worship on Emotional Intelligence

Too often we are given a choice—emotions or faith and belief. Yet as Dan Allender and Tremper Longman observe,  Emotion links our internal and external worlds. To be aware of what we feel can open ...

But what seems to happen in our lived practice of worship is that we don’t simply enjoy the stimulation; we expect it from God. We don’t just value “positive” emotions, but in our lived experience and...

Researchers have discovered that when people sing as a group, as they would in a choir, oxytocin courses through their brains. An uptick in the hormone is a fairly reliable indicator of feelings of tr...

Parakalō There are a lot of interesting words in this passage, including the second one. In the NIV, it says, “I urge...” In English, “urge” has some range. If I “urge you to reconsider,” we all kno...

Awe ignites joy because it makes us bend the knee.

Context In Chapter 18, Elijah was on Mount Carmel, confronting and taunting the 450 prophets of Baal when Baal didn’t (or couldn’t) answer their prayers and send down fire. Baal must have been sleepi...

Joy is the music that plays when our hearts are tuned to the frequency of God’s glory and our connection to it. Joy is the heart’s settled and worshipful contentment in our justification with God. Joy...

All forms of worship is like fire— it is a good servant, but it is a bad master.

Ancient Lens What can we learn from the historical context? "Hear O Israel..." The Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4-9) commands the Israelites to love the Lord their God with heart, soul, and m...

Look, the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful; it is that they are unconscious. They are default-settings. They're the kind of worship you just grad...

A. W. Tozer once wrote,  Left to ourselves we tend immediately to reduce God to manageable terms. We want to get Him where we can use Him, or at least know where He is when we need Him. We want a ...

The spiritual discipline of honoring the body helps us find our way between the excesses of a culture that glorifies and objectifies the body and the excesses of Christian tradition that have often de...

Man is a metaphysical being, an animal that nourishes its life on transcendence.

Heavenly Father, we confess that we often forget Who it is that we worship. You, Lord, are the great God Almighty and our Heavenly Father. Yet, at times, we deny that truth by living in fear and respo...

Ancient Lens What's the historical context? Context in Mark Recall the context. In chapter 11, Jesus entered Jerusalem to much acclaim and briefly entered the temple (vv. 1-11). The next day,...

I can remember that afternoon as if it were yesterday. I (Doug) was standing out in the middle of the green grass of the quad on campus, singing as loudly as I could. Twenty of my Christian friends an...

To handle the things of God without worship is always to falsify them.

Human beings are at their core defined by what they worship rather than primarily by what they think, know, or believe. That is bound up with the central Augustinian claim that we are what we love.

Ancient lens What's the historical context? Confronting the Giant Psalm 119 is the longest of all the Psalms and for this reason it has received the nickname “the Giant Psalm.” The Psalm is a...

Leader: "Now concerning spiritual gifts," brothers and sisters, "there are varieties of gifts," People: "But the same Spirit;" Leader: "And there are varieties o...

Preaching Commentary Parakalō There are a lot of interesting words in this passage, including the second one. In the NIV, it says, “I urge...” In English, “urge” has some range. If I “urge you to r...

AIM Commentary Ancient Lens What can we learn from the historical context? "Hear O Israel..." The Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4-9) commands the Israelites to love the Lord their God with h...

Martin Lindstrom observes: When people viewed images associated with the strong brands-the iPods, the Harley-Davidson, the Ferrari, and others-their -their brains registered the exact same patterns of...

These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is based on merely human rules they have been taught.

My heart I give you, Lord, promptly and sincerely.

Anointed One, Heal our stingy, selfish ways Silence our accusations End the worship wars The congregation is invited to offer their own prayers of confession silently We remember our faithful sist...

Leader: “With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high?" People: "Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil?" Le...

The closer you get to the truth, the clearer becomes the beauty, and the more you will find worship welling up within you. That's why theology and worship belong together.

Preaching Commentary Confrontation Most pastors don’t care for confrontation. Maybe, that could be said for most people. There are the rare few of us who thrive on the tension and drama that comes ...

Prayer that is used for any other purpose, no matter how lofty, than to personally converse with a personal God is a sham. It must never be used as part of public relations. It must never be put to th...