Basic Practicalities (Loving God)

RE-CAP – Why are we here?

From my previous blog (Back to Basics), we took Jesus’ words in Matthew 22:36-39 as being the best summary of the primary purpose of mankind, and Christians in particular: –

“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law? Jesus replied: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment.” “And the second is like it: Love your neighbour as yourself”.

So, love for God and love for the rest of mankind is what life is all about. Jesus is the ultimate example of how to fulfil both aspects of this directive. The gospels are full of how he worshipped his heavenly Father and the love that he has for all of mankind – not just dying for their sins, and defeating evil, but getting alongside those in need to provide healing, nourishment, encouragement and guidance – love for others in action.

Peter (1 Peter 2:9) also described Christians as “a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God…” In John’s opening praise to Jesus in Revelation (Ch 1:5-6), and in his record of praise in heaven (Ch 5:10), the church is also described in these terms: – “You [Jesus] have made them [Christians] to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God….”

So how do we manage to do this in our day-to-day living? Unfortunately, we are mostly fairly rubbish at this, especially if we try to do it in our own strength. The only possible chance that we have is by giving more control of our lives to the Holy Spirit. We received the Holy Spirit as a gift once we became Christians. The Holy Spirit’s primary role in the life of a believer is to transform him/her to be more like Jesus (see 2 Cor 3:18)– exactly what we need to enable us to fulfil our Priestly and Royal duties.

Priestly Duty

This aspect is all about loving God – giving Him the worship that he deserves. It involves prayer, praise and so much more. In fact, we are encouraged “…. whatever you do, do it all for the Glory of God.” (1 Cor 10:31)

1. PRAYER

I must confess that I find regular praying much more difficult than regular bible study. I don’t really know why. I appreciate the value of prayer (I know that it is vital and effective), but I struggle to be consistent.

I think that my prayer life has improved recently due to a book aptly titled “How to Pray”. This is the third book in a series by Pete Greig, the founder of the “24-7 Prayer Movement”. In the book, Greig gives lots of practical advice on prayer, including

• Pray constantly. Ask for even the little things in life. Intercede for others (part of loving others). Confess our sins; take forgiveness and forgive others.
• Find somewhere to pray with no distractions.
• Use repeat or prepared prayers – Psalms, e.g. Ps 23. Aaronic Blessing; The Lord’s Prayer.
• Sing hymns.
• Be still and let the Holy Spirit pray.
• Engage in the fight against the devil. Give God the Power and the Glory.

I’ve adapted some of these ideas to suit myself.

1.1 Regular prayers – phone reminder.

I have set my phone to provide a “reminder” every day at 1 pm to pray the Lord’s Prayer. I don’t always pray at 1pm but the reminder stays on the home screen of my phone until I update the phone that I have actually made the prayer. This update then automatically sets the reminder for the next day.

After doing this for a while, I was getting concerned that I could just say the Lord’s Prayer without really thinking about it. This would still be better than not praying at all, but I wanted to be more engaged in the prayer. So now, I continue to say the Lord’s Prayer every day but on different days I focus on one phrase of the prayer and try to personalise it. For example, “give us this day our daily bread” still gets prayed but I take a few minutes to give thanks for all the many blessings received, and then continue on with the rest of the Lord’s Prayer. On another day I will spend more time focussing on “hallowed be thy name” or “lead us not into temptation”, etc.

1.2 Irregular prayers – “ambulance chasing”

I live near a main road, which frequently has ambulances travelling on it. If the ambulance sounds its siren to warn other road users of its approach, then I will hear that siren from my home. I use that sound as an additional, irregular prompt to pray. When I first started this, I prayed for the ambulance crew (that they would be able to cope with whatever situation they were rushing into). I also prayed for their patient (that they would be healed). For the crew and patient, I prayed that God would provide his saving grace to them, so that they would all be healed spiritually and that God’s Kingdom would be extended.

After praying this way for people that I did not know, and would probably never meet, I became aware of family members and friends that also needed these healing and saving graces. So now, when I hear an ambulance siren, I still pray for the crew and their patient, but I also include specific needs of friends and family.

Perhaps there is some other irregular event in your life that you could use to prompt a prayer. E.g., after receiving a phone call, or text message.

1.3 Prompting of the Holy Spirit

I’ve found that as I make more effort at “improving” my prayer life, I also receive more prompting from the Holy Spirit to worship God in prayer. Sometimes this happens at night, if I’m having trouble sleeping, or it can occur when I suddenly notice something marvellous in nature, or perhaps some event reported in the news. All these things give me a greater awareness of the Holy Spirit living within me.

2. PRAISE

Another way of worshipping God is to praise him in song. Thankfully (for those around me), this doesn’t always mean singing out loud. Ephesians 5:19 tells us to “sing and make music in your heart to the Lord”. For me, this is another way of letting the Holy Spirit have more say in my life.

2.1 Music Streaming

There are various online music streaming services, which allow you to select your favourite music and compile personal playlists which can be streamed for immediate playback or downloaded for playing later. These streaming services are most often associated with young people for contemporary music. However, the libraries of these services include gospel music as well. Most of the providers have provided most of their services for free although you occasionally have to listen to advertisements.

After searching the library to find my favourite tunes, I simply mark them as “liked”. This results in one long playlist of all my favourite music. I then use this “liked playlist” to prepare shorter playlists of music for specific purposes. One of my playlists consists purely of favourite gospel music and hymns. I also have other playlists of all sorts of music, some with no gospel music but most have at least a few gospel tracks. This makes it easy to praise God throughout my day, wherever I have my phone (and a pair of earphones, if necessary).

YouTube has a similar facility if you prefer sound and vision. Try Victor’s Crown by Darlene Zschech or The UK Blessing.

2.2 Earworms

Sounds disgusting but earworms refer to times when you have a tune stuck in your head all day long. The harder you try to ignore it, the more annoying it can get. Who can forget Joe Pasquale singing “I know a song that’ll get on your nerves, get on your nerves, get on your nerves…”?

However, it is possible to create a more acceptable earworm. I find that if I hear the first verse and chorus of a song but don’t hear the rest of it, that song will play on in the back of my mind until something else replaces it. Try it with your favourite praise song, e.g. Your Grace is Enough, or How Great is Our God, or Lord, I Need You, or….

I sometimes think that the earworm is selected by the Holy Spirit so that I am sub-consciously praising God.

3. CORPORATE WORSHIP

I suspect that one of Jesus’ greatest disappointments is the number and variety of different churches that exist today. It is a clear tactic of the devil to fracture the Christian Church over Orthodox Christianity, Roman Catholicism, Protestantism and all the little denominations that come under these general headings – “divide and conquer” is the devils’ strategy.

Having got that off my chest, corporate worship is important, and I would recommend finding a local church that has a strong scriptural basis. It’s unlikely to be perfect (we will only get that in heaven), but it is good to pray, praise God and be involved in the local community. Ask the Holy Spirit to guide you.

This blog focused on the first great commandment given by Jesus, and hopefully gave some practical ideas about how to fulfil our Priestly duties towards worshipping God, with the help of the Holy Spirit. The next blog will focus on the second greatest commandment on how to fulfil our Royal duties towards loving our neighbour.