Crying Out For Mercy

Have you ever felt like you are never good enough or that you won't ever be what you should in Christ?  I feel like that all of the time.  As I read my Bible I realize that God doesn't love me for my potential, but He loves me because of me.  This is not a cop-out to say that I don't have to try, it's more like an encouraging word to let me know that I will never walk away from God's love.  As encouraging as that is I still have to choose to follow Him everyday of my life.  God has been putting a message on my heart and it is the message of mercy.  He has been putting some key Psalms in my heart and they all have the message of mercy; however, not the message that I typically think of.  It's not the message that says He is merciful, it is the message that says that I have to ask for His mercy so that I can be free.  We often like to think of the God of love, mercy and grace (which He is all of those), but we hate to think of the God of the Old Testament who demolished cities and people for their evil, wickedness and sin.  The truth is that I have to ask for God's mercy and grace in my life every day so that I can be in His will.  I hope that I never forget that and that I choose to follow my God all of my life.  

Relevant Worship

In the world of worship, there are people crying out for relevant worship.  First, let me ask, what does that mean?  Many times I hear people follow up this statement with, "you have to be singing songs of this generation."  I couldn't agree more.  I don't think we should use yesterday's tools to fix today's problems; however, let's not call this relevant.  If all we do is change how new our worship music is then we have only become recent.  Relevance is more than just being recent.  When leading people to God's heart through worship, we have to do more than just sing new songs.  In John 4 Jesus tells a Samaritan woman that "...true worshippers worship God in Spirit and truth."  The truth part is living a lifestyle of worship and the Spirit part is connecting with God on a much deeper level than just repeating words on a screen.  It's easy for us to go through the motions of singing, clapping and even worshipping; however, it's not always heart-felt.  Relevant worship is worship that takes the individual to a place where they can let their walls down and worship God for who He is.  Sometimes this is accomplished by new music and sometimes a hymn.  You have to know your audience and you have to know what connects.  Once you have decided that then it's time to sing songs that allow our spirits, our deep emotional parts, to connect with the heart of our Creator.