Category: Chistian Quotes

  • Awe – How was worship today at your local church?

    Morraine Lake

    Today’s image is Moraine Lake in Alberta. The sight always stops me in my tracks and leaves me in awe. How much more can I be in awe of God? Thinking of awe led to this morning’s Gleanings.

    Have you ever done this? I confess that I have, and too often. You’ve just attended the Sunday service at your local church, and before you’re out the door, you’re complaining. That was boring. The service was too short/long. The music wasn’t the right volume/genre, and the songs were too old/new.

    Maybe it was, “Did you see what Mrs. Smith was wearing? Or, perhaps, “Did you see that teenager who wore his hat in the service or had that rude t-shirt?” How about “Did you see who was ushering. How can they even show their face in the church?’

    The pastor spoke too long, I didn’t like the prayer time, that baby kept fussing, the list goes on and on.

    Perhaps we were focused on the wrong things. Any one of those comments might be accurate (or not), but we’ve missed the point of “going to church.”

    The Sunday service (or whatever day yours happens to be) is a time to gather in godly fellowship with other believers, to meet with the one true God and worship Him corporately. We do that through serving, teaching, singing, giving, fellowship, and loving others.

    When we go to meet with God, our focus changes. I believe it was RC Sproule who once said, “People in awe never complain that church is boring.” 

    Whenever we read of people in the bible encountering God, awe is a common factor.

    “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God almighty, who was, and is, and is to come.”  Revelation 4:8 ESV

    “I am unworthy—how can I reply to you? I put my hand over my mouth.”  Job 40:4 ESV

    “If you, O Lord, kept a record of sins, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness; therefore, you are feared” Psalm 130:3-4 ESV

    Now, I’ll be the first to admit that not every Sunday service causes us to fall on our faces in awe of God. Still, if our focus and desire are to meet with the living God through the message of the Word, the singing, and true fellowship, He will meet us there.

    Our hearts and minds will be transformed.

    If you’re not happy with your local church, perhaps the first thing you ought to do is check your own heart. Maybe something about the format isn’t to your liking, but was God present? Is the congregation being transformed into the image of God? 

    The local church, with all its warts and flaws, all the people still in progress, and all its problems, is still the bride of Christ. We need to learn to love her as much as we do Him.

    Wherever you worship this Sunday, set aside everything else and seek His face with joy and awe.

    Be blessed

    Kevin

    Some others to choose from

    Every Member Is Necessary — 1 Corinthians 12

    Some thoughts on finding a good church

    Find a good church

    Live in Abbotsford? There are many good churches. This is where I attend.

  • Spawning salmon point us to God

    Chinook, Pink, coho salmon at Weaver Creek

    Yesterday, Kathy and I took a little road trip. We visited the  Weaver Creek Spawning Channels and the Chehalis River Trout and Salmon Enhancement Facility. They were amazing.

    The Weaver Creek facility has 3km of manmade spawning channels, beautifully laid out for walking and viewing. Three species of salmon, sockeye, chum, and pinks, come here by the thousands to spawn and die.

    Every year, the salmon return to where they were born to spawn. No one yet understands how they know where to return.

    The salmon’s lifecycle is a miracle in itself. They are born in freshwater gravel beds and eventually travel downriver (often as much as 150 miles) to live their lives in the ocean. When it’s time to spawn, they return upstream in freshwater, overcoming a wide variety of obstacles, including waterfalls, to their place of birth.

    I found it impossible to stand there and watch the salmon without marveling at God’s incredible creative power and the beauty of what He has made.

    God has placed knowledge of their home into their hearts. In the same way, He has put a knowledge of our home into our hearts.

    In 1670, Blaise Pascal wrote,

    “What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words, by God himself.”

    When the Apostle Paul addressed the learned philosophers at the Areopagus, he said this…

    So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said: “Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription: ‘To the unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man,nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us. Acts 17:22-27 ESV

    Only God can truly fill that void in our lives. Everything else will fail.

    Praise God for the wonderful way in which we are made, and that He calls us to Him.

    Hallelu Yah (Praise God)

    Be blessed, 

    Kevin

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