Motions

The worship service yesterday here at ECCC was a great thing to be a part of, though my opinion could be biased. Being able to worship with the entire church body, try a new sermon style with Ron and Dave, was awesome! A great morning and an amazing way to worship. Since the services ended my prayer is that those who heard the message, participated in worship are still worshiping today. It reminds me of a song, maybe you have heard, if not check it out. The song I am referring to is called "The Motions" by Matthew West.

"I don't wanna go through the motions
I don't wanna go one more day
without Your all consuming passion inside of me
I don't wanna spend my whole life asking,
'What if I had given everything,
instead of going through the motions?'"

I remember the first time I heard this song in the car on I-65 heading back to Columbus from Greenwood. It immediately hit me, how many times do I do what he was singing about? How often do I just go through the motions in my relationship with God. I want to encourage you to engage in God more and more each day in your own worship with Him. When we do this and allow God's all consuming passion to come inside of us, we can not help but to worship God. By allowing God to reign in our lives, He will flow out of our actions, thoughts, and words.
As we draw ourselves closer to God, allowing Him to take over, we will never have to ask that question. "What if I had given everything, instead of going through the motions?" This week do not go through the motions during the week. Next Sunday, do not go through the motions on Sunday morning. Instead let our worship reflect that all consuming passion that we have for God. The same one He shows us all the time.

Real Love

Our character trait this month in children's church is love. Too many times this word is easily thrown around. The definition that we are using to describe love is choosing to give someone your time and attention no matter what. (This is for K-5th grade students)
Have you ever told someone that you love God? Have you ever been asked if you love God and answered yes? Do you really? The definition that we are using to describe love to our elementary kids, do we really love God?
In all the chaos of our lives, the busy schedules, the me first mindsets; do we give God our time and attention? Not only ask ourselves that question but ask ourselves do we give Him those two things no matter what? Each of us (myself included) need to make a priority each day to truly love God. Not just whenever we feel like loving Him, that is not what true love does. This means that we make time to give him our time and attention.
Here at church Ron has been preaching a sermon series called "Psummer in the Psalms". As we talk about truly loving God. Really loving Him, spending time with Him, paying attention to Him I am reminded of what a certain Psalm says. Psalm 46:10 says, "Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth."
I want to encourage each of us to truly love God. We need to be still, give Him our attention, give Him our time, give Him our love. Let us do this with our lifestyle and how we live, not just an answer to a question or a statement to a friend.