Kindle the Fire in Corporate Worship

by Davis Mathis

You were made for more than private devotions.

As nice as it can be to tuck ourselves away in some nook and cranny, all by our lonesome, and read the Scriptures we want to read, pray the prayers we prefer, play the songs we like, memorize the verses we pick, and fast from food when it’s convenient — as important as it is to pursue a regular rhythm of “private worship” in these personal disciplines — this is not the pinnacle of our Christian lives.

We were made to worship Jesus together. 

Among the multitude. 

With the great hoard. 

Swallowed up in the magnificent mass of the redeemed. 

God didn’t fashion us to enjoy him finally as solitary individuals, but as happy members of a countlessly large family.

When the fog of everyday life clears, and we catch a glimpse of heaven’s bliss, we don’t find ourselves sequestered at a study desk or hidden alone in a prayer closet in paradise, or even standing alone before the great Grand Canyon or mountain peak of God’s majesty, but joyfully lost in the worshiping throng of Christ’s people from every tongue and tribe and nation.

We were made for corporate worship.

Cheerfully Lost in the Crowd

Heaven will be more spectacular than we can dream — and the new earth, even better than heaven — but it might be surprising to hear that perhaps the best foretaste we can get on this side is with the gathered church, worshiping Jesus together. 

Not that eternity will amount to an unending church service, but that we will be wonderfully immersed in a joy-multiplying multitude of fellow worshipers.

And in heaven’s adoration, we join not only “many angels, numbering myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands” (Revelation 5:11) — you might say “innumerable angels” (Hebrews 12:22) — but also the innumerable communion of the ransomed,

a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb . . . and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” (Revelation 7:9–10)

While the corporate worship of Jesus by the church universal is an essential element in our great destiny, it is the corporate worship of Jesus by the church local that is a vital means of God’s grace in getting us there.

Most Important Means of Grace

And it may be the single most important means of grace, and our greatest weapon in the fight for joy, because like no other means, corporate worship combines all three principles of God’s ongoing grace: his word, prayer, and fellowship. 

It is corporate worship, with its preaching and sacraments and collective praises, confessions, petitions, and thanksgivings, which most acutely brings together the gifts of God’s voice, his ear, and his body.

And so, according to Don Whitney, “There’s an element of worship and Christianity that cannot be experienced in private worship or by watching worship. 

There are some graces and blessings that God gives only in ‘meeting together’ with other believers” (Spiritual Disciplines, 92). 

Or as Richard Foster says, “When we are truly gathered into worship, things occur that could never occur alone” (Celebration of Discipline, 164).

Perhaps your own experience of corporate worship as a means of grace has, at times, echoed that of Martin Luther: “at home, in my own house, there is no warmth or vigor in me, but in the church when the multitude is gathered together, a fire is kindled in my heart and it breaks its way through.”

Worship Is No Means

But talking about worship as a means of grace is tricky, because, as John Piper cautions us, true worship is not a means to anything.

Worship is an end in itself. 

We do not eat the feast of worship as a means to anything else. 

Happiness in God [which is the heart of worship] is the end of all our seeking. 

Nothing beyond it can be sought as a higher goal. . . . True worship cannot be performed as a means to some other experience. (Desiring God, 90)

What then do we mean when we say that corporate worship is an essential means of God’s grace? 

Can it really be such?

The Secret of Joy: Self-Forgetfulness

One distinction to make is between the essence of worship as joy in God and the context of corporate worship as the gathered assembly. 

While praising Jesus together is its greatest expression, worship is bigger than just the gathered church — for Sunday mornings and for everyday life (Romans 12:1). 

And related to this is the difference between how we think about corporate worship (and the various motivations for it and benefits from it) and how we experience it in the moment.

There is more to be said about the “graces and blessings that God gives only in ‘meeting together’ with other believers” — which can inspire our faithful engagement and help us appreciate the irreplaceable role corporate worship plays in our Christian health and growth — but for now, the question is, where should we turn our hearts and minds collectively in the moment to experience this grace from God?

The answer is that our focus should not be self-consciously preoccupied with how we’re being strengthened or what grace we’re receiving. 

Rather, our focus together is the crucified and risen Christ, and the incomparable excellencies of his person and work. 

Which illumines all the various spiritual disciplines. 

Corporate worship is a means of grace not when we’re caught up with what we’re doing, but when we experience the secret of worship — the joy of self-forgetfulness — as we become preoccupied together with Jesus and his manifold perfections.

See, then, the pregnant application to corporate worship in this summary by Piper:

All genuine emotion is an end in itself. 

It is not consciously caused as a means to something else. 

This does not mean we cannot or should not seek to have certain feelings.

We should and we can. 

We can put ourselves in situations [corporate worship] where the feeling may more readily be kindled. . . .

But in the moment of authentic emotion, the calculation vanishes. 

We are transported (perhaps only for seconds) above the reasoning work of the mind, and we experience feeling without reference to logical or practical implications. (92)

In this way, corporate worship, which is no means to anything else, is a powerful — even the most powerful — means of God’s grace for the Christian life.

So come to corporate worship for the many blessings, and then let the calculations vanish and lose yourself in the Blessed. 

Get yourself there with a reminder about how good it will be for you if you do, and as the gathering begins, go hard after the goodness of God and seek to forget yourself as you focus on his Son.

Confessions of a Grown-Up Momma’s Boy

by Marshall Segal

Mothers are mind-blowing people if you stop to look at them.

In their body, they can carry, feed, protect, and eventually deliver a child — a human being, like you or me. 

They often set aside personal gifts and aspirations for the sake of the family. 

They very often are the ones to confront and conquer the warzone of the home — a world of overwhelming, ever-changing, and ever-undone demands. 

When life allows, they’re often the more present and available parent as boys and girls very quickly become young men and young women. 

And through adoption, many of them welcome sons and daughters into their home and heart whom they didn't get to welcome into the world through birth.

We simply do not — and cannot — celebrate these women enough.

The Making of Men and Women

My mom quite literally might have been the most precious gift my dad ever gave me — that is, her freedom to be with me at home during the formative years of my life. 

He worked, and worked hard, to provide so that she could be more active in making my brothers and me into men — men of love, men of discipline, courage, and learning, men of sympathy and sensitivity, especially toward women, most of all, men after God’s heart.

It’s the kind of work we can’t afford to outsource. 

Boys become men — strong men of integrity — and girls become women — wise and beautiful women — through consistent care and attention, bold and grace-filled instruction, and real-life modeling. 

This requires lots and lots of time with our parents. 

Both mom and dad absolutely have a role to play in this progress, but God has placed this priority on the mother in an unusual way. 

And it sure seems like the extraordinary reality of motherhood has too often and too easily become the victim of other things, whether tragically through death, disability, or divorce, or more subtly through good things like ambition, education, and career advancement.

For sure, something hard, uniquely Christ-like, and therefore beautiful, happens in single mothering. 

Some mothers just don’t have a choice to be home more. 

They must work and work long hours, and they should be commended and celebrated for their sacrifices and burden-bearing. 

They lean more heavily on the community in raising their children, and we’re certainly glad when they do.

But among the rest of us, I wonder whether we’ve lost our awe and appreciation for the glory of the work of the home, of the work of making men and women, building them — year by year, hour by hour, meal by meal, mundane moment by mundane moment.

Advice for Teenage Me (and Today Me)

For all who’ve known me, and for as long as I can remember, I’ve been an undeniable and unashamed momma’s boy. 

But my naïve, undying love for Mom has not always been enough to help me make the most of her mothering. 

I have needed a heart and wisdom that only comes over time from above, from the Maker of mothers.

At twenty-eight, I believe I’ll still learn a lot more about being a son, but here are four things I wish I could say to fifteen-year-old me (and even twenty-seven-year-old me). 

I hope they can be a means of celebrating the miracle of every mom and the world-changing work they do.

1. Listen to her more intently.

Your mother’s mouth is a hidden well of wisdom, and you have access to it like no one else on earth. 

Her deep, unconditional, instinctive love leaves you a secret door open to her — her heart and history and mind and perspective. 

There are things — unique God-given, weighty, helpful things — she has that are available to her children and no one else.

They might be answers to difficult questions or timely messages for a random Monday or simply lessons passed on in passing. 

Take advantage. 

Learn your God, your world, and yourself through her love. 

Your pride and attention span will try and steal this from you, but be ever listening for and listening to your mother.

2. Watch her more carefully.

If the Bible is true and there is a God, and this God made the saving work of his Son the highest expression of who he is and how he loves, we ought to study, celebrate, and imitate love like that. 

Mothers make the daily, extravagant, often unnoticed, and probably more often unappreciated sacrifices that preserve health and growth in the home. 

They very tangibly die to themselves and live for the interests of others, especially others that are too young and immature to grasp what’s being given them.

We ought to marvel at motherly love like this, and worship the God who loves us that way and therefore fills up the love of mothers with tremendous and eternal meaning. 

When she’s not looking, be looking. 

Learn to follow Christ by watching carefully how your mother lives and works and feeds and cleans and dies for you.

3. Thank her more regularly.

One of Paul’s favorite ways to worship God was through thanks. “I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus,” (1 Corinthians 1:4). 

In at least eight other letters, Paul expresses this same kind of affection and appreciation. 

There’s something about a grateful heart that brings great glory to our God.

We ought to be the most constant, most passionate, most outspoken thank-ers on the planet because our thanks in all things makes much of God, from whom comes every good thing, especially our mothers. 

Don’t make light of his provision by neglecting to make much of her. 

Notice her work, thank her for it, and as often as your remember, thank your God for giving you her and everything she does for you. 

Your gratitude was meant to highlight a mother’s ministry from God. 

Help her and others see that by calling it out, even in the forgettable, repeatable responsibilities of today.

4. Share with her more openly.

The ones who know and love us most are most worthy of our honesty. 

More than that, we are desperately in need of their knowing us. 

God made us to depend on others, so he gave us these strong, wise, mature women to live with us, especially when we’re learning and changing the most. 

As I reflect on my high school years in particular, I can see now how much was happening in me — my faith and thinking and feelings and relationships — and I can see how crazy I was to keep so much from her.

There’s this unwritten, unwise code among teenagers that privacy is the great treasure and parents the great threat. 

Well it’s unwritten for a reason. 

There’s probably no one on this earth more steadfastly, more compassionately, even more ruthlessly committed to your well-being than your parents. 

Your mom is a woman who’s been with you until death do you part from the moment you knew her — even while she was still a blur in your baby eyes. 

Let her love you by welcoming her further into yourself. 

If she loves the Lord and you, you never need to fear her rejection or denial or condemnation. 

So go ahead and share it all, and let her help shape your heart and decision-making inside the security of her grace and care.

Honor Your Mother

I’m twenty-eight and still not-yet-married, which means I have a single’s mom, who also happens to be happily married. 

She’s been the closest, sweetest, most reliable, most forgiving woman in my life thus far. 

And she’s the woman most responsible — under God — for making me the man I am. 

In the next twenty-eight years and more, I aspire to love and appreciate her and her mothering better.

May we all treasure and honor our mothers more today and everyday — listening, watching, thanking, and sharing — and in doing so, making much of the God who made her, loves her, and who speaks through her and her life.

Why We Educate Our Girls

            

by John Piper 

On April 14, 2014, the terrorist Islamist group called Boko Haram kidnapped over 270 girls, most between 16 and 18, from the Chibok Government Girls Secondary School in northeast Nigeria.

Boko Haram means “Western education is sinful.” 

Part of the motivation behind the attack is their belief that it is sinful for girls to be formally educated at all. Educating girls is a Western effort to undermine the Islamic view of the family.

The leader of Boko Haram, Abubakar Shekau, said in a recording, “Western education should end. . . . Girls, you should go and get married.” 

He warned that he would “give their hands in marriage because they are our slaves. We would marry them out at the age of 9. We would marry them out at the age of 12.”

While we advocate for vigorous efforts for the return of the young women, and while we pray for them and their evil abductors, it is fitting to remind ourselves why we as Christians encourage our girls and young women to seek a full education. 

What I mean by “full” will become clear.

1. God created man male and female in his image.

“God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27). 

The unique human capacities for knowing God and loving God belong to men and women.

The capacity to know the world as from God and through God and for God belongs to men and women. 

The capacity to delight in all good things, out of thanks to God and for the glory of God, belong to men and women.

Maximizing these capacities in the worship of God and the fruitful use of the world, is a divine mandate to men and women. 

“God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it’” (Genesis 1:28).

2. God has revealed his glory in the natural world, and he intends for all his creatures to see his wonders and give him praise.

One of the great aims of education is to impart habits of mind that can see the fullest possible range of God’s wonders in the world he has made (Psalm 19:1; 104:23). 

The praises of women are to increase with their abilities to see and understand the wonderful works of God in the world (Psalm 105:2).

3. God has revealed himself more fully in the inspired word of God than he has in the natural world.

The fact that God reveals himself in a book is explosive with implications for education, from the cradle to the grave. 

All who aspire to know and love God as fully as they can will aspire to learn to read the book of God.

The Bible is the most important book in the world because it is God’s revelation of what humans need to know for salvation and fruitfulness which we cannot find out any other way. 

Here is where God can be truly known, and fully loved. 

Education is the process of imparting habits and skills of reading that enable human beings to know God and love God as fully as possible.

God wills for women to know him and love him as fully as they can. 

He wills for them to commune with him directly — as daughter to Father — through their encounter with the Bible. 

She is a fellow heir of the grace of life (1 Peter 3:7) and is not to be limited in her access to her Father or his word.

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37), was not a command given only to men. 

Women will be held back from knowing and loving God as fully as they can, if they are held back from forming the habits and skills of reading — not just the skills of a third grade reader, but the skills of discerning the full riches of biblical revelation concerning the great work of the Son of God in his life, death, and resurrection. 

This is the great work of education.

4. All the roles into which God leads women call for the habits of mind which education is meant to cultivate.

These include the habits of

▪   observing all things accurately and thoroughly,

▪   understanding clearly what she has observed,

▪   evaluating fairly in the discernment of what is true,

▪   feeling intensely according to the worth of what she has evaluated,

▪   applying wisely and helpfully in life what she understands and feels,

▪   and expressing in speech and writing and deeds what she has seen, understood, felt and applied, in such a way that its accuracy, clarity, truth, value, and helpfulness can be known and enjoyed by others.

Whether she is a church-serving, globally aware, politically awake, neighbor-loving full-time homemaker and mom, or a partner with her husband in breadwinning, or an unmarried career woman, or other role, God’s call on her life is to

▪   observe accurately (Matthew 13:16; Mark 8:18; Luke 6:42; John 9:39),

▪   understand clearly (Mark 8:21; Ephesians 5:17),

▪   evaluate truly (Luke 12:57; 1 Corinthians 10:15),

▪   feel appropriately (Romans 12:9; Philippians 4:4; James 4:9),

▪   apply truth wisely (James 1:22; Romans 12:2),

▪   and express herself effectively (Ephesians 4:15; Colossians 4:6).

These are the aims of a full education. 

These are the aims of Christian discipleship. 

These are the aims of Christ-exalting womanhood. 

Without them our knowledge of Christ, his world, his salvation, his ways in history, and our path of obedience will remain immature. 

God does not call any of his children, men or women, to immaturity. 

Therefore he calls them all to a full education.