There’s a pretty big fad pushing its way through our culture these days. It’s the trend of
LifeCoaching. A Life Coach is someone who, for a relatively sizable sum of money, will walk you through some of life’s challenging moments and help you determine the proper trajectory on which your life should run. They help you determine something called a
Life Plan. While their version may not be called exactly that, it will undoubtedly contain some basis for decision-making, what you want to be when you grow up, how to succeed, where you should apply yourself, etc.
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Knowledge is a great thing! We strive for deeper knowledge at every turn. From a very early age we seek to grow through learning. We learn from our parents as they talk us through new tasks. We learn as we watch people do things we’ve never attempted. We learn from teachers, pastors, grandparents, and so many other grown-ups in our lives. Our society is driven by the idea of gaining knowledge. We ask our young people what their plans are after high school. We apply pressure to our young adults when we ask what they want to “do with the rest of the lives.” It’s all about more and more knowledge! 
I recently had the opportunity to spend a day on the water with some friends. We tooled around Alum Creek on their boat. We talked. We ate. We relaxed. We went tubing around the water. It was great fun. But while I was being dragged behind the boat in the tube, I began to think about the power of a wake. 
Have you ever seen one of those Where’s Waldo books? The premise of the is to find a character on each page. The character is Waldo. He’s dressed in a red and white striped shirt and blue jeans with a stocking cap. Some of the pages are quite easy to find this little man hiding among the green trees. But other pages are almost impossible! I remember a page in a Where’s Waldo book from my childhood that had Waldo in his red and white striped outfit marching with thousands of others in a crowded city. These thousands of others were also wearing red and white stripes and playing instruments. Needless today that one took quite a while to find but I remember the great sense of accomplishment when I was actually able to see Waldo! 
About a year ago we introduced the concept of Christian Neighboring to the congregation I serve. It was a lot of fun, and we were able to make impact in people’s lives as a result. The goal of Christian Neighboring is not to add numbers to the local church. As a matter of fact we don’t really talk all that much about church attendance or membership. The focus is on Jesus and knowing him. 
It was a Wednesday morning. I arrived at church a little early to put some finishing touches on a bible study that I had prepared for the ladies at church. We were reading through the book of Romans. It’s a rich book. The thoughts and teachings in this book are some of the heaviest in the entire new testament of the Bible. But they were not unfamiliar teachings to me. I had read these words more times that I can even count. I’ve preached messages on these words. I’ve translated them from their original language to english to help me get a better grasp on their context and meaning. 
Over the past couple of months we’ve looked at the idea of worship. We discussed the what, the how, and even a little bit of where and when. But it’s easy to miss something when we forget the reason behind it all. That’s why to close out our topic on worship, we look at why. Why do we worship anyway? 
So far in our look at worship, we’ve covered the topics of 
Last week we looked at the basic idea of what is worship. Simply put, worship is the action of God coming to us and filling us. It’s God inviting us to a time and a place, to a lifestyle of receiving from God then (and only then) do we return with hearts of thankfulness and praise. The whole post on 
As many of you know, I’m a pastor of a church. And a big part of what we do is this thing called worship. We hold it on different days of the week but generally we do this thing on Sunday mornings. There are many styles of worship. Some people use tons of songs while others use none at all. Some worship is packed with teaching and others use an interactive style approach to the time of worship.