Heart of Worship

Worship. Does that word give you a warm uplifting feeling or a feeling of dread? Worship is supposed to be a heartfelt connection with our object of worship (God) but too often we only think about the music during our Sunday morning church service and whether or not we like that particular kind of music. But it's so much more than just Sunday morning music.

According to Dictionary.com worship is:

• Noun
1. reverent honor and homage paid to god or a sacred personage, or to any object regarded as sacred.
2. formal or ceremonious rendering of such honor and homage
3. adoring reverence or regard
• Verb
1. to render religious reverence and homage to
2. to feel an adoring reverence or regard for (any person or thing)
3. to feel an adoring reverence or regard

As people, we are easily distracted and too often our worship (honor, homage, regard, reverence, etc.) is paid to something or someone other than our Lord and Savior--Jesus. But that's not really what I want to dwell on today. I want to talk about having a heart of worship.

If you have a heart of worship you can worship no matter where you are or what kind of music is being played. It shouldn't matter whether there are hymns playing or more current choruses you should be able to worship. Worship is a matter of the heart. It is you coming before God and giving Him your honor and your attention and all you are. Music is secondary. Don't let the secondary distract you and keep you from worshipping God.

So the next time you are tempted to complain that the worship service isn't playing your kind of music check to see if your attention and regard are directed to the right person. If you are focused on God the rest won't matter as much.

Heart of Worship
when the music fades
all is stripped away
and i simply come
longing just to bring
something that's of worth
that will bless your heart

i'll bring you more than a song
for a song in itself
is not what you have required
you search much deeper within
through the way things appear
you're looking into my heart

chorus
I'm coming back to the heart of worship
and it's all about you
It's all about you, Jesus
I'm sorry Lord for the things i've made it
when it's all about you
it's all about you, Jesus

King of endless worth
no one could express
how much you deserve
though i'm weak and poor
all i have is yours
every single breath

Where's the Beef?

This past weekend was DNOW. I don't know if you have ever been apart of a Disciple Now weekend or not but you should try it sometimes. In fact, one of the senior adult women in our church that my wife and I affectionately call Grandma Edna said that she thought we should have an adult DNOW weekend. The thought made me smile, but I wonder if an adult DNOW would go over as well as the one we do for the youth.

I mean there are some key ingredients to a DNOW weekend that I just don't see adults getting into. #1 You go away from home and sleep on the floor of someone else's house (along with 10-20 other people) for a whole weekend. #2 You spend the weekend alternating between crazy fun activities and doing Bible study and worship. #3 You have to get uncomfortable so that God can speak to you.

This year, the whole theme of DNOW was Where's the Beef? It was based on the passage in the book of Hebrews where the writer explains that by now the Hebrew Christians should be digging deep into the meat of the Gospel rather than relying on the feel good, easy to swallow Spiritual milk that they received as baby Christians. When you sit down to a meal of spiritual meat, you have to be willing for God to dig in there and remove your deepest and darkest sins and possibly even change your life.

Teenagers resist this at first because they like having things their own way and they don't want to take a chance that God will ask them to change the way that they live their lives, but eventually most of them will yield to God. They see the potential that God has for their lives. They want His best for Him. They are willing to change. That's where I think most adults fall short. Just like teens we are stuck in our ways. We are comfortable. We don't want God to change us. But what really holds us back is that too often we hold onto our stubbornness and pride and we refuse to yield to God. So we miss out.

Where's the Beef? It's right there in the Word of God waiting for you to dig in and enjoy it. The real question is, can you handle the beef? Can you handle what it takes to get to the beef?

Will you let God change your life?

Hide it in Your Heart from Life as a Minister's Wife

Mission trip is just around the corner. In a few short weeks we will be having the parent/student meeting. We will talk about all the things that we are doing on mission trip. We will talk about where we are staying and how much it will cost. Plus we will be talking about the mission trip requirements.

This is the second year that we have done requirements for mission trip. They aren't meant to be so hard to keep people out. In fact it you are really committed and have a passion for going on mission trip the requirements will be easy. They are mainly based on church attendance. The other componenet is scripture memory. In light of this upcoming scripture memory challenge, I am posting a blog my wife, Christiana, wrote for Life as a Minister's Wife.

I hope you enjoy Hide it in Your Heart.


Recently, it was brought to my attention that there is a difference between memorizing scripture and hiding it in your heart. Yes, the two go hand in hand but the more I thought about it I knew that my friend was right. There is a difference! So that's what I am going to talk about today.

According to dictionary.com, memorize is #1 to commit to memory (I don't particularly care for definitions that use the defined word in them--thanks Dr. Fessler!) and #2 to learn by heart.

How many of us have memorized Bible verses to meet mission trip requirements or to earn stickers at Vacation Bible School? Do you remember them later? Maybe. Maybe not. We know them front and back and can recite them upon command--at least for a little while. But is that hiding them in our heart?

Psalm 119:11 says, "I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you." The Hebrew word for hidden used here is tsaphan (tsaw-fan'). It means to hoard, protect, and treasure. It goes way beyond committing something to rote memory.

I believe that you can memorize a verse without hiding it in your heart, but you can't tsaphan (treasure, protect) a verse until you have first committed it to memory. If you are hiding scripture in your heart, you are putting it there intentionally with the purpose of guarding it from being stolen and to protect it as a vital part of yourself.

Are you hiding scripture in your heart or are you just memorizing it?

Share a verse that you have hidden in your heart. Wednesday, I will talk about a few of my life verses that I have hidden in my heart.

Hide it in Your Heart was written by Christiana Mustion on March 14,2011 and was originally posted on her blog Life as a Minister's Wife

DNOW 2011 at Villebrook Baptist Church

I can't believe that DNOW (Disciple Now) is here again! I have just over a week to finish all my preparations for one of the biggest events of the school year. However, I am not too worried because I have one of the best teams in the whole world when it comes to the DNOW leaders who have agreed to come to teach, preach, serve, and lead music. For that I am blessed and grateful!

This will be my fourth DNOW at Villebrook Baptist Church in Hazelwood, Missouri. Each year the theme has been different but the goal has been the same--bring students closer to God. Just to take a moment and fondly look back I will remind you of all three past VBC DNOW themes:

2008	Back to the Basics
2009	You are What You Eat
2010	EPIC

And the 2011 theme is...drum roll please...Where's the Beef?

I will write more about DNOW 2011 after it is over. I wouldn't want to give anything away. It's going to be a great time. We are going to have a lot of fun, and most importantly you will be challenged to draw closer to God!

DNOW 2011: Where's the Beef?
Starts Friday, March 18th at 7:00pm
Ends Sunday, March 20th at Noon
Cost: $20 per student plus a bag of chips and a bottle of soda to share

Just a reminder, if you come for DNOW you need to stay the whole weekend. We will not be allowing drop by visits or come and go participation (unless pre-approved by me--Jimmy Mustion).

Meet at Villebrook Baptist Church and DON'T be late!


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I Don't Know What to Pray

"...the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express." Romans 8:26

It's been one of those days...who am I kidding? It's been one of those months! It seems that everything I pray for is bouncing off the ceiling. When God does answer my prayers it seems like they are the ones that I never actually verbalized. That leaves me feeling more than a little confused. Now I don't know what to pray.

Thankfully, God promises that when we don't know what to pray the Holy Spirit intercedes for us (Rom 8:26). This is a lot of what I have been experiencing lately. God has truly met my needs and has answered the desires of my heart that I didn't really know were there until they were answered or couldn't find a way to put them into words.

So even when my prayers seem to be bouncing off the ceiling and I don't know what to pray. I can rest in the promise that the Holy Spirit intercedes on my behalf and that God hears and answers those prayers. Besides, they put my true needs so much better than I ever could.

Thank you, God, for sending the Holy Spirit to live in me and to intercede on my behalf.