"Praise the Lord"

The older I get, the more I realize how much I need to know God. My sermons have changed over the years. What I use to think that I was defending the faith was nothing more than showing why we are right and everyone else is wrong. That took away from God's glory, made us glory in us and what we believe and people left with little filling up of God. It made us gloat and created self righteousness. That sounds just like the Pharisees in the days of Jesus. I have come to realize in a deeper way that we need to keep our eyes off us and lifted up to God. Jesus taught over and over that it was God's glorification that was important and His death would be to God's glory.

The messages we need to be hearing from our pulpits are messages that bring us back again and again to the implications and applications of the redemptive work of God through Christ. We need to hear the atoning affects of the cross as well as our faith challenged to grow up, to see our holiness in light of the Lord and extend ourselves to others as the Lord has extended Himself to us in truth. People can't grow as long as those preaching/teaching keep regurgitating the same old shallow stuff. We've got to stop 'lullibying' into the bland, cheap talk that never takes one into the heart of God! Preaching and teaching should make us reflect, repent if necessary and say 'thank you' to the Almighty for His wondrous care and love. It should confront us to move our hearts (if the heart is in tune and operating correctly) to take on more and more of His nature. Forgiveness should be so sweet to our souls that we would offer it to others freely because it has our hearts turned into the heart of our Savior.

Brethren don't need to be verbally abused. They need conviction and that conviction comes through the proper presentation of mercies of God. The mercies of God are what moves us to present ourselves back (Rom. 12:1-2) and what draws us away from the mold of the world. Only then will people be transformed. The words of the song we often sing: "My sin, O the bliss of this glorious thought, my sin, not in part but the whole, is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more, Praise the Lord, Praise the Lord, O my soul!" For the sensitive heart and sincere of faith, that's what everything is about that moves us from deep within. Praise the Lord, O our souls!