In a recent Sunday School class, Jeff Tyner taught on how God transforms people to make us more like Him. We learned that God begins this process by miraculously creating a new life inside of anyone who puts their faith in Jesus – by giving us new hearts with the desire and the power to love and obey Him. Here is how Jeff so beautifully and eloquently described the work of God’s spirit in changing us and the implications of this work for daily life:

God loves you! He chose you. That is why you are a Christian. It wasn’t your doing. It was His doing. When you were his enemy, he made you his friend. And he made you more than his friend; he made you his child. He adopted you. You were alone and without anyone in the universe to truly love you. He directed his love toward you and chose to make you his son or daughter. He has irrevocably written you into his will and made you an heir, sharing the inheritance with His firstborn, Jesus.

You were broken, disabled, and disfigured. You were unlovely. You were ugly. But He came and found you, picked you up, and took you home, lavishing you with kindness and everything eternally good you could ever hope for. Anyone else – if they knew as much about you as He knows about you – would have been sick to their stomach and walked away, rejected you and left you to die. But not Him! Knowing your ugliness, your sick secrets, and even your insane God-complex, he looked at all of it and didn’t flinch. He even smiled – and continues to smile – a tender, loving smile. No, as he studied every nook and cranny of your strangeness, ever fold of your deformity, every ugly, sinful bump and stain – He already knew them. How did he know them? He knew them because he had already carried every one of them to the cross of his love – the cross of your atonement.

The very birthmark of Adam that marked you as a deeply broken, totally stained, irreconcilable enemy of God, your loving Father has generously removed, paying for the operation out of his own inexhaustibly deep pockets. You see, Jesus has taken your stain to the cross and – holding it up to the awesome and terrible blast of God’s infinite, holy fury – He has destroyed it. No stain remains.

And he did this knowing that you would often reject Him and His love. Be honest – Since becoming his son or daughter, in spite of the loving tenderness and care he has lavished on you, you still mostly refuse to believe that He loves you and has good, kind intentions toward you. Other times, you take His love for granted and fail to see how amazing, and unwarranted it is. Sometimes you decide to believe he loves you only based on your current performance – that His love for you waxes and wanes with how you’re doing these days – in spite of His repeated, clear statements to you in scripture that this is absolutely not the case. Any other father would have His feelings hurt. But not this one. He continues to lavish you with loving, fatherly care. He. loves. you!

And in his great, sovereign love, He continues to work all things for your good. He loves you.

You are safe in His love.

In His sovereign, fatherly love, He has erased your shame. I’ll say it again – Jesus has erased your shame. He has erased the shame of sins done against you and to you – and by you. And that includes not only the shame you feel from your life before you were a Christian – it also includes the shame you feel about your present life. He has erased the shame you feel about your mistakes, about your embarrassing sinful thoughts, and about your mediocre performance as a Christian. Maybe you can muster the faith to believe that your sinful life before you were saved is forgiven, but you can’t escape the feeling that He must be disappointed in your B- or C+ as a Christian. He has erased the shame you presently feel! In his perfect life and death, Jesus meant to consume and has in fact consumed the stain of your shame – and you bear it no longer. So, as your loving father invites you to his table, he sees no ugly mark on you! He knows you, and He loves you.

You couldn’t be safer in His love. In the safety of His love, He has given you His Holy Spirit, His very living presence, to be with you and help you and to remind you of all of this and to keep it before you and to HELP YOU BELIEVE IT! And His Holy Spirit uses the truth and the commands of the Bible and the ministry (or failures) of His people (called the church) to shape you into his image.

Proverbs 27:6 says “Wounds from a friend can be trusted”. God is far more than your friend, and if He wounds you in the shaping process, you can trust those wounds because His purpose in shaping you is GOOD! His purpose in shaping you is to grow your capacity to experience, and to reflect, and to share the enjoyment of this glorious, loving Father. That is, to drink deeply of Who He is and What He’s done for you in saving you, and to pour out what you’ve experienced from Him to others in both words and actions, causing you and them to experience – both as giver and receiver – the same kind of love that all His adopted kids have received from God in Christ, and to put His glory on display.

So, having said all that, when God undertakes to shape and sanctify you… You couldn’t be in a better place!!!

And in this place, there is no need to self-justify or be defensive.

You are safe in His love.

While most people are probably not thinking theologically about the singing a church does on a Sunday morning (or the people who lead it), many are bringing some expectation as they walk through the doors.  Unfortunately many people will choose to stay or leave a church based on how “good” the worship is.  It is tempting for pastors, worship leaders, and worship team members to be too aware of this reality – so aware that what we sing and who we have leading can begin to be shaped by what people want or expect.  Over the last few years, we have been seeking to clarify what worship ministry is all about and the theology that informs our practices as a church.  Here is what we want every present or potential worship team member to know:

The worship team exists to magnify the greatness of God in Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit with our songs and with our lives.  We believe that leading the gathered church in the worship of God is a ministry leadership role in the church and not a performance role.  To participate in worship leadership is to extend pastoral care by teaching, equipping, and edifying God’s people. A worship team member is not just a singer or a musician but a caregiver – on stage and off stage.  As such, all our worship team members must be believers in Jesus Christ.  Their commitment to Jesus should be demonstrated and lived out in their commitment to and care for one local church.  This is expressed through church membership and a signing of the church covenant – our mutual commitment to love and care for one another as a body.  Worship team involvement in any capacity is a matter of service, stewardship and setting an example.  We ares servants in the body of Christ with the specific task of helping people see and sing the greatness of God.  As stewards of this task, we are called to faithful commitment not simply to the team, but to this church as an expression of the local body of Christ.  Because of the public nature of this role, the lives we lead on and off the stage and the commitments we make together become an example for others to follow.

If you’d like more information on how to get involved with the worship team, please talk to a pastor or any one of the worship leaders.  Or, drop us an email and we can send you a worship team packet and application.  Let’s see and sing the greatness of Christ together for the glory of God.

Colin Marshall states:

We’ve just heard the Word read and proclaimed, sung the praises of our great God, and petitioned him for mercy in our time of need. And then we spend our time afterward talking about last night’s movie, the game, the hobby, the state of the nation, or whatever. Anything but the great truths of the gospel we’ve just heard and by which we’re saved. Why do we do this?

It is far too easy to hear the closing “Amen” and immediately shift on to the next thing that’s happening in your day.  “Where are we going to eat? I’m starving!” Or, one spouse to the other: “We better not stay and talk, I’ve got a lot to do.”  Sometimes we just rush over to the same friends every week and pick up where we left off. After service you can hear a lot of,

“How have you been?”

“Busy.”

“Working a lot?”

“Yea.”

“Me too.”

But we have just heard the glorious gospel proclaimed! Surely there are better things to talk about.  I’m not suggesting that we familiarize ourselves with the latest Christian lingo so we have spiritually-sounding conversations.  And our conversations shouldn’t be contrived or forced.  But like all healthy relationships, good conversations require thought and care.  Small talk is good and important; it’s a way to show hospitality to others.  It can be a great starting point.  But if all we ever have is small talk,  then our Christianity probably needs to run a little deeper than that.

Marshall offers a number of helpful suggestions:

• Pray during the service that God would lead your conversations, and pray for specific people around you.

• Listen to what God is saying to you through the sermon (or songs, creeds, and so on) and formulate a comment or question to start a conversation. This past week at our church, the sermon was on what it means to praise the Lord, from Psalms 146-150. Since I was thinking about this article (and, I hope, for more godly reasons), I picked out two things to try as conversation-starters after church.

• With another couple we somehow got into a conversation about their blended family, and I reminded them of God’s favor towards the alien, orphans, and widows (Ps. 146). Since the husband is not yet a believer, I was deliberately talking about God’s character. I have no idea what effect it had on him.

• Even if the conversations don’t always get off the ground, your enthusiasm for learning the Bible and knowing God will be contagious. And non-Christians will see that church isn’t dull and boring but fascinating and life-shattering.

• These intentional conversations after church will sometimes lead to prayer for one another. Why not stop for a moment and give thanks or petition God for some need?

• Another way to deepen our fellowship is to ask each other how we came to salvation in Christ. Sometimes we’ve been in church with people for years without ever learning their story. The other day at church I asked a guy named Phil how he became a Christian, and we discovered God had worked in us in very similar ways as young men. The door is now open to building a friendship with this brother. What a joy!

So, no condemnation for small talk or casual, friendly conversations!  Those are both wonderful gifts from God and are ways we can show care to other people.  But pray and ask God how your interactions with others after church can convey even greater love, care, compassion, and enthusiasm for the greatest news in all the world.

HT: Read Colin Marshall’s full post here.