Experiencing God through Worship

An Army corps should be a place where people encounter a relevant, personal and dynamic God. It is not all about religion but relationship

Laurence Singlehurst, author of Future Church, Loving the Lost says, “The underlying thrust of everything we do should be people meeting with Jesus and being changed by him. We want every church member to be regularly encountering the presence of the living Christ, whether through scripture, being prayer for, seeing God through other members of the church or experiencing him personally.”
It is tragic when the trappings are there, there is a lot of activity and churchy language is used but the people don’t actually connect with the real God.
The letter to the Hebrews reveals a people who had been trying to connect with the living God in a satisfactory way. The ways they used were not intrinsically wrong but they were inadequate. The letter explains how since Jesus came there is a better way. Through his sacrifice on the cross a way has been opened for all who believe on him to enter into the very presence of God and meet with him without having to rely on a complicated ritualistic system, which didn’t work properly anyway. The people to whom this letter was sent knew all of this but were being pressured to reject the new way and settle for back to the old religion instead of embracing God’s amazing promise. 
Hebrews 8:10 “I will put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts I will be their God and they will be my people. No longer will a man teach his neighbour or a man his brother, saying, “Know the Lord because they will all know me form the least of them to the greatest. For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”

Internal power
“I will put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts”
The Jews had been given the law and they recognised that it was good. The Ten Commandments summarise the law and in them we see what our attitudes and actions should be towards God and to our fellow human beings. Love God, value life, respect other people, recognise you are part of a community so don’t live selfishly are all sentiments contained in these ten laws. The laws are good and a person who did these things we would say was a good person. We also sense that fulfilling the law will please God.
But human beings struggle with this. They see the standard but fail to meet it. And it becomes a terrific burden to them and a source of huge guilt.
The solution that people tend to come up with is to put a huge emphasis on doing. They say, “Do as much good as you can and eventually if you keep on doing good; you will become good. They say, tell the truth and keep on telling the truth and you will become honest. They say, think good thoughts, keep on thinking good thoughts and you will become pure in mind. They say, go out and help people and you will learn to love them. Then you will be good and then you will please God.
What we end up with is a person who often outwardly does the right thing but inwardly desires to do something else. That person ends up with inner conflicts that often result in a moral explosion.
But God says he will put his law in our minds and write it on our hearts.
Jesus tells us that we can’t really do any good unless we first become good.
Matthew 12:33-35 “How can you being evil speak good things? An evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil things. A good man out of the good treasure of the heart brings forth good things.”
An attempt at becoming good by doing good things is like taking a bag of apples and tying them onto a telephone post thereby expecting the telephone post to become an apple tree! The tree must be an apple tree then it will produce fruit after its kind.
What God is saying he will do is change us on the inside so that doing the right thing will be the natural outcome not something we force ourselves to do.
2 Corinthians 5:17 “If any man be in Christ he is a new creature old things are passed away behold all things become new.”
If your religion has not transformed you it is not worth very much.
At times the Christian church has lost sight of this. Instead of emphasising what we can obtain through Christ we have urged people to attain a standard of behaviour. Instead of asking people to accept a gift through us we have only accepted them when they have fitted into our way of doing things. We have said try when the Bible has said trust.

Intimate Relationship
“I will be their God and they will be my people”
The promise of God is intimate relationship. The promise of relationship with the Father comes through Jesus. Jesus said, “He who has seen me has seen the Father.”
Religion places emphasis on principles and creed the gospel emphasizes a person. When Jesus was asked what was the most important commandment he spoke in terms of relationships “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your mind and all your soul and your neighbour as yourself. A religion that forgets relationship is best forgotten.

Individual Access
 “No longer will a man teach his neighbour or a man his brother saying, “Know the Lord” because they will all know me from the least to the greatest.”
What God promises is that knowledge of him will not be confined to a privileged few but too all. You need to remember that in the Jewish religion only the High Priest could enter the holy of holies where God was said to dwell. And he could only enter after fulfilling the strictest of regulations and he could only go in once a year. But with Jesus as our high priest we can all go in whoever we are. We have his invitation.
There is no second class with Jesus. There is a leadership role for some but this is not about prestige or acceptability to God. It is a distinction of function not of importance or access to God. God does not listen any more readily to the prayers of the General than he does to the little lass in the primary.
But we must also issue a warning here. If this better way means that everyone can have access to God through Christ, it means that no one can rely on someone else to sort out their relationship to God for them. With Christ there is no such thing as second hand religion. You cannot rely on the fact of birth or association for it to work for you. No one but you can make the decisions that need to be made about committing your life to Christ. As much as we desire our loved ones to come to Christ we cannot make the decision on their behalf
Whilst we would want no-one to feel threatened or pressurized churches can become so desperate to make people feel comfortable that they begin to feel embarrassed about the passion they have for their God. We are so frightened of our enthusiasm and our own confidence putting people off that seekers after God can be left wondering if we our faith means that much to us after all.

Incredible answer to man’s deepest need
 “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”
Man’s deepest need is to be forgiven by God.
The need for forgiveness is not just of isolated wrongs that we have committed but the meaning of the word in the Bible has often got the meaning of “Crookedness or twisted nature. We need God’s forgiveness to straighten us out to unravel the tangle we have to ourselves into by our attempts to play God. We’ve all sinned. We’ve sinned through our acts. We sinned through our attitudes, things like anger, lust and envy and pride. But we’ve also sinned through our nature. We aren’t sinners because we sin. We sin because we are sinners. The answer to guilt is not denial or cover up or trying to balance out our bad deeds with good ones. It is forgiveness. And when God forgives he will not bring it up against us anymore.
If we are to be essentially Christian then we are going to have to talk about the “S” word. Sin is mankind’s biggest problem. This is not to make people feel bad but because God promises that he can deal with it effectively. How we can call ourselves Christian if we avoid dealing with this issue? Yet the temptation is to do so because it is not fashionable to do so.
The Church can become the place we go to find release from tension and frustration or adversely a place to get a spiritual high. It can be a place where we make social contact, meet people of like mind and get to know the neighbours. Churches can be places to act on our social conscience. It can be a place where our minds are intellectually challenged as the Bible is studied with depth and the scholarship of great theologians is grappled with. It can give us a sense of place, as maybe we follow on from the tradition of our loved ones who have gone before us.
None of those things are wrong. In fact many of them are very important but they are not what Church is about if whilst we engage in them we seek to avoid dealing with the issue about which Jesus died.

In the end it is not an anaesthetic or a teapot or political banner or a family photo album that is at the heart of Christianity but a cross.

And if we forget that we can call ourselves whatever else we like but we cannot call ourselves Christian.

God bless

Carol