worship

The aim of the climb is not intellectual satisfaction. The aim is worship. God gets more honor when we worship on the basis of what we know about him than he gets if we worship on the basis of what we don__ know.

You don't really get to choose. We worship you, and that makes you our God.

Who will deny that true religion consists, in a great measure, in vigorous and lively actings of the inclination and will of the soul, or the fervent exercises of the heart? That religion which God requires, and will accept, does not consist in weak, dull, and lifeless, wishes, raising us but a little above a state of indifference.

Real worship costs.

Prosperity is only an instrument to be used, not a deity to be worshipped.

Paul Ricoeur has wonderful counsel for people like us. Go ahead, he says, maintain and practice your hermaneutics of suspicion. It is important to do this. Not only important, it is necessary. There are a lot of lies out there; learn to discern the truth and throw out the junk. But then reenter the book, the world, with what he calls 'a second naivete'.' Look at the world with childlike wonder, ready to be startled into surprised delight by the profuse abundance of truth and beauty and goodness that is spilling out of the skies at every moment. Cultivate a hermaneutic of adoration - see how large, how splendid, how magnificent life is.And then practice this hermaneutic of adoration in the reading of Holy Scripture. Plan on spending the rest of our lives exploring and enjoying the world both vast and intricate that is revealed by this text.

All music has a message and a spirit behind it.

When the music is birthed from a place of worship it carries a spirit of worship.

It was well to be Martha and serve, but better to be Lazarus and commune.

When we are asked to show our love for God, our desire for him, when he asks us as Jesus asked Peter, 'Lovest thou me?' we have to give proof of it. 'Lovest thou me more than these, more than any human companionship, more than any human love?' It is not filth and ugliness, drugs and drink and perversion he is asking us to prefer him to. He is asking us to prefer him to all beauty and loveliness. To all other love. He is giving us a chance to prove our faith, our hope, our charity. It is as hard and painful as Abraham's ordeal, when he thought he was asked to perform a human sacrifice and immolate his son.

James Smith argues that liturgies __re compressed, performed narratives that recruit the imagination through the body.

The longing for Joy is in itself Joy. When he recalled when he had experienced Joy, he was, in that recollection, experiencing Joy anew, though he knew it not. Joy was not a state; it was an arrow pointing to something beyond all states, something objective yet unattainable _ at least in our earthly existence.

When we dedicate our talent to serving a neighbor, it is possibly one of the highest forms of worship; something sacred transpires when we sacrifice our time and dedicate our God-given loves and talents to one another.

The heart of service is grace of belonging.

Instead of magnifying the problem in your thoughts, magnify God.

It is the heaven-born instinct of a gracious soul to seek shelter from all ills beneath the wings of Jehovah. A hypocrite, when afflicted by God, resents the infliction, and, like a slave, would run from the Master who has scourged him

Truth could never be wholly contained in words.

The arduous nature of practical Christianity makes so many people choose theoretical Christianity! Both are however good, but the former is weightier, noble and solemn than the later! Many are called, but few are dedicated!