Sermons Christ Community Church: Daytona Beach, FL

One of the most ancient traditions of Christian faith was to see the Lord's Prayer as a summary of the Christian life and as an important means of teaching Christian spirituality to new converts and believers. This is the prayer Jesus gave us to teach us how to pray. A prayer that not only teaches us how to pray, but also teaches the essentials of spiritual life.

In this third message on Psalm 95, God speaks to his people and warns them about hardening their hearts. This Psalm teaches us that rest is the test of worship.

To worship the God of the Bible is to worship pure goodness, greatness, beauty, justice, wisdom and perfect love. In that sense God is absolutely worthy of our worship and to worship him is simply to see who he really is, what is at the heart of all of life and reality, to enjoy and celebrate a relationship with God and respond in a way that is healthy and life-giving for us.

The word "worship" comes from an old English word meaning "worthship". True worship is to see what God is worth and to give him what he is worth; to see and take to heart his worth in such a way that your whole person is engaged in a response.

"In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength." It's a beautiful, poetic scripture, but maybe that's the problem. We see it as beautiful and poetic and that may cause us to not see it as what it is. It sounds good, but does the truth of this verse really work in the real struggles of life?

We are born into this world in the middle of a very important story. But unless we understand the story, we have no idea what's happening or why any of it really matters. One of the claims of the Christian faith is that it tells us the story that makes sense of life. It tells us how it all began, what's gone wrong, and how it can be made right.

We have a propensity to believe myths, or half-truths. Usually those half-truths have to do with us being in charge instead of God being in charge, and us being the center instead of God being the center.

There is deep comfort that comes through faith in Christ but it comes at a high cost because there is also opposition and sometimes hatred. You follow Christ not just for comfort but out of conviction. And if you follow him you will need the courage of your convictions because you will face conflict and hostility.

One of the ancient and earliest Christians writers, Tertullian, wrote that in his age the non-believing world looked at the Christians and saw something absolutely unique. What was it? Tertullian wrote:

"It is our care for the helpless, our practice of loving kindness, that brands us in the eyes of many of our opponents. 'Look!' they say. 'How they love one another!'"

We have to understand that God's love and our obedience to together. God's love inspires and empowers our obedience, and our obedience is the only adequate response to God's love.