Through this season, I wanted you to have a deeper biblical foundation of what worship is because our God cares how He is worshiped and He also cares about what we worship. But besides all the passages that we talked about, I also wanted you to see how this biblical foundation affects your personal and also corporate worship. 

So, today instead of summarizing this season, I wanted to bring a special treat for you. Today we have the pleasure to have Dr. Joseph Crider with us and we will share some final thoughts on Defining Christian Worship. 

Next season we will be talking about the Visible Church and how technology is affecting how people think about their involvement in their churches. So stay tuned either through our social media or our website www.livingonthealtar.com

At the end of each episode we have talked about how the different aspects of Christian worship like the Trinity, the revelation-response pattern, or the ongoing aspect, impact our personal worship, but also our corporate worship... and especially in the last 3 episodes we have had a heavy emphasis on our personal worship because we talked about attitude, actions, transformation, sacrifice and obedience. I think it is very easy for us to see how those aspects of worship affect our personal worship because they directly involve us…our hearts and our minds. But sometimes, we are not aware that the corporate aspect of worship is as important as our personal worship.

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Discussion Questions:

If you want to access the sources behind these episodes you can visit livingonthealtar.com and go to our Heart Meets Mind page.

The first time the word worship (shachah) is used in the Scripture is in Genesis 22, and its context is a sacrifice. The Lord had asked Abraham to sacrifice his promised son as a burnt offering, and Abraham decided to obey.

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Discussion Questions: 

If you want to access the sources behind these episodes you can visit livingonthealtar.com and go to our Heart Meets Mind page.

Throughout the episodes we have highlighted some passages of Scripture where the issue at hand is worship…the people in those passages either are worshiping God or worshiping idols and God repeatedly warns his people to not worship other gods and teaches them how they should worship Him. Even the first two commandments emphasize God’s calling to worship only Him.

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The psalmist says in Psalm 84:2 “My soul longs, yes, faints for the courts of the Lord; my heart and flesh sing for joy to the living God.” Not only worship comes naturally to human beings, but also worshiping God is where they find their fullness and destiny. The Lord has created us with an innate longing to worship. In the book Unceasing Worship, Harold Best says, “we are…unceasing worshipers and will remain so forever, for eternity is an infinite extrapolation of one of two conditions: a surrender to the sinfulness of sin unto infinite loss or the commitment of personal righteousness unto infinite gain.” The term “unceasing worshipers” means that worship is not something that can be neglected or stopped. Human beings cannot cease to worship, but they can change their object of worship.

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Discussion Questions: 

If you want to access the sources behind these episodes you can visit livingonthealtar.com and go to our Heart Meets Mind page.

rinity means that God is three in One. Throughout Scripture we have evidence of the oneness of God as well as the three persons of the Trinity and their different Roles. The Baptist Faith and Message 2000 explains it this way “The Eternal triune God reveals himself to us as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, with distinct personal attributes, but without division of nature, essence or being.” This is one of the hardest concepts for us to understand. There are systematic books and other resources available that help us understand a little bit more but it is still a mystery that one day when we meet the Lord we will be able to attain it in its fullness.

But for now, we know that God presents himself in three persons. Each of them have different roles but all of them share the same essence, meaning the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit are God. So when it comes to worship, each of the persons of the Trinity has a specific role that without it, we are not able to worship.

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Discussion questions: 

You can also find these questions in the description below! We will be sharing recaps of the episode and these questions through our social media platforms and email! So if you haven’t, you can check our website livingonthealtar.com and subscribe. You will also find our social media handle there.

If you want to access the sources behind these episodes you can visit livingonthealtar.com and go to our Heart Meets Mind page.

One of the elements of this definition of Christian worship is response… meaning, Christians do not initiate worship, but they respond to an invitation from God. In John 4:23, Jesus teaches that the Father is the one seeking worshipers. Jesus says to the woman at the well “Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.”– the Father is the one inviting them to worship the one true living God, and this invitation is done through God’s self-revelation to His people. Throughout Scripture, we learn that the Lord has revealed himself to his people through creation, divine speech, appearances, Scripture, the person of Jesus Christ, and his Holy Spirit.[i] and today, the Triune God reveals his character, his plan of salvation, and his transformational teachings through Scripture. It is through the Word of God that he invites his people to behold his majesty and to worship him in truth. Allen Ross says in Recalling the Hope of Glory , “the greater our appreciation and apprehension of the majestic God who we say we worship, the greater will be our reverence, adoration, and service.”[ii] When God reveals himself, his redeemed people respond with their affections and actions to who God is and what he has done.

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Discussion Questions:

You can also find these questions in the description below! We will also be sharing recaps of the episode and these questions through our social media platforms and email! So if you haven’t, you can check our website livingonthealtar.com and subscribe. You will also find our social media handle there.

If you want to access the sources behind these episodes you can visit livingonthealtar.com and go to our Heart Meets Mind page.

As a celebration of the Reformation, we are sharing with you three original songs that are based on Scripture!   Our Father in Heaven, Let Your Will Be Done, and Our Portion Forever. 

 OUR FATHER IN HEAVEN   by Lina Cole - in collaboration with Cesia Orozco Arr. Matthew Cole  

LET YOUR WILL BE DONE by Lina Cole  Arr. Matthew Cole  

OUR PORTION FOREVER by Lina Cole  Arr. Matthew Cole  Rcopyright www.livingonthealtar.com