We continue with our 30 Days to Live series at The Community Fellowship , and I want to point you to a quote from Mark Batterson 's new book (my thoughts are below):
"These people say they are mine," God complained. "They honor me with their lips but their hearts are far from me. And their worship of me is nothing but man-made rules learned by rote." (Isaiah 29:13) God doesn't want to be lip-synced. He wants to be worshipped.
When we worship out of memory, it must sound to God like a broken record. Maybe that's why the psalms exhort us no fewer than six times to sing a new song. We need new words, new postures, new thoughts and new feelings.
Why? Because God wants to be more than a memory!
from Wild Goose Chase
We tend to think and act in patterned ways. And that tendency to think the way we've always thought or do it the way we've always done it is called heuristic bias. It is an incredibly complex cognitive process but the end result is mindlessness. We do things without thinking about them. And if we aren't careful, we pray without thinking, take Communion without thinking and worship without thinking.
I read a fascinating study a few years ago that suggested people stop thinking about the lyrics of a song after singing it thirty times. I"m sure the numbers vary from person to person but the tendency is universal. And it has profound implications when it comes to worship.
We tend to think and act in patterned ways. And that tendency to think the way we've always thought or do it the way we've always done it is called heuristic bias. It is an incredibly complex cognitive process but the end result is mindlessness. We do things without thinking about them. And if we aren't careful, we pray without thinking, take Communion without thinking and worship without thinking.
I read a fascinating study a few years ago that suggested people stop thinking about the lyrics of a song after singing it thirty times. I"m sure the numbers vary from person to person but the tendency is universal. And it has profound implications when it comes to worship.
"These people say they are mine," God complained. "They honor me with their lips but their hearts are far from me. And their worship of me is nothing but man-made rules learned by rote." (Isaiah 29:13) God doesn't want to be lip-synced. He wants to be worshipped.
When we worship out of memory, it must sound to God like a broken record. Maybe that's why the psalms exhort us no fewer than six times to sing a new song. We need new words, new postures, new thoughts and new feelings.
Why? Because God wants to be more than a memory!
I am humbled by those thoughts and the genuineness of of those who truly seek God. We have to seek harder, dig deeper, be more creative, more outgoing, give more and the list goes on. If you are on the leadership team or serve at The Community or you serve at another church, it is in our best interest to lay things aside that keep us from going further than we've gone before.
The old standard, "we've never done it that way before", will not work. That comfort zone that all of us know and like has got to go. God did not call His kids and His church to be comfort. He called us to be always on an adventure with Him.
What's gonna be?
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