13 days ago

23_04_20 -Ep.309 - Run With Horses Podcast - It’s all about Jesus

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Last week we talked about how Jesus is our focus. As a disciple, you become like the one you follow and we follow Jesus. Today we consider how we worship Jesus as we follow Him.

Welcome to Run With Horses! My name is Norman and my goal is to help you thrive as a follower of Jesus. The spiritual life is both incredibly simple and potentially the most difficult part of your life. God invites you to live intentionally and on His mission. It’s very cool that we can do that together!

We are working on what it might look like to live out my working definition of church by going through the definition a word at a time. Today we turn to worship.

MY WORKING DEFINITION OF CHURCH
A CHURCH is a group of followers of Jesus who worship Him in spirit and truth, humbly offering their lives as living sacrifices, together living out the mission of Jesus as His witnesses to the world, by sharing the gospel and making disciples through teaching obedience to His commands as they edify and equip others to join them on His mission.

Worship – Merriam-Webster
1: to honor or show reverence for as a divine being or supernatural power
2: to regard with great or extravagant respect, honor, or devotion

****https://wheatmyermusic.com/on-christian-worship-old-testament-vocabulary/
The two most common Old Testament Hebrew words commonly translated as “worship” are shachah and abad. Vine’s Expository Dictionary defines shachah as meaning “to worship, prostrate oneself, bow down.” It occurs more than 170 times in the OT and is the principle Hebrew word translated into English as “worship.”
To bow is to express complete surrender to the mercy of the second person to be used as they willed.

Vine’s defines abad as meaning “to serve, cultivate, enslave, work.” It is very common throughout the OT (nearly 300 instances) but is only occasionally translated as “worship” (about 15 times). Rather, its most frequent English translation is “to serve” where it refers to all manner of ordinary labor.

To conclude, when we read the word “worship” in the Old Testament we should always see within it the essence of bowing, an aroma of surrender and service, of saying, “here I am, use me as you will.” To borrow a line from Issac Watts, when the Old Testament says worship, it is saying, “Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.”
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shachah
Gen 18:2 -

Gen 22:5 -
abad
Gen 2:15 -

Deut. 10:12-13 -

Key Points from OT worship – It involves HUMILITY and SERVICE.

NT worship

John 4: 19-24 - 1

1 Peter 1:4-5 -

Romans 12: 1-2 -
12:1 - latreia: service, sacred service - Usage: service rendered to God, perhaps simply: worship

Hebrews 13: 15-16 -

Let’s go back to our definition of the church for a minute.

Last week I said that We follow Jesus, because He is God and Savior and because He is doing something. Jesus offers us a part in His mission as His witnesses. There is no greater work we can give our lives to. We follow Jesus because outside of Him our lives have no purpose. Once you truly understand who Jesus is and what He offers you, there is no choice to be made.

We follow Jesus because of Who He IS and what He is doing. And that is also the reason we worship Him. He IS God.

What is your response to Jesus? Will you follow when the journey gets hard?
Making intentional, serious efforts to obey the commands of Jesus will result in your spiritual growth and the building up of the church. Intentional obedience to the commands of Jesus will connect you directly to Jesus and His mission. More importantly intentional obedience to the commands of Jesus, trying to do what HE said, is at the heart of our worship.
It takes HUMILITY to follow someone else. When we serve Him we proclaim Him as Lord of our lives and glorify Him in the worship of our actions.
It doesn’t matter how much you know about Jesus if you aren’t practically engaged in following Jesus.

The question we all answer every day is how do WE live this HERE, NOW. The answer says a lot about our view of God and His place in our lives.

A life that is focused on Intentional, Relational Disciple Making that is Centered on Jesus is a life of worship. And what a journey He takes us on when we follow Him!

Thanks for joining me again today! Stop and say a prayer for your church family today! I’d love to hear from you, write me at norman@runwithhorses.net or leave a comment on the Run With Horses Podcast facebook page. Take time today to pause and thank God for His work in your life and keep running.

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