Bringing your Faith into Focus
July 16, 2006
Our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ is the one thing that allows us to live, breathe and enjoy a wonderful relationship with Him.
Romans 5:1-2 (NIV)
Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, [2] through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. 3 And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.
This scripture among others, attest to the power of this saving faith. We are first of all justified because we have faith in Christ’s atoning work.
Secondly, we gain access to His continual grace by that same faith. Because of that, we have peace, hope and joy.
When our faith in Christ for our daily journey waivers, the signs of this are that our peace, hope, and joy begin to diminish and become faint. This is caused when we lose focus on our faith.
Our focus is lost because we simply quit looking at Jesus and begin to cast our gaze on other things.
Isaiah 26:3 (NIV)
You will keep in perfect peace
him whose mind is steadfast,
because he trusts in you.
So the question is, how do we maintain our focus on our faith? This is the purpose for worship. Worship is something we do as a love response to our Lord and savior Jesus Christ, however it also serves the purpose of keeping our faith focused on God.
True worship is a daily activity rather than just a weekly activity. Most Christians don’t recognize or acknowledge this fact. They are deceived in thinking that attending a worship service on Sunday is the sum total worship requirement that must be fulfilled for the week.
Worship is a life style of surrender and focus upon God.
John 4:24 (NIV)
God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth."
The type of worship God desires is continual worship in spirit and in truth.
We must regard our weekly worship services is in three ways;
• It is a model of the worship lifestyle we must live daily.
• It is the corporate expression of how the whole body of believers lives out their lives on a daily basis.
• It is a time of refocusing on our faith in the one who saves us and sustains us.
With these 3 things in mind let’s look at it this way. If you decided to get started in archery this week and your goal is to be accurate at 50 feet how would begin? You would start by:
• Obtaining all the proper equipment,
• Learning all the proper techniques,
• Practicing at short ranges.
The goal of corporate worship is:
• To give you the proper equipment through the preaching, teaching and singing of the word.
• To help you learn the proper techniques by approaching the master in prayer, presence, and attitude.
• To practice loving God and loving others at a short distance before you are accurate at a greater distance.
Each week as we come together to practice the skill of worship, we leave with the intention to utilize that skill throughout our lives "in the real world".
A weekly worship service is not the end in itself, it is just the point of refocus so that our faith is sharpened and honed for the continued journey.
We often loose focus!
Often we loose the true focus of our faith in Christ and the reason for worshiping Him. Our focus becomes lost over concerns, worries and preoccupations. Our worship focus also becomes lost over a myriad of misconceptions, opinions and preferences.
Because of this, we confuse the vehicle of our worship for worship itself.
The vehicles for worship are those elements we employ in a worship service that are designed to lead us into true spiritual worship. These things are; music, scriptures, prayer, preaching, receiving offering, communion, and a host of other creative methods. All of these things are essential and required. However, the purposes of these things are to lead us into spiritual worship not to be worshipped. All of these things are simply practices that lead us to focus on the presence and the throne of God.
Because we live in such a fast paced and quickly changing culture, we are seeing these vehicles to worship keeping us from true worship. It is time for us to refocus our faith on where it truly needs to be focused. We need to bring the true purpose of our weekly corporate worship back.
Over the next month or so, we are going to learn to refocus our faith and our worship.
So what does it mean?
• we are going to learn to put our focus on God and not ourselves.
• we are going to be more concerned about what the person next to us is going through than what we are going through.
• we will learn what true sacrifice is and how to do it.
• we will become true worshipers, worshiping the Father in Spirit and in Truth.
To help us we have, with the help of the Holy Spirit, determined 5 biblical focuses for why we worship corporately and why we should worship personally each and every day. I believe that if we focus our faith on these things, we will certainly see a difference in our attitudes and actions.
This morning I want to highlight those for you. In the weeks to come we look more in depth into how each of these points of focus can change how we focus our faith on Christ.
Consecration and Preparation:
Joshua 3:5 (NIV)
Joshua told the people "Consecrate yourselves, for tomorrow the Lord will do amazing things among you."
The people of Israel were preparing to cross the Jordan River and begin to take possession of the land God had promised them. The process of taking possession was going to be a long and hard journey for the Israelites. However, it was God that was going to do most of the work.
Here we see the importance of them consecrating themselves so that they could be a part of what God was going to do.
To consecrate means to set apart for a specific purpose.
When we set ourselves apart for God, we are saying that we are available for His purposes and His alone. The irony of this is that we prepare ourselves for some many activities in life but seldom ever come prepared and set apart for worship. We show up expecting that God will be satisfied merely with the fact that we showed up at all.
When we understand the necessity to consecrate and prepare ourselves to come before God’s throne and be in His presence, then we will begin to see a change in how we view worship.
Sensing His presence:
1 John 4:15-16 (NIV)
If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God. [16] And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.
Since one of God’s essential characteristics is that He is omnipresent then worship is not a matter of conjuring up His presence. It is a matter of us, being present with Him. John tells us that if we acknowledge Jesus Christ as the Son of God, then He lives in us and we live in Him.
homologeoô; from ¿ìüëïãïò homologos (of one mind); to speak the same, to
agree:- acknowledge(2), admit(1), assured(1), confess(6), confessed(4), confesses(6),
confessing(1), declare(1), give thanks(1), made(1), profess(1), promised(1).
This word means to confess Christ.
If we are going to be present with God, we must first confess His Son Jesus as Lord and Savior of our lives.
This act of confessing is not merely saying or proclaiming with our lips. It is declaring Him with our faith, our lifestyle, our commitment, our whole being.
If we are living in sin apart of God and we are aligning ourselves with the world and its values, then it is foolish for us to believe we can sense God’s presence.
When we are present with Him it is a matter of just knowing He is present. It is not about our 5 senses or our feelings. It is about our faith and our surrender.
It is important for us to understand that the things we do in a worship service helps us to focus on God’s presence.
When we have a sense of His presence this will inevitably affect our senses and our emotions. Too often we get it backwards. We are under the false notion that our emotional state conjures up the presence of God.
Sensing God’s presence is a matter of focus and faith.
Conviction of the Heart
CONVICTION: A sense of guilt and shame leading to repentance.
John 16:7-8 (NIV)
But I tell you the truth: It is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. [8] When he comes, he will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment:
When our imperfection is set next to His perfection, the sins and inconsistencies of our lives become glaringly clear.
Once they become clear we are under the responsibility of our faith and the motivation of our love towards God, to deal with them and repent.
However, there are a few things that must happen in order for that to take place.
• We must present ourselves before God and ask Him to examine our lives.
• We must look deep into His word and read it with intent.
• We must deal quickly and honestly with what the Spirit and the Word shows us. , In other words, repent and get rid of the sin in our lives.
The sad truth is, many people stand before God every week in places that have been set aside for Him and hide in plain site. They know that their lifestyle is in conflict with God’s commands. They know that they must deal with sinful attitudes. However, they refuse to listen, they refuse to obey. The scripture is clear!
1 John 2:4 (NIV)
The man who says, "I know him," but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him.
Reminded of His Grace
Col. 1:21-22 (NIV)
Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. [22] But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation--
We need to constantly be reminded of God’s grace for two reasons:
• Because we allow the world and ourselves to condemn us after Christ has already set us free. The scriptures remind us that whoever has been set free by the Son of God is free indeed. Nobody else’s condemnation of us matters when God’s grace has covered us over. This does not mean that we are free to live any old way. It means that Christ is our only salvation and He alone will we be accountable to for our lives. Knowing this, we must live a life pleasing to Him.
• Because we sometimes condemn others when it is not our place to do so. We should be in constant prayer, encouragement and accountability towards each other. However, to condemn someone means to pass a judgment. It is our place to be concern and to hold one another up. It is not our place to judge and condemn. For the measure by which we judge others we will be judged ourselves.
Inspired to serve
Philip. 2:5-7 (NIV)
Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
[6] Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
[7] but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
When our faith is refocused in Christ, we once again seek to have the mind of Christ. Christ’s life revolved around service.
When we sense His presence we cannot help but to be inspired to serve as He served.
Each time we approach His throne, we should be asking, "What would you have me do today?"
