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Some Ways to Enjoy the Lord’s Day More Fully (4): Prepare before You Arrive

July 31st, 2010
by timshorey

As this Lord’s Day is near let me pick up our theme and encourage you on toward a better and more delightful use of this coming Sunday. I’d exhort you to prepare your mind, spirit and body before you arrive.

Too often believers arrive on Sundays without any due preparation beforehand. They hope to drop into their Sunday seats and be able to turn on the worship juices at the push of a button. It simply does not work that way. Passages like Psalm 15:1-5 and Psalm 24:3-6 and 1 Corinthians 11:27-32 and Matthew 5:23, 24 indicate that worship must be preceded by heart work, holiness work, and relationship work. Let me “acrosticize” for you today to give you seven preparation steps for Sunday worship:

P-illow work (get good rest the night before). God calls us to love him with all our strength. We can hardly do that in worship–which is very tiring work when done right (you can’t sing loud, listen hard, focus mind, and feel all that you are doing with all your heart in worship without getting tired). If we do not get good rest the night before and are not body refreshed, we simply will not be able to love God with all our strength.
R-estoration (confession and forgiveness cross-work). If we cherish sin in our hearts the Lord will not hear us (Psalm 66:18). Unconfessed and unrepented of sin keeps us from the blessing of God in prayer and worship. Confess your sins to God and plead the merits and work of Christ in your behalf before you arrive on Sundays. If you have known sin in your life that you either haven’t confessed or refuse to confess, then you have no assurance from God that you will be blessed in worship.
E-nlightenment with truth (Bible and book reading, reflection on theology, sermon review/preview). Songs, sermons, and sacraments will be richer and deeper in impact if we have been filling our minds with God and gospel truth all week long. Review last week’s sermon either Saturday PM or Sunday AM early. Preview the message text for the coming Lord’s Day. Read books that fill you with big thoughts about God and humble thoughts about self.
P-rayer (adoration, thanksgiving). Pray for a blessing this Lord’s Day. Pray for revival. Pray for manifestations of the Spirit. Pray that gifts and grace will come that will make us know that God is surely among us in this place. Pray for the preaching of the Word and the conversion of souls! Pray for your shepherds that they will feed and care for the sheep well this day.
A-ttitude (come expectantly, cheerfully, humbly, with a willing and submissive heart). Let’s see the Lord’s Day as being a day on which he does epic things–and expect him to do so. Look for power from on high. Expect the Spirit to fall and fill. In meekness be ready to listen and slow to respond in disagreement or anger (James 1:19-21).
R-econciliation (with others). Do not come to the worship of God or communion meal without having done all in your power to be at peace with all your brothers and sisters in Christ. That is the point of the Matthew and 1 Corinthians texts cited above. If we say we love God (in worship) but do not love our brother, how can the love of God be in us (1 John 4:20)? If you know you have not done all you can do to be at peace and in fully restored brotherly/sisterly love with all in your local church with whom you may have had offence, then you are not prepared to worship and you will not be fully blessed.
E-xultation (use good, rousing music to prepare). It is good to sing and worship privately before you do so publicly and congregationally. Get some good music CDs and use them for Sunday worship preparation. Get CDs that have the songs your church uses a lot and listen to them so much that they are absorbed into your soul! Then when you come on Sundays you will more easily enter fully into the worship. The God-given point of music is to stir spiritual affections and emotions. Light the fire folks! Stir the embers and ignite even before you arrive.

Now may the Lord bless and ignite our souls for this Sunday’s congregational experience in the presence of the holy and happy God; to him be glory now and forevermore. Amen.

Posted in Christian Life, Church, Worship | No Comments »

A 35 Year Love Story

July 30th, 2010
by timshorey

Breaking from my series for the day, I want simply to say thanks to and for my beloved bride. Thiry-five years ago yesterday, I asked her to consider pursuing a relationship with me, and even though we were young (she 17, me 16) and lived far apart (2 1/2 hours) and the odds seemed great (what were the “chances” it’d work out?), she consented. Thanks hon hon for daring to try.

Not being interested in just dating or having a girlfriend, this was for me a momentous day: I had a good idea that I had found my wife. And I had. Indeed, she found me–that is to say: God made her for me, prepared her before she even knew me, brought her to me, gave her to me, and has kept her for me. Other than the gift of God’s Son to be my Savior, the gift of Gayline V. Fuller to be my bride is, of all life’s treasures, the dearest to me.

Recently we visited where we met 35 years ago and I came home with the very bench on which I was sitting when I first spoke with her. Soon it’ll be freshly fixed aand painted and then placed very visibly in my back yard.

You ask “why?” Because any gift as precious as my wife is worth being reminded of and cherished any way possible. Ours is a 35 year love story, and that bench will remind me for the rest of life where it all began.

Please know that all of us are part of a love story. All of us who have faith in Jesus are loved by Jesus: personally, tenderly, affectionately, happily, deeply, sacrificially, with singing joy. He’s our Husband, we’re the Bride. And this love story began, not a mere 35 years ago, but before time. And it will never end. O may we all live in the love of Jesus today.

Posted in Marriage | 7 Comments »

Some Ways to Enjoy the Lord’s Day More Fully (3): Keep it the Lord’s

July 29th, 2010
by timshorey

Among other activities of the Lord’s Day is the opportunity to hear the Word of God preached by shepherds appointed by God to feed and care for the sheep of God. This is part of what makes the Lord’s Day the Lord’s: we come together to hear the Shepherd-Lord speak through his appointed under-shepherds.

Sundays are days in which the ministry of the Word as prepared by pastors (mediated through pastorally prepared song, meditation and sermon) are provided by the Lord for the nourishment of his church. But too often the impact of the ministry of the Lord’s Word is lost (or at least greatly reduced) because people fail to guard the day against intrusions that negate its effects upon their lives.

In Luke 8:13, 14 our Lord identifies thorns which choke out the ministry of the Word of God in our hearts. These are things which cause God’s Word sown through preaching and study to bear no fruit. They are:

the cares of this life
the riches of this life
the pleasures of this life

Of course Jesus is speaking here of lifestyles and life-pursuits which make the Word of God of none effect in human lives. But if it is true that these things choke out the Word in an entire life, it is also true that they may choke it out on any given Sunday. One reason why so many sermons have so little effect on us is because we do not guard our Sundays from the cares, riches and pleasures of this life. We allow for and even plan for the very things that choke God’s Word!

How cluttered are your Sundays? Other than the fact that you go to church in the morning, would people be able to discern that in any other significant way your Lord’s Day is truly the Lord’s? We need to realize that a Sunday cluttered with cares, pleasures and riches (or the things riches can buy) ceases to be the Lord’s and becomes ours. And it will be a Sunday lost. The Word will not bear fruit because weeds have been allowed to choke the life out of it.

Here’s today’s how-to-enjoy-the-Lord’s-day-more-fully tip: Sanctify the Lord’s Day as the Lord’s. Keep your Sundays simple and uncluttered. Do all in your power to plan only events and activities that will allow you to water and nourish the Word sown in the morning. With special urgency, pull the weeds of life’s cares, treasures and pleasures on the Lord’s day, so that your mind/heart may be as undistracted, unhindered, and unencumbered as is possible.

Too much planned for Sundays will result in too little gained on Sundays. Never let your Sundays get so full that when you get to the end of them, you’ve forgotten they were Sundays. And make sure that you plan and pursue time alone and with your family and/or Christian friends in which you can review and figure out (with prayer) how you’re going to apply the Word provided by the Lord through his servants that day.

Check out your calendar. Guard your Sundays. Function with the K.I.S.S. principle (keep it simple saints) in mind. Do all you can to move the extra and the unnecessary off the Sunday calendar, and move in the quiet , the reflective, the intentionally spiritually focused. I’m guessing your soul will be happy you did.

Posted in Christian Life, Church, Spiritual disciplines, Worship | No Comments »

Some Ways to Enjoy the Lord’s Day More Fully (2): Start on Monday and Reduce the Mind-Numbing

July 28th, 2010
by timshorey

It may surprise you to hear that Sunday worship is really a matter of what one does six days a week as much as it is a question of what one chooses to do one day a week. Meaningful Sunday observance begins on Monday.

There are many lifestyle habits that have to be in place throughout the week in order to make the Lord’s Day more fully enjoyed. Here are a few of them:

Cherish daily devotional time with God
Pay attention (with active gratitude) to the everyday graces and kindnesses of God in your life
Live a cross-centered life
Be in fellowship with other believers at some level essentially every day
Practice the presence of God all the time

In addition to these I would add this: Reduce (dramatically) the entertainment and amusement involvements of your life. Since these dull the mind and deaden the affections, they reduce our capacity to think deep thoughts and to feel great passions in worship.

One reason people have a hard time giving themselves to the rigors of Sunday worship (and believe me, biblical worship filled with biblical content about God and the gospel and life is rigorous) is because our minds have been too much softened by the glitz, shine, and mind-numbing fare of our entertainment culture.

Less television, Facebook, movie watching, Internet surfing, and music listening would produce more Bible and theology reading, more real praying, more deep thinking, more sermon reviewing and applying, more true feeling, more mind-expansion, and more heart worship.

Satan’s no fool. He knows that if he can fill our days with perpetual noise and mindless entertainment he can empty our minds of content, and our hearts of praise. If you find it hard to concentrate in public worship it may well be because you’ve sacrificed your powers of thinking and your capacity for the profound in the mindless cultic ritual of Monday through Saturday worship at the altar called Hollywood.

I leave you with these words:

“If you don’t feel strong desires for the manifestation of the glory of God [in private or public worship], it is not because you have drunk deeply and are satisfied. It is because you have nibbled so long at the table of the world. Your soul is stuffed with small things, and there is no room for the great. God did not create you for this. There is an appetite for God” (John Piper).

Stop nibbling so you can start feasting.

Posted in Church, Worship | 3 Comments »

Some Ways to Enjoy the Lord’s Day More Fully (1)

July 27th, 2010
by timshorey

Having just completed a two-part message on our need to be Redeeming Our Sundays, my heart–both as a Christian and as a pastor–goes immediately into application mode. The questions that frequently press in on me when I’ve learned something from the Bible are: (1) So what? and (2) Now what?

So what? What difference does it make? In the case of our recent messages, what difference is it going to make in my life that the Bible says that one day in seven belongs both to the Lord for worship (it is after all, the Lord’s Day), and to me for spiritual and physical refreshment (the Sabbath is made after all, for man)?

And now what? What is my next step? What specific application steps for my life am I going to make? I do not want ever to leave what I learn as mere head knowledge–so what is at least one specific step I can take to make this truth become life to me?

It is with the so what and now what in mind that I offer a few days of application suggestions for how to enjoy the Lord’s Day more fully. I hope they help.

Suggestion One: review carefully and prayerfully the reasons why we should observe Lord’s Day worship and rest. Don’t assume you got all you heard the past two Sundays. Re-listen to the messages and review with prayer the points made (for any reader not a part of Trinity Fellowship Church, you can download these messages here or by subscribing to our podcast).

Here are the reasons we gave for Sunday worship and rest:

1. Sabbath rest and Lord’s Day worship are God’s gifts to us.

2. God does epic things on Sundays.

3. God lives where his people gather.

4. The Spirit falls upon and fills the gathered church.

5. God commands Sabbath rest.

6. The world and the god of this world will squeeze Sundays out of existence if we let them.

7. Our modeling–to our children, to young believers, and to unbelievers–of what matters most is compromised if we do not.

8. Absence from Sunday worship weakens our congregational witness and guest hospitality.

9. We need communion with Christ and with each other around the Lord’s Table.

10. Shepherds and sheep belong to and with each other.

11. Every member of the local body needs every member of the local body.

12. We are at war.

13. Sunday worship and rest remind us of heaven.

Consider deeply these truths with prayer. Very deeply. Doing so will deepen you and will affect your attitudes toward Sabbath rest and Sunday worship in your local church. You and your Sunday experience will–just by this exercise alone–be changed. We become what we behold and think about. So think on these things.

Suggestion Two tomorrow, Lord willing.

Posted in Christian Life, Church, Spiritual disciplines, Worship | 1 Comment »

No Place to Lay the Head

July 22nd, 2010
by timshorey

Jesus’ well known words in Matthew 8:20 reveal a huge spiritual principle for life: if you follow Christ you will never be able to settle down or settle in. Foxes find a hole and climb in; birds build a nest and move in; Christians find a Master and keep following.

Jesus is not forbidding home-buying here; he’s forbidding comfortability and complacency. He’s forbidding anything like an attitude that makes this world our home, and this present situation (whatever it is and however good it may be in life or home or ministry) where we settle.

The longer I live the more I dread one great evil: complacency. I live with a personal and pastoral fear of a Christian nesting instinct. I consider anything like a “this is good enough, let’s be content to settle where we are at” mindset to be the first sign of impending death.

Have you served Christ? Then serve him more.

Have you grown in holiness? The press further up and further in.

Have you sought and found sinners? The keep seeking and finding.

Have you served your church? Then serve her even more and better.

Have you read the Bible? Then read it again…and again.

Have you killed certain sins? Then root out and kill some more.

Have you had ambition for God? Then feed it and fuel it and live it even more.

Have you lived long enough to retire? Then get ready to run the home stretch with grace and strength.

Have you helped your church grow and bear fruit? The labor all the harder that her growth and fruit may abound.

Whatever you do, don’t settle, don’t nest, don’t stop. Keep following on behind the Master!

And oh, by the way, Jesus is preparing a place for you to settle down. It will be worth it all, believe me. Until then let’s keep moving.

Posted in Christian Life, Mission, Servanthood | 1 Comment »

Heroic Simple Childlike Obedience

July 21st, 2010
by timshorey

I gave my son a copy of Elisabeth Elliot’s Through Gates of Splendor this morning. It’s the story of Jim Elliot’s martyrdom in South America–he who said: “He is no fool to give what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”

Thirty years ago when I first read this book, I was impacted by one simple point, and it has stuck to me like glue ever since. It was said of this heroic man that he functioned with a childlike kind of obedience. Having resolved the basic question regarding the divine authorship of the Bible, life became pretty simple for him: find out what it says and then do it. Don’t question, fight, quarrel with, or resist what the Bible says. Simply obey.

Since what the Bible says God says, it only follows that what God says in the Bible, I must do. I hope my son gets that concept early. It’ll spare him much sorrow, many sins, and great loss. Not that he, or I will ever get it all right, but we can be spared all kinds of angst and anguish if we simply approach the Bible every day with a simple prayer, followed by a resolve.

The prayer? ”Sovereign Father, show me your will from your Word today and give me grace to do it.”

The resolve? In the words of one old saint: “To be as holy today (i.e. joyfully and lovingly obedient to the Father) as a redeemed sinner can possibly be.”

That about covers it.

For my part, true heroism is not measured so much by a willingness to die for Christ as by a willingness to live for him. In other words, what made Jim Elliot a hero is not that he died on some jungle shore, but that he obeyed like a child.

Posted in Authority of the Bible, Christian Life, Obedience | 4 Comments »

Kind Words and Carrying Strength

July 20th, 2010
by timshorey

I’m back!

First let me thank those who replied to my earlier query regarding the blog and included some very kind words in the process. It was much appreciated and encouraging. Such kind words are strength to the often uncertain and sometimes weary!

Speaking of strength to the weary, I am amazed, as I shared Sunday in the dearest place on earth, how God carried Gayline and me through the past couple of weeks. In a 10-11 day stretch we logged:

1, 000+ miles of driving
15 speaking times for me; 3 for Gayline
20+ hours preparing talks
10+ hours counseling/encouraging 4 pastors and their wives
dozens of additional hours in conversation/counseling/interacting with various folks

And here we are: safe, sound, and still strong by grace! We felt quite literally carried by grace. And you all helped us by your prayers (2 Corinthians 1:11).

I was thinking this morning of the sustaining grace of God. I drove to my office realizing that I was anxious to get there! God has called me to serve as a pastor–thus far for 28+ years–and I still love it, look forward to it, enjoy it, and feel strong in it. Is that grace or what?!

This is Isaiah 40:28-31 proven. He gives strength to the weary so that they are able to run and not be weary, to walk and not faint. As I preached recently: God gives strength to the trusting weary in His time, through Christ, according to their need, to do the remarkable.

And everyone who has been a Christian for longer than three minutes is proof of it!

Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments »

Thanks–and a Few Words before I Head Out of Town

June 29th, 2010
by timshorey

Thanks to those who responded to my last post–giving me just enough encouragement to continue this blogging work into the future. I’ve always believed there to be value in this; I’ve just not always been sure others felt the same. Your words have encouraged me to keep going.

I am about to head out of town for about 8 days of rather intense ministry opportunity. Ten messages in three New England locations in eight days, with counseling and care for dozens of teens and a couple of pastors added in throughout.

Studies have shown that New England is now the most secular part of our country. It is the least churched region in America today.

But God is at work. In North Attleboro, Mass. and just north, are two good, growing churches where Christ is loved, the gospel is preached, and rich and sound doctrine is procaimed by pastors who love and live the truth with passion. Just north of Boston is another.

In Greene, Maine, there is a fine little church pastored by a young man with a passion for Christ and the gospel, who has a desire to become a part of something bigger than his little work: he wants to get into our family of churches, Sovereign Grace Ministries.

At the recent Together for the Gospel conference I met dozens of men who were leading churches throughout New England, taking them further up and further into the riches of grace.

So my labors over this next couple of weeks are but tiny drops in a bucket of heroic labors going on in a dry and barren region. God is at work through good and godly folks who are not counting their lives dear to themselves that they might run the race and finish the course laid out for them.

Pray for New England. Pray for America. Pray for revival–a true, deep, and profound work of the Spirit that will lead to the conversion of millions and the transformation of countless lives. It’s happened before; it can happen again.

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

Where Have I Been–or Have You Even Noticed I’ve Been Away?

June 24th, 2010
by timshorey

Hello all. Sorry for my recent absence but life has been full and I’ve just not been able to get to this. As it is, with summer ministry events coming up, it’ll be a good two weeks before I can even think about returning to my blogging ways.

Here’s a question for you: since we have no real accurate way of tracking who or how many are reading FreeTruth, would you do me a favor? Would you please simply click on “Comments” and type “I do” to indicate whether you read the blog and would like it to continue. There have been so few responses of late that I need to guage the readership to discern the value of continuing…

Let me know friends!

Thanks.

Posted in Uncategorized | 14 Comments »