Worship August 2018
Church Family,
Fall is quickly approaching, and I know we’re all ready for some cooler air. It’s been an exciting season of ministry here at Oakhill, and we are excited to see what God is going to do as we press forward into the future. This month I want to ask a question and encourage you to ponder with it: How do you worship in hard times? In hard times and hard seasons of life, do you inch closer to God, or do you lean further away from God? I think we can all agree that it’s easy to worship when things are going well. But when things aren’t going well, sometimes our worship of God is more absent from our lives than present. I want to encourage us all to remain faithful in our worship, in every season, just as God remains faithful to us at all times.
Psalms 46:1-3 says, “God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea.” The reality is that there are only two times in our lives when we should worship God - when we feel like it, and when we don’t. What we need to understand is that even in the hardest of times, God is just as faithful as He is in the good times. He’s always the same God, never changing. So many times we wrestle with the idea that because we have fallen on hard times, God’s love for us has altered, or we start to think that He somehow has changed. But the reality is that He has not changed, but we have changed. Our hearts have changed. Our hearts have become cold and distant because our lives haven’t gone exactly how we planned for them to go. We have to trust that God’s plans for us are far better than the plans we can make on our own. God doesn’t lead us to the fire, He leads us through the fire.
So this week, be encouraged to worship God even in the hard times. Don’t hide from God. If you’re sad, bring your feelings to Him in prayer. If you’re angry, tell Him. If you’re lonely, tell Him. Whatever your trials may be, bring them before God, as He already knows them very well. He is our Perfect Creator, and our Good Father. He knows you and He loves you. We can be comforted in the middle of a storm, because we know the maker of the storm, and He knows us. A great worship leader, Aaron Keyes once said, “Worship is like breathing, it’s something we were constantly created to do.” So lean in. In the good and the bad, lean into the presence of God. There’s nothing quite like it.
In Christ,
Jared