God has hardwired us for worship. It is an expression of our humanness. We worship what is uppermost in our affections. So the question is not whether we worship but what we worship.
Idolatry is the worship of anything other than God. We see this misplaced worship in our culture at large. It is nothing new. We make sacrifices to and serve that which we worship. We even gravitate toward ...
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In elementary school I learned that Columbus sailed the ocean blue against the advice of all contemporary sages. Would he fall off the ends of the earth? His men and my classroom waited with bated breath on the edge of mutiny as the ships approached the edges of the known world. I was taught that everyone in the early church and the Middle Ages unreservedly believed that the earth was flat, but ...
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The gospel is a scandalous declaration. No other news in all of history is so liberating to the brokenhearted and irritating to the religious. The song of the Church is that Jesus came to save sinners (Luke 19:10). This will forever be the theme of our worship (Rev. 5:9-12).
In Scripture we find examples that teach us about the rhythms of gospel and how it leads us to worship (Isa. 6; Deut. ...
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Celebration Services at The Village are some of the sweetest times for our church family. Together we both see and hear testimony of God’s saving work as men, women and children make a public profession of faith through baptism. And together we remember the sacrifice of Jesus by taking communion.
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A few years back I had a front-row seat to an explosive, scandalous, public moral failure in the church. My dear friend had been asked to attempt to head off the catastrophe through counseling the people involved. Despite her wise words, they ran headlong into disaster, leaving an absolute mess for themselves and others to try to clean up. My friend was exhausted and grieved. Wanting to ...
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Nehemiah was an empathic man. In Nehemiah 1:4, he writes, “As soon as I heard these words I sat down and wept and mourned for days, and I continued fasting and praying before the God of heaven.” He did not witness the disaster in Jerusalem, nor did he personally know those suffering there. Yet his heart broke for the trouble occurring among God’s people. He spent days fasting and praying, ...
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Are stoplights and speed limits simply suggestions? Good advice to drive carefully? Helpful reminders to those less qualified in handling the complexities of modern motor carriages? Why come to a complete cessation of forward momentum when a California stop will suffice? Are you really expected to wait if there is quite literally no one else around? Does stop really mean stop? Isn’t that a ...
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God-imaging humans are social creatures; “persons-in-relation” is the prescribed human condition. The triune God, in His wisdom, set up specific structural communities that act as scaffolding on which these relationships would hang. These structural communities are called institutions. Family, Church, and School are institutions that are close to the heart of most. Industry (enterprise) and ...
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