Last Night's Service

Yesterday was a travel day as I made my way home from the revival meeting in Rockville, MD. I give God praise for His presence that was very evident in each of the services; God is truly revealing His Love and Grace if only we will take the time to identify His ministering presence. We must be willing to lay aside our agendas and we must be willing to lay aside our plans for the services and just allow God to have His way in our midst. I know that might sound simple or you may think that I am downplaying the importance of preparation. No, I truly believe in preparation and I am believe in being organized but I am truly afraid that we may have made our "church" services more about our wants being met than we have entering into the presence of God. Many of the worship songs that we offer to God speaks about His presence but many times we are more interested in displaying our talents and abilities than we are the presence of God. This attitude and practice will lead to religious routines that merely take our time and never touch our hearts. We must stop offering ourselves as the answer for the needs of mankind and remind people that Christ is the answer for all that they are facing. Last night I was privileged to serve as the Minister for the service in Radcliff, KY at New River Ministries. The service opened in the "normal" way with a time of greeting, prayer and a time of singing to the Lord. But something began to happen as we moved through the first two stages of the service and began to truly focus on the true purpose of the gathering of the people. We must recapture the true purpose of the gathering of the people of God. We come together to declare the name of Jesus and offer our heartfelt adoration and praise to the King. As we began to receive His presence and declare His presence the atmosphere of the service began to change. We lost the focus on us and began to shift the focus on Christ. Many of us have been in those types of services in which we forget about ourselves and our needs and we truly focus on loving God and allowing Him to love us. The presence of the Lord moved in the service and His ministering presence was released in our lives. The next time you enter a worship service I challenge you to forget about yourself and focus on the greatness of our God. I truly believe that the atmosphere of that service will change when we "turn our eyes toward Jesus". As A.W. Tozer wrote, "Let us turn the gaze of our soul" toward Jesus and watch Him release His presence in our midst.