Grace and Peace from Our Lord Jesus Christ!
As the apostle Paul tells us, “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages He might show the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:4-7).
We are seated with God in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus! This is a present reality for all who trust in Jesus Christ for your salvation. Worship on Sunday morning is a time when we practice seeing this invisible dimension. This service of worship is an education of our desires, which takes place not just when we are thoughtfully reflecting on the sermon but through the practice of gathering together, reading the Psalms, singing God’s praise, praying in silence and in unison and responsively both spoken and with singing, and the like as we talk to God and hear from Him. These practices serve to form our imaginations in ways that we may not even
realize.
Normally I would rail against just going through the motions. But the point I just made above about how worship serves to educate our desires and trains our imaginations seems to suggest that there might be some value in it. James K.A. Smith says, “While it is not ideal, I do think that there can be a sort of implanting of the gospel that happens simply by virtue of participating in liturgical practices…. For instance, one will often hear testimonies of those raised in the church, but who have strayed from the path of discipleship, nevertheless caught short by the cadences of the Apostles’ Creed or the catechism while immersed in hedonistic pursuits of pleasure. The rhythms of the liturgy come back to haunt them, sometimes calling them back to a life of more
intentional discipleship. Or one finds that their imagination—the very way they construe the world—is
fundamentally shaped by Christian practices.”
If this is true for those who have no outward signs of belonging to God, then how much more must the imaginations of Christians be shaped by the practices of worship – such that we learn to desire God more than just to buy things today that we will throw away tomorrow. Worship on Sunday is not just about learning knowledge for our minds, it is also about ‘exercising’ our imaginations as we sing and speak and pass the peace. And as we practice these kinds of things on Sunday, we are being shaped to live and love differently during the week in ways that we may not even stop to think about. We so often focus on how the things of the world negatively shape us in ways that we do not even realize, that it is refreshing to realize that worship positively shapes us in ways we do not even realize – as do daily practices of reading Scripture and praying.
In Christ,
Pastor Justin
Read more about these things here or other posts under Systematic Theology, Elements of Worship.
Recent Comments