, giving it greater authority than the Bible.
2. Who is enriched? Both personal enrichment and church enrichment are important, but when they conflict, we must prefer church enrichment. 1 Cor. 13 is sandwiched between 12 and 14. Love must control the expression of spirituality in church. “When you come together, everyone has a hymn;, or a word or instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. All of these must be done for the strengthening of the church” (1 Cor. 14:26).
3. Is it orderly? “God is not a God of disorder but of peace (1 Cor. 14:33). God doesn’t want chaos in our meetings because that brings confusion and unrest. To the church at Colossae Paul wrote: “I delight to see how orderly you are” (Col. 2:5).
4. Is it intelligible? Being spiritual doesn’t mean being mindless. “I would rather speak five intelligible words to instruct others than 10,000 words in a tongue” (1 Cor. 14:19).
5. Is it sensitive to the unbeliever? Since unbelievers come to church, love requires us to worship in a way that shows God is real and present, and doesn’t make unbelievers regard the gospel as unworthy of serious consideration. (1 Cor. 14:23)
6. Does it bear fruit? Jesus said, “by their fruit you will know them” (Matt. 7:20). We test spiritual gifts and their manifestation by their results. Are Kingdom purposes achieved? Do they encourage evangelism, discipleship, repentance, praise to God? When Barnabas was sent to Antioch to investigate reports of God’s activity in Antioch, he “saw the evidence of the grace of God” (Acts 11:23).
7. What is my motivation for testing? Some err in becoming critical, corrective, or cynical when assessing phenomena associated with revival. They become “puffed-up experts” in passing judgment, but are themselves without fruitfulness or spiritual vitality.
(Craig Brian Larson, Pentecostal Evangel, July 14, 1996, pp. 11-13)
Breath of the Almighty, Comforter, Eternal Spirit, Free Spirit, Gift of God, God, Good Spirit, Holy One, Holy Spirit, Lord, Power of the Highest, Promise of the Father, Seal, Seven Spirits of God, Spirit, Spirit of adoption, Spirit of burning, Spirit of Christ, Spirit of counsel, Spirit of glory, Spirit of God, Spirit of grace, Spirit of holiness, Spirit of judgment, Spirit of knowledge, Spirit of life, Spirit of might, Spirit of prophecy, Spirit of revelation, Spirit of the Father, Spirit of the fear of the Lord, Sprit of the Living God, Spirit of the Lord, Spirit of the Lord God, Spirit of the Son, Spirit of truth, Spirit of understanding, Spirit of wisdom…
(compiled myself from various sources)
Second Adam, Almighty, Amen, Alpha and Omega, Advocate, Angel, Angel of the Lord, Angel of God’s presence, Apostle, Arm of the Lord, Author and Finisher or our faith, Blessed and only Potentate, Beginning of the creation of God, Branch, Bread of Life, Captain of the Lord’s hosts, Captain of salvation, Chief Shepherd, Christ of God, Consolation of Israel, Chief Corner-stone, Commander, Counselor, David, Day-spring, Deliverer, Desire of all nations, Door, Elect of God, Emmanuel, Eternal life, Everlasting Father, Faithful witness, First and Last, First-begotten of the dead, First-born of every creature, Forerunner, Friend of
Sinners, God, God blessed for ever, God’s fellow, Glory of the Lord, Good Shepherd, Great High Priest, Governor, Head of the Church, Heir of all things, Holy One, Holy One of God, Holy One of Israel, Horn of salvation, I AM, Jehovah, Jesus, Judge of Israel, Just One, King, King of Israel, King of the Jews, King of Saints, King of Kings, Law giver, Lamb, Lamb of God, Leader, Life, Light of the world, Lion of the tribe of Judah, Lord of glory, Lord of all, Lord our righteousness, Lord God of the holy prophets, Lord God Almighty, Mediator, Messenger of the covenant, Messiah, Mighty God, Mighty One of Jacob, Morning-star, Nazarene, Offspring of David, Only-begotten, Our Passover, Plant of renown, Prince of life, Prince of peace, Prince of the kings of the earth, Prophet, Ransom, Redeemer, Resurrection and life, Rock, Root of David, Root of Jesse, Ruler of Israel, Saviour, Servant, Shepherd and Bishop of souls, Shiloh, Son of the blessed, Son of God, Son of the Highest, Son of David, Son of man, Star, Sun of righteousness, Surety, True God, True Light, True Vine, Truth, Way, Wisdom, Witness, Wonderful, Word, Word of God, Word of Life…
(compiled myself from various sources)
Accessible; Awesome; Authentic; Comforting; Compassionate; Constant; Creator; Eternal; Faithful; Foreknowing; Free; Genuine; Glorious; Good; Gracious; Great; Guiding; Holy; Immanent; Impassible; Immutable; Impartial; Incomparable; Incomprehensible; Infinite; Inscrutable; Invisible; Jealous; Just; Light; Living; Longsuffering; Love; Manifold; Marvelous; Merciful; Mighty; Omnipotent; Omnipresent; Omniscient; Patient; Peaceful; Perfect; Personal; Powerful; Preserver; Providencial; Majestic; Mysterious; Righteous; Savior; Self-existent; Sovereign; Spirit; Transcendent; Triune; Truthful; Ubiquitous; Unchangeable; Unequaled; Unity; Unsearchable; Vengeful; Wise; Wrathful…
(compiled myself from several sources)
An unidentified Chinese Christian spoke of his days in a concentration camp. His crime was leading an unauthorized house church. He was sentenced to the camp for several years. All prisoners were given strenuous work throughout their imprisonment. This particular prisoner’s task was cleaning the cesspool. Everyday he was led by a guard to the edge of the cesspool where he then waded into the excrement up to his waist. He then proceeded to shovel it for the entire day. But this man called that cesspool “the garden of the Lord.” Why? The stench was so bad that the guards would leave him alone all day long. No one was within ear shot, so he spent the entire day in worship to His Lord—singing hymns, praying and meditating on the Scripture he had memorized.
(Story told by Michael Card during a concert in approximately 1995)
The first song I learned in church was “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so; Little ones to him belong, they are weak, but He is strong.” In 1949, when Mao Tse Tung declared the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, the country was closed to missionaries, and all Western Christians were forced to leave the mainland. The church has had a very difficult time since. For years little was known about how it was doing. What news did leak out had to be discreet. One message did get out in 1972. It was brief, and to the Chinese authorities, innocuous. It said, “The This I Know People are well.” A vivid and powerful word to Christians, worldwide. That was who they were—the people loved by Jesus—and that has been how and why they have persisted in prayer over years of suppression and persecution.
“Lord, hast thou declared that no man shall see Thy face and live?—Then let me die, that I may see Thee.”
—Augustine
Quoted in Peter Kreeft, Three Philosophies of Life (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989), 95.
To praise God is to hope in the world to come and is therefore the most practical act in this world. Occasionally I hear something like this said after a great service of worship: “That was wonderful! Too bad we have to go back to the ‘real world’ now.”
The assumption seems to be that what happened in worship was a pleasant and therapeutic diversion, and that the real thing is out there in the rough and tumble of the world. It’s the other way around! What was seen and felt in worship is the real thing. The secret is to remember what we saw and felt when we go back into the world of deception and lies.
Ben Patterson and David L. Goetz, vol. 7, Deepening Your Conversation With God, The pastor’s soul series; Library of leadership development (Minneapolis, Minn.: Bethany House Publishers, 1999), 100.
Praise is a great impetus to faith. There is a profoundly important reason for this: unbelief is first a failure at adoration. In his analysis of the human condition, Paul probes into the heart of our darkness and finds this at its root: “For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened” (Rom. 1:21). Note the order: First comes the refusal to honor and give thanks to God, then follows mental darkness and futility. The reason is not hard to understand. We see what we look for; we see most clearly what we most dearly adore.
Ben Patterson and David L. Goetz, vol. 7, Deepening Your Conversation With God, The pastor’s soul series; Library of leadership development (Minneapolis, Minn.: Bethany House Publishers, 1999), 97.
“The glory of God is man fully alive, and the life of man is the vision of God.”1 When we praise God, we adjust our vision to gaze upon the One who transforms and expands us in the gazing. “We know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). In praise, we anticipate Christ’s appearing, and by faith, see him as he is. But we are, nevertheless, participating now in what will be. C. S. Lewis borrows an image from John Donne, describing praise as “tuning our instruments“:
The tuning of the orchestra can be itself delightful, but only to those who can, in some measure, however little, anticipate the symphony … even our most sacred rites, as they occur in human experience, are, like tuning, promise, not performance. Hence, like the tuning, they have in them much duty and little delight; or none. But the duty exists for the delight. When we carry out our “religious” duties we are like people digging channels in a waterless land, in order that, when at last the water comes, it may find them ready. I mean, for the most part. There are happy moments, even now, when a trickle creeps along the dry beds; and happy souls to whom this happens often.2
1 Ireneaus, quoted by William Willimon, The Service of God (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1983), 64.
2 C. S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1964), 97.
3. Ben Patterson and David L. Goetz, vol. 7, Deepening Your Conversation With God, The pastor’s soul series; Library of leadership development (Minneapolis, Minn.: Bethany House Publishers, 1999), 96.
Martin Rinkart (1586–1649), was a pastor in the city of Elenberg in Saxony, during the Thirty Years War. During that horrible time, all the other pastors in the city left, leaving him with 4,500 funerals to conduct, among them his wife’s. As the war drew to a close, the city was overrun by the Austrians once and the Swedes twice. The Swedish general levied a heavy tax on the beleaguered people. Rinkart and his congregation pleaded for the general to show mercy, but he refused. Rinkart then turned to his people and said, “Come, my children; we can find no mercy with man—let us take refuge in God.” There, before the general, they knelt in prayer. The general was so moved by what he saw that he relented and lowered the tax to one-twentieth of what it had been. Martin Rinkart, the man who saw so much grief and endured so much loss, could still say gratitude’s defiant “nevertheless,” and write the great, “Now Thank We All Our God”:
Now thank we all our God
With heart and hands and voices,
Who wondrous things hath done,
In whom His world rejoices;
Who, from our mother’s arms,
Hath blessed us on our way
With countless gifts of love,
And still is ours today.
All praise and thanks to God
The Father now be given,
The Son and Holy Ghost,
Supreme in highest heaven;
The one eternal God,
Whom earth and heaven adore;
For thus it was, is now,
And shall be evermore.
Martin Rinkart, “Now Thank We All Our God,” Hymns II (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1976), 148. Ben Patterson and David L. Goetz, vol. 7, Deepening Your Conversation With God, The pastor’s soul series; Library of leadership development (Minneapolis, Minn.: Bethany House Publishers, 1999), 19.
Quoted by Ben Patterson and David L. Goetz, vol. 7, Deepening Your Conversation With God, The pastor’s soul series; Library of leadership development (Minneapolis, Minn.: Bethany House Publishers, 1999), 89.
“There was a time when all those commands of God for us to thank and praise him seemed to me to be a little odd. Did he need them to feel better about himself? Was he like the kid I knew in junior high who stood around with his hands in his pockets fishing for compliments? No, God doesn’t need our praise—we need to give it. For to praise God is to sharpen our soul’s vision of his greatness and goodness, and thus to increase our soul’s greatness and goodness. God doesn’t need our thanks and praise to feel better about himself, we need to thank and praise him to be better ourselves. It is a gift to us to give God thanks and praise.”
Ben Patterson and David L. Goetz, vol. 7, Deepening Your Conversation With God, The pastor’s soul series; Library of leadership development (Minneapolis, Minn.: Bethany House Publishers, 1999), 88.
“No character in the Bible found anything approaching a face-to-face encounter with God anything less than shattering. We clergy must learn to act and think as people who are amazed that our proximity to holy things has not left us vaporized. We must pray that God will cultivate in our spirits fresh awareness of his majesty and goodness, and that we not confuse his goodness with his being safe. Like the lion Aslan in C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, ‘He isn’t safe. But he’s good.’ God being God, Annie Dillard playfully suggested that along with our Bibles and vestments we should wear crash helmets when we worship.”
Ben Patterson and David L. Goetz, vol. 7, Deepening Your Conversation With God, The pastor’s soul series; Library of leadership development (Minneapolis, Minn.: Bethany House Publishers, 1999), 79.
In Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, the pilgrims were leaving the Delectable Mountains after the shepherds warned them to beware of traversing the Enchanted Ground. The overwhelming desire there would be to fall asleep, never again to awake. And it was just as the shepherds told them it would be: the drowsiness there became nearly unbearable. Hopeful pleaded for a nap, just one little rest. But Christian made him talk. He asked him the question, “By what means were you led to go on this pilgrimage?” In other words, he asked, “Why are you on this journey? Why are you doing this?” By telling the story, and thus remembering why he was on the pilgrimage, Hopeful kept talking and kept walking.
It is remembrance that keeps us awake; it is significant that the supreme act of Christian worship, the Lord’s Supper, draws us into fellowship with Christ by calling us to remember his mercy and love for us. It is a love feast spread out upon a redeemed and quickened memory. To pray is also to remember. It is to look into the face of the One who came to our side and saved us when we were lost and then called us into his service. It is to nourish the tender first love that Christ so passionately wants us to remember (Rev. 2:5). To pray is to connect again with the love that compelled us to declare the Good News to the world. To pray is to remember why we are doing this thing called ministry.
Ben Patterson and David L. Goetz, vol. 7, Deepening Your Conversation With God, The pastor’s soul series; Library of leadership development (Minneapolis, Minn.: Bethany House Publishers, 1999), 49.
The day is over, you are driving home. You tune in your radio. You hear a little blurb about a little village in India where some villagers have died suddenly, strangely, of a flu that has never been seen before. It’s not influenza, but three or four fellows are dead, and it’s kind of interesting. They’re sending some doctors over there to investigate it.
You don’t think much about it, but on Sunday, coming home from church, you hear another radio spot. Only they say it’s not three villagers, it’s 30,000 villagers in the back hills of this particular area of India, and it’s on TV that night. CNN runs a little blurb; people are heading there from the disease center in Atlanta because this disease strain has never been seen before.
By Monday morning when you get up, it’s the lead story. For it’s not just India; it’s Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, and before you know it, you’re hearing this story everywhere, and they have coined it now as “the mystery flu”. The President has made some comment that he and everyone are praying and hoping that all will go well over there.
But everyone is wondering, “How are we going to contain it?” That’s when the President of France makes an announcement that shocks Europe. He is closing their borders; no flights from India, Pakistan, or any of the countries where this thing has been seen.
That night you are watching a little bit of CNN before going to bed. Your jaw hits your chest when a weeping woman is translated from a French news program into English: “There’s a man lying in a hospital in Paris dying of the mystery flu. It has come to Europe.” Panic strikes. As best they can tell, once you get it, you have it for a week, and you don’t know it. Then you have four days of unbelievable symptoms. Then you die.
Britain closes it’s borders, but it’s too late. South Hampton, Liverpool, North Hampton, and it’s Tuesday morning when the President of the United States makes the following announcement: “Due to a national security risk, all flights to and from Europe and Asia have been canceled. If your loved ones are overseas, I’m sorry. They cannot come back until we find a cure for this thing”.
Within four days our nation has been plunged into an unbelievable fear. People are selling little masks for your face. People are talking about what if it comes to this country, and preachers on Tuesday are saying, “It’s the scourge of God”.
It’s Wednesday night, and you are at a church prayer meeting when somebody runs in from the parking lot and says, “Turn on a radio, turn on a radio.” While the church listens to a little transistor radio with a microphone stuck up to it, the announcement is made, “Two women are lying in a Long Island hospital dying from the mystery flu.” Within hours it seems, this thing just sweeps across the country. People are working around the clock trying to find an antidote. Nothing is working. California, Oregon, Arizona, Florida, Massachusetts. It’s as though it’s just sweeping in from the borders. Then, all of a sudden the news comes out. The code has been broken. A cure can be found. A vaccine can be made. It’s going to take the blood of somebody who hasn’t been infected, and so, sure enough, all through the Midwest, through all those channels of emergency broadcasting, everyone is asked to do one simple thing: “Go to your downtown hospital and have your blood type taken. That’s all we ask of you. When you hear the sirens go off in your neighborhood, please make your way quickly, quietly, and safely to the hospitals.”
Sure enough, when you and your family get down there late on that Friday night, there is a long line, and they’ve got nurses and doctors coming out and pricking fingers and taking blood and putting labels on it. Your wife and your kids are out there, and they take your blood type and they say, “Wait here in the parking lot and if we call your name, you can be dismissed and go home”. You stand around scared with your neighbors, wondering what in the world is going on, and wondering if this is the end of the world. Suddenly a young man comes running out of the hospital screaming. He’s yelling a name and waving a clipboard. What? He yells it again!
And your son tugs on your jacket and says, “Daddy, that’s me.” Before you know it, they have grabbed your boy. “Wait a minute, hold it!” And they say, “It’s okay, his blood is clean. His blood is pure. We want to make sure he doesn’t have the disease. We think he has got the right type.” Five tense minutes later, out come the doctors and nurses, crying and hugging one another and some are even laughing. It’s the first time you have seen anybody laugh in a week, and an old doctor walks up to you and says, “Thank you, sir. Your son’s blood type is perfect. It’s clean, it is pure, and we can make the vaccine.” As the word begins to spread all across that parking lot full of folks, people are screaming and praying and laughing and crying. But then the gray-haired doctor pulls you and your wife aside and says, “May we see you for a moment? We didn’t realize that the donor would be a minor, and we need you to sign a consent form.” You begin to sign and then you see that the number of pints of blood to be taken is empty. “H-h-h-how many pints?” And that is when the old doctor’s smile fades and he says, “We had no idea it would be a little child. We weren’t prepared. We need it all!” “But, but…” “You don’t understand. We are talking about the world here. Please sign. We – we need it all – we need it all!” “But can’t you give him a transfusion?” “If we had clean blood we would. Can you sign? Would you sign?” In numb silence you do. Then they say, “Would you like to have a moment with him before we begin?” Can you walk back? Can you walk back to that room where he sits on a table saying, “Daddy? Mommy? What’s going on?” Can you take his hands and say, “Son, your mommy and I love you, and we would never ever let anything happen to you that didn’t just have to be. Do you understand that?” And when that old doctor comes back in and says, “I’m sorry, we’ve – we’ve got to get started. People all over the world are dying.” Can you leave? Can you walk out while he is saying, “Dad? Mom? Dad? Why – why have you forsaken me?”
And then next week, when they have the ceremony to honor your son, and some folks sleep through it, and some folks don’t even come because they go to the lake, and some folks come with a pretentious smile and just pretend to care. Would you want to jump up and say, “MY SON DIED! DON’T YOU CARE?”
Is that what God is saying? “MY SON DIED. DON’T YOU KNOW HOW MUCH I CARE?”
Father, seeing it from your eyes breaks our hearts. Maybe now we begin to comprehend the great love you have for us. Amen.
(Unknown Source)
Regular worshipers live 10% longer than those who skip services, a national study found. Life expectancy for weekly churchgoers is 82, and 83 for those who attend more than once a week, Religious Involvement and U.S. Adult Mortality said. Those who do not attend church live an average of 75 years. Behavior is influenced by religious involvement, and that affects life spans, the researchers said. Researchers from three universities tracked 22,000 people over nine years, USA Today said.
Texas Family Update 30 April 1999
The Collection 
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