Be Overflowing with Praise

Umm mmm mmm, did we have a wonderful time as the gathered people of God at X1 yesterday morning or what? Certainly feeling God is shifting things in our very culture with respect to our sung out worship of the King together. As the Lead Elder I can only pray for more and more of the same.

As part of that desire for a shift to be pronounced and affecting in our minds, hearts, and actions I shared a message that had been on my heart as a pastor for over a year. I entitled it, "Be Overflowing with Praise." The simple thesis of the whole message being: Christians are empowered and filled with the Spirit of God in such a way as to overflow with expressive, exuberant praise for their God at all times - even in the dark, dark hours of the soul. (Not with fake outward adherence, or as a religious must, but from deep within a soul aware of all who God is and all HE's done.) Anyway enough of my thoughts, I wanted to re-share the thoughts of Charles Spurgeon on Psalm 103, the text I used for yesterday's sermon.

Here it is:

"As in the lofty Alps some peaks rise above all others so among even the inspired Psalms there are heights of song which overtop the rest. This one hundred and third Psalm has ever seemed to us to be the Monte Rosa of the divine chain of mountains of praise, glowing with a ruddier light than any of the rest. It is as the apple tree among the trees of the wood, and its golden fruit has a flavour such as no fruit ever bears unless it has been ripened in the full sunshine of mercy. It is man's reply to the benedictions of his God, his Song on the Mount answering to his Redeemer's Sermon on the Mount. [here] David awakens all the melodies of heaven and earth in honour of the one only living and true God."

Beautiful isn't it?
Bless you Lord for giving us the words and ministry of such a golden throated orator thoroughly consumed with love for you.

Simon

A Healthy dose of Piper

I'm sorry this man has so richly blessed me in His absolute fascination with my, and his, God for so many years now, and in this sermon he does it again. I have to place some excerpts here for all of you to read and taste.

"When David says, 'I will magnify God with thanksgiving, he does not mean: 'I will make a small God look bigger than he is. He means: 'I will make a big God begin to look as big as he really is.' We are not called to be microscopes, but telescopes. Christians are not called to be con-men who magnify their product out of all proportion to reality, when they know the competitor's product is far superior. There is nothing and nobody superior to God. And so the calling of those who love God is to make his greatness begin to look as great as it really is. The whole duty of the Christian can be summed up in this: feel, think, and act in a way that will make God look as great as he really is. Be a telescope for the world of the infinite starry wealth of the glory of God...

...We are called to be telescopes: people who make the greatness of God seem as great as it really is. This is what it means for a Christian to magnify God. But you can't magnify what you haven't seen or what you quickly forget. Therefore, our first task is to see and to remember the greatness and goodness of God. So we pray to God, "Open the eyes of my heart," and we preach to our souls, 'Soul, forget not all his benefits!'

...There are only two groups of people in the world whose differences from each other are of any eternal significance: those who love to magnify God and those who love to magnify themselves. At the root of all ingratitude is the love of one's own greatness. For genuine gratitude admits that we are beneficiaries of an unearned bequest; we are cripples leaning on the cross shaped crutch of Jesus Christ; we are paralytics living minute by minute in the iron lung of God's mercy; we are children asleep in heaven's stroller. Natural man hates to think of himself in these images: unworthy beneficiary, cripple, paralytic, child. They rob him of all his glory by giving it all to God. Therefore, while a man loves his own glory, and prizes his self-sufficiency, and hates to think of himself as sin-sick and helpless, he will never feel any genuine gratitude to the true God and so will never magnify God, but only himself."

On Psalm 69: 30 - 32. (See sermon here)

Let's be overflowing with praise - it gives glory to He who deserves it and it's truly missional!

Simon

Moses deals a reality 'double-whammy.'

Tucked away in 'my happy place,' yes half of you guessed it, Starbucks and taking time to look into God's word - good times! I try and dip into the Psalms as regularly as possible as part of daily devotional time and got into Psalm 90 a few moments ago. It is written by Moses and is laced with healthy 'anti-humanistic' reality.
We need that every so often you know? Do you know? We are locked into a man worshiping, self-exalting society that can lead to a desperately skewed view of reality which is basically upside down. God is a man-made creation to serve us and our agendas, whereas the biblical view (seen here in Psalm 90) is the antithesis of such a 'reality.' What am I saying? Well let me expose you to just two thoughts from Moses the great man of God (note men that does not mean perfect, he failed, but he still was great in God's eyes for he sought to lead his people faithfully - our calling) in this Psalm - a reality 'double whammy' so to speak:

"For a thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night. You sweep men away in the sleep of death; they are like the new grass of the morning - though in the morning it springs up new, by evening it is dry and withered." (vs. 4 - 6)

"The length of our days is seventy years -- or eighty, if we have the strength; yet their span is but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away." (vs. 10)

* The maths - A 'day' to God is 12 1/2 times the lifetime of the 'man of strength.'
* The dawning - every day of our life takes effort and strain to 'fully live' and yet in His serene, glorious, self-existence God expends NO energy to survive!

As Calvin wonderfully states at the outset of his Institutes - seeing who we are really allows us to see who He is. In the immortal words of Wayne and Garth (Wayne's World 2) "You big, we small."

O and get this, He does love His children more than we could ever estimate! Wow.

Simon

'I hide myself in you.'

Life is tumultuous of that there is no doubt. We may be living in the 'noisiest', 'busiest' generation ever, and resting or finding peace may be harder than at any time before.
Where do we go? How do we counteract the rush? Where does the rat go to get out of the rat race?
We are facing different difficulties than generations before us: we are devoid of war on our turf, health care and social structure has eradicated numerous problems that would have afflicted generations before us. Our difficulties are more about stress, overwhelming time demands, cultural pressure to conform at all costs, community fracture and internal conflicts. They are difficulties all the same.

Sometimes you cry out for an 'all-embracing' solution to all your problems, something that would maybe be your rescue. Well how about doing what David did 3000 years ago: HIDE YOURSELF IN GOD! Psalm 143 in the OT scriptures tell us that David did exactly that, he writes,

"Rescue me from my enemies, O Lord, for I hide myself in you."

Immerse yourself in the presence of God, revel in His love and compassion for you. Hear His well, dwell in His promises. I assure you there is no 'safer' empowering place.

HIDE YOURSELF IN GOD!

Simon

What do I want?

Last week Friday at 8pm GMT www.x1church.com went live as we seek to impact people digitally and draw them into the great Christ Culture of the church. There is a blog there where I am entrusted to share thoughts as the lead elder at X1. Here is some thoughts I shared with our people this Monday:

A legitimate question that could, and probably should, be asked by any member of a church (or any Christian within a church) to its pastor is, "What do you most want from me?" I would love to be asked that question by everyone at X1. What I mean by this question is not in the arena of service (although the answer to this question will have immense implications upon service), or giving, or attendance, or purity of life, or even effective evangelism (although again every one of these things will be completely affected). What I mean is what do I want for my people to grasp as the central component that would astoundingly transform their lives and therefore the life of X1 as a community of Christ followers.

My answer, and maybe different church leaders would give different ones (or the same but worded differently) is simple and is scriptural. It is discovered in the life of that man who was known as 'a man after God's own heart', King David. It is in these verses found at the very beginning of Psalm 63

1 O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you;
my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you,
in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

2 I have seen you in the sanctuary
and beheld your power and your glory.

3 Because your love is better than life,
my lips will glorify you.

4 I will praise you as long as I live,
and in your name I will lift up my hands.

5 My soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods;
with singing lips my mouth will praise you.

David gets it, he gets what I would want from every member of the X1 family! He knows the Lord. His life, every single element of it, stems from an intimate communion with the Lord. You see that in vs 2. The result is the overwhelming consciousness of the love of God for Him ('better than life'). The final overflow is a life of sheer contentment, a life of praise, a life that lives every minute in passionate response to the 'power[ful] glor[ious]' King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

What I want from every member of X1 is that you seek, above all other things, every distraction or seemingly good thing, total and complete intimacy with the Lord. An intimacy that draws you into HIs presence and allows you to see Him as He truly is.

Everything will be different!

Simon

What do you talk about?

I wonder how many words we do actually say a day. There has always been the joke hasn't there that a woman speaks twice as many words in a day then a man. Or is it that a man has got through 90% of his by the time he gets home in the evening whilst the woman is only at 40% hence the silent men sighing at their extremely talkative wives at night. Whatever really, I am not sure any of that is true, and I digress anyway.

Was struck by a verse in Psalm 71 today which is as follows:

"My mouth will tell of your righteousness, of your salvation all day long, though I know not its measure."

It made me think about whether, as a follower of the Lord Jesus, this is my testimony. Does my mouth speak often of what it is like to live 'this side' of my having encountered the 'salvation' and 'righteousness' of God so completely almost 16 years ago now?
Or is my mouth typically caught up in petty discussion about meaningless reality TV shows and the desires to have the next 'cool' gadget? Maybe my mouth is engaged in activity even worse than that; maybe my mouth is speaking bad of others, bringing them down, mocking or accusing them in order to keep myself in a lofty position. Whatever it may be, I think all of us would have to admit that we are not able to say unequivocally with the Psalmist that our mouths speak of the lofty, glorious wonders of the salvation and righteousness of God all day long.

Maybe we should make a much more conscious effort to do that. I do not think that it means sitting down and talking through the theological concepts of election, salvation, justification, regeneration and such (although I feel there is absolutely no harm in that if it is to deepen our awareness that such glorious truths are beyond our 'measure') but just speaking highly of new life in Christ. Being positive, hopeful, passionate about who He is and how He changes lives.

Simon