The following is a column written by Tullian Tchividjian, the new pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Tullian is the grandson of Billy and Ruth Graham. This column was published at www.christianpost.com.

Our Worship Is To Be God-Centered

In the opening verses of Isaiah 6, what the prophet encounters first in the house of God is the glory of God: “I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple” (v.1). It doesn’t first say he encountered well-dressed people or hot coffee or influential power brokers or a booming sound system or a great organ. What he caught sight of first was God’s glory.

There’s a growing trend in some churches to offer door prizes to any returning visitor. One church visited recently by a friend of mine promised him a ten-dollar Starbucks gift card if he came back the following week.

Isaiah shows us the door prize that awaited him when he walked into the house of God-the uncomfortable, wrecking presence of God’s glory: “Woe is me!” (v.5).

In the Bible, the glory of God refers to God’s “heaviness,” his powerful presence. It’s God’s prevailing excellence on display. The glory of God is the “augustness” of God-an old term conveying his awe-inspiring majesty. In fact, one reason why Christians in the Roman Empire were persecuted is that they refused to use the word august for the emperor-such a description belonged to God alone, they said. They understood that there is a transcendent majesty unique to God. This high and lifted up greatness of God is what Isaiah encountered-a God who is majestically and brilliantly in command.

All this means we ought to come to worship expecting first and foremost to see God. We come to encounter his glory, to be awe struck by his majesty. A worship service isn’t the place to showcase human talent but the place for God to showcase his divine treasure. We gather not to be impressed by one another-how we sound, what we wear, who we are-but to be impressed by God and his mighty acts of salvation. We come to sing of who he is and what he’s done. We come to hear his voice resounding in and through his Word. We come to feel the grief of our sin so that we can taste the glory of his salvation. We gather to be magnificently defeated, flattened, and shrunk by the power and might of the living God.

This is in stark contrast to the world’s insistence that the bigger we get and the better we feel about ourselves, the freer we become. That’s why many worship services have been reduced to little more than motivational, self-help seminars filled with “you can do it” songs and sermons. But what we find in the gospel is just the opposite. The gospel is good news for losers, not winners. It’s for those who long to be freed from the slavery of believing that all of their significance, meaning, purpose, and security depend on their ability to “become a better you.” The gospel tells us that weakness precedes usefulness-that, in fact, the smaller you get, the freer you will be. As G.K. Chesterton wrote, “How much larger your life would be if your self could become smaller in it.” Nothing makes you more aware of your smallness and life’s potential bigness than encountering the glory of God in worship. Corporate worship services in the church today desperately need to recover a sense of God’s size!

Not long ago I was in desperate need for God to liberate me from the slavish pressure to perform by reminding me of my smallness and his bigness. And since God has used the preaching of the late Dr. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones throughout my Christian life to bring great perspective and reorientation to my troubled soul, I went back to one of his 1959 sermons on revival. With great unction, Lloyd-Jones delivered the reminder I craved:

"Our supreme need, our only need, is to know God, the living God, and the power of his might. We need nothing else. It is just that, the power of the living God, to know that the living God is among us and that nothing else matters…I say, forget everything else. Forget everything else. We need to realize the presence of the living God amongst us. Let everything else be silent. This is no time for minor differences. We all need to know the touch of the power of the living God."

“The touch of the power of the living God”-that’s what Isaiah experienced. He was freed by realizing that God is big and he was small-that God was God and he was not. And this is what God intends for us to experience when he gathers us in worship. Isaiah didn’t leave the temple thinking, “What a great angelic choir” or “What a great temple.” He left thinking, “What a great God.”

As pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, I’ll be the first to admit that we are blessed with great music and a world-class facility. But, as I often remind our church, if people don’t leave our church thinking first, “What a great God” than our music and facilities mean nothing. Whatever else we may see in worship, we must see God first and best.

Do you ever wonder if anyone is listening?

I know it's been some time since my last post. Hopefully this will mark the beginning of more frequent posts on the blog - but only time will tell. There are times when I think about taking the blog down, especially since the church now has its own website. At other times I think about taking the blog down because I often don't think I have much to say that anyone would want to read.

One of the odd things about the world of blogs is that much is written, often without any response. I don't read as many blogs as I once did, but it was very rare for me to respond. This was true whether I agreed, disagreed, or was indifferent to what I read. Because of that, I'm sure that most of my visits to the blogs were completely unknown. The person never heard from me and had no way of knowing that I had even read the words he had written.

When I write thoughts on this blog, I often wonder whether or not anyone reads them. This is not a plea for your response to this, even though that would be encouraging. I say this because this might sometimes be our posture in prayer. We may pour out our hearts to God in some time of deep need or in our normal prayer time. When the answers are not quickly forthcoming we may wonder if God is listening at all. Sometimes we may sincerely and fervently ask for something - for months or even years - without an obvious answer to those prayers.

But apparent silence should not be equated with neglect on God's part. He most often works on a timetable very different from our own. I was reminded of this over the past weekend. There was a man for whom prayers had been offered for years. I had known him for about nine years and had prayed for his salvation through those years, as had my wife and many others. His wife and family had prayed for his salvation for many years longer than that. This past weekend, in the midst of an illness which took his life early this morning, the Lord saw fit to answer those prayers. His wife was the human instrument through whom the Gospel was once again presented to him. This time, the Lord granted him repentance and faith unto salvation. He is now among those who soul has been made perfectly holy as he has passed into glory.

Do you ever wonder if anyone is listening when you pray? Rest assured that He does.

Another Jacksonville News Article on Hope Community Church

The Jacksonville News ran an article this week featuring three Jacksonville churches. Hope Community Church was one of the three churches. If you would like to read this article, please follow this link:

Repairs and renovations being made at local churches

Hearing God's Voice

A couple of years ago I was taken back a bit by the words of John Piper in one of his "Taste and See" articles. The article was entitled "The Morning I Heard the Voice of God." Those were words that I would have never expected to hear from a pastor like John Piper. He explains what just what he meant by the provocative title through the course of the article. It is a tremendous article and I want to recommend it to you for reading. You can check it out by the link here.

Who Builds the Church? - Life Action Revival Ministries

Who Builds the Church? - Life Action Revival Ministries

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New Website Is Now Operational

Our new website is up and going. I am sure that we will make some changes to it in the future. You can visit it by clicking on the link below:

www.hopecommunitypca.com

Column on Baptism by R.C. Sproul

What is the significance of baptism?

Just as an aside, the word significance has as its root the word sign. A sign is something that points to something beyond itself. We all recognize that whatever baptism signifies, Jesus obviously thought it was very important because he gives a command to baptize all nations in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Whatever else it is, baptism is the sign of the new covenant that God makes with his people. We do have the clear mandate in the New Testament that Christians are to be baptized.

I personally do not believe that baptism is essential for salvation. If I believed that, I would think that the thief on the cross who was promised paradise with Jesus would have been disqualified because he obviously didn’t have an opportunity to get baptized. But I do believe that baptism is essential for obedience because Christ commands it. It’s just the same thing as when people say, “Do you have to go to church to go to heaven?” I would say, “Obviously not.” But do you have to go to church to obey Christ? Yes, you do. And if you are not inclined to obey Christ and have no inclination to follow his mandates, that may be a sign that you are not headed for heaven. So church involvement becomes a very serious matter of obedience.

I would say the same about the sacrament of baptism. It’s a sign of the new covenant. It’s a sign of our participation in Jesus, of being partakers in his death and resurrection, which are at the heart of the gospel. It’s also a sign of our cleansing from sin and guilt by the work of Jesus and the washing of regeneration. What we do outwardly with water, the Spirit does inwardly with his grace. So it’s a sign of our cleansing. It’s also a sign of our sanctification. It’s a sign of our baptism of the Holy Spirit. It’s a sign of our being set apart from the world and given the holy task to fulfill the commission that Christ gives to his church.

So there are several things that baptism signifies. I think one of our tendencies is to reduce those to one—making it merely a cleansing rite or merely a sign of empowering by the Holy Spirit—when in fact it is a sacrament that is rich and complex with meaning and significance.

©1996 by R.C. Sproul. Used by permission of Tyndale.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. ©1982 by Thomas Nelson.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.