The 96th Psalm is closely comparable with 1 Chronicles 16:23-26. Psalm 29:2 also contains the words, "Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness." The New Revised Standard Version translated Psalm 96:9 to read, "Worship the Lord in holy splendor; tremble before him all the earth." Older people have long been accustomed to using the words from the King James Version.

Worship ought to be made beautiful in sight, sound, and thought. The physical settings of worship experiences serve to enhance and reinforce the yearning for understanding and completeness. This may be illustrated by a question: "Would you rather have a picnic on a graveled area in the heat of the sun, or where there is verdure of grass, and the shade of trees?" Worship is best when the scene is not barren, but blessed with good architecture, beauty of color, protection from the elements, and in the presence of an altar, giving it sacred significance.

We need to remember that truth is not only conveyed by words. It is also shared in feelings, situational inclusion, comfortable meditation and contemplation, which nurtures us. But worship can also take place in foxholes of distress, danger, and despair. God's messages and our responses do not always come in pretty packages with liturgical decorations. Sometimes they come in moments of destitution, hunger, inner distress, pain, and loneliness. What we make of what we learn at such times turns the place of discovery into a temple, and we worship in the beauty of holiness because we have found a relationship that truly enriches life.

Worship may take place in prison, a hospital or a nursing home; in a cemetery, a forest, or in a barren desert. It was in a desert setting that Jesus dealt with his temptations and life determinations, as he recalled Deuteronomy 6:13, and declared, "You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve." To the woman at the well in Samaria, Jesus said, "Believe me the hour is coming when on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. ... But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for such the Father seeks to worship him. God is a spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth." (See John 4:19-24)

All of us yearn for the experience of "worship in the beauty of holiness." The psychiatrist, Von Frankl, held that the urge to worship is instinctive in children in much the same way as the urge to nurse. He suggested that the ages of four and five are the times when children are most desirous and accepting for the experiences of worship. Esthetics and quality appreciation are important to the development and life of the child. The elderly demonstrate much of the same needs in their lives.

"The beauty of holiness" is a most suggestive and satisfying phrase. It conveys the idea of "Holy Presence," and of being involved in spiritual goodness. My how human hearts long for that! In the midst of crassness, competitiveness, controversies, hostility, and uncertainty of conditions, we need that respite desperately.

Symbolism, the historic sign of faith, serves to renew our sense of oneness with what has been generative before us, and proclaims that we too can be involved in the experience of personal inclusion.

The building we refer to as the church or the chapel ought to be as adequate, as comfortable, and as attractive as we want our homes to be. Shouldn't God's house be the most attractive and architecturally satisfying of all? Nostalgia is important to many of us, and plays a tremendous role in our religious and personal life. It is the incentive that leads us to memorialize -- to provide new and beautiful things that relate to worship. Yet, we know that nostalgic sentiment can become a barrier to doing what is most important for the future. We can become so attached to what we have, and give our loyalty to what is familiar, that we may neglect to see what we ought to develop.

"The beauty of holiness" should inspire us for the transformation of life. It should also challenge us to greater things, with God's encouragement and guidance. Contemplating "the beauty of holiness" is not enough! We must also ask, "And what else ought we to do, God?" The answer we receive may not be the one we might prefer, but we had better not pray, "Thy will be done," unless we are willing to be a part of that will. God calls us to the faithful application of our Christian belief and commitment to discipleship, in which is included "the beauty of holiness." Therein lies the great truth of the words with which we began this worship time:

"O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness;
Serve him with gladness all the earth." Amen.

The Benediction: Send us forth, O God, causing us to remember that the beauty of holiness needs to show in our lives, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

One man was trying to persuade another to attend church. He said, "Don't you think you owe the Lord something?" The other man answered, "Yes, I suppose so, but he isn't pressing me as hard as my other creditors!"

True - and he never will. God will never send you a bill, or send out somebody to collect what you owe him. He doesn't keep reminding us how deeply we are in debt. This is something he would like for us to find out for ourselves.

It is one thing to be told that we have a lot to be thankful for; it is quite another to make the discovery on our own. We can be told and not be convinced, but what we discover we can be sure of. And each of us needs to make the discovery that he or she is a deeply indebted person.

A Christian person is one who has made this discovery; a Christian person is a truly thankful one; there is no way to be a Christian and not be thankful. As Christians, we are indebted for the love which sent Christ into the world, for the love which brought him to a cross, for the power which brought him forth alive from death, for the grace by which we have our salvation, for the goodness by which we are blessed all along the way.

Worship time, whatever else it may be, surely is a thanksgiving time. As a grateful people, let us rejoice and be glad, and, as the psalmist said, "give to the Lord the glory due to his name."

The Board of Bethlehem Community Church gathered for its monthly meeting with solemn resolve. They were the largest, most prestigious congregation in their region, and with that honor came some serious responsibility. Every other year they hosted the Bishop's Winter Renewal Retreat for forty to fifty area pastors. Bethlehem Church's beautiful facility provided meeting rooms and meals for the specially invited clergy and guest speakers. The details were always impeccably managed. Each retreat closed with the Bishop preaching the Sunday morning sermon for the guests and congregation. Participants left feeling pampered and refreshed.

But this year the Board faced a potentially embarrassing dilemma. In the two years since the last retreat, Mae Ella Grant had joined the church.

Now, Bethlehem Community Church was known for its classic, high-church liturgy. The pastor's preaching style tended to attract the intellectual, professional members of the community. The organist and music director had both taught music at a local private college for years. They had attracted many professional singers and musicians to the sixty-voice choir and chamber orchestra. Mae Ella Grant's first visit to the church had been at Easter the previous year. After the choir's beautiful presentation of Handel's "Hallelujah Chorus," she had spontaneously cried out, "Praise the Lord!" Imagine the congregation's shock!

Most everyone had politely ignored that first, indelicate outburst. But the Grant family returned to worship. During each service she attended, Mae Ella managed to lose control of at least one "Amen!" or "Halleluia!" or "Praise the Lord!" The difficulty was that she was a perfectly charming person in every other way. When her family joined the church, she took an immediate role in Sunday School, the Social Concerns Committee and the Women's Service Society. She volunteered tirelessly to serve at dinners, help put out mailings, and work at the mealsite for the homeless. Everyone came to know and like her. Many tried, directly or indirectly, in gentle and not-so-gentle ways, to tell her how disturbing her outbursts were to the rest of the congregation. Mae Ella would blush and shake her red curls and apologize. But, with a sparkle in her eyes, she would say that, sometimes, there was no controlling the Holy Spirit!

Well, even the most conservative worshipers became accustomed to the outbursts after a year and a half. They could tolerate some spontaneity, especially when they knew Mae Ella was trying to conform. But what would the Bishop and visiting pastors think? The board was solemn, indeed, as they made their preparations.

Another Bishop's Winter Retreat was carried out as impeccably as always after the beginning of the New Year. With tastefully-chosen Christmas decorations still in place, awaiting the arrival of the magi, forty-five pastors were enveloped in the hospitality of Bethlehem Church. Mae Ella Grant was one of the hardest working volunteers that entire weekend. And on Sunday morning she and her husband, a psychology professor at the University, and their three curly-haired children were in their usual places to hear the Bishop speak. Mae Ella, having been cautioned by her many friends to control herself, was on her best behavior.

The choir's moving rendition of "Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming" nearly did her in. Mae Ella sat on her hands and bit her lip when they were finished. Then one of the guest speakers from the retreat rose to read the Psalm, and his words and the strength of his southern drawl were a balm on Mae Ella's soul. He read:

Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord from the heavens; praise him in the heights! Praise him, all his angels; praise him, all his host! Praise him, sun and moon; praise him, all you shining stars! ... Kings of the earth and all peoples, princes and all rulers of the earth! Young men and women alike, old and young together! Let them praise the name of the Lord, for his name alone is exalted; his glory is above earth and heaven ... Praise the Lord! (verses 1-3, 11-13, 14b)

The echo of his last words had not finished ringing through the carved oak rafters before Mae Ella's hands clapped before her and she shouted in return, "Oh, praise the Lord!"

Just as abruptly as it began, her applause stopped as Mae Ella's hands clapped over her mouth. She sank back in the pew in horror of what she had done. But her husband tapped her shoulder and pointed to the Bishop, who now stood in the pulpit beaming a warm smile in her direction.

"Thank you so much for that testimony to the glory of God," the Bishop said directly to Mae Ella. And as the crimson color began to recede slowly from her face, she listened in awe. The Bishop proceeded to preach an inspiring sermon on the importance of spontaneous praise in worship. In it he endorsed the expression of such praise as a regular part of the worship experience. When he came to the conclusion, the Bishop smiled impishly in Mae Ella's direction and said, "Will you all say 'Amen'?" Mae Ella's lilting voice led the staid congregation in a surprisingly strong Amen!

To worship God is to recognize his worth or worthiness; to look God-ward, and to acknowledge in all appropriate ways the value of what we see. The Bible calls this activity "glorifying God" or "giving glory to God," and views it as the ultimate end, and from one point of view, the whole duty of man (Ps. 29:2; 96:6; 1 Cor. 10:31).

Scripture views the glorifying of God as a sixfold activity: praising God for all that he is and all his achievements; thanking him for his gifts and his goodness to us; asking him to meet our own and others' needs; offering him our gifts, our service, and ourselves; learning of him from his word, read and preached, and obeying his voice; telling others of his worth, both by public confession and testimony to what he has done for us. Thus we might say that the basic formulas of worship are these: "Lord, you are wonderful"; "Thank you, Lord"; "Please Lord"; "Take this, Lord"; "Yes, Lord"; "Listen everybody!"

This then is worship in its largest sense: petition as well as praise, preaching as well as prayer, hearing as well as speaking, actions as well as words, obeying as well as offering, loving people as well as loving God. However, the primary acts of worship are those which focus on God directly and we must not imagine that work for God in the world is a substitute for direct fellowship with him in praise and prayer and devotion.

Let your actions praise the Lord. Praise is something you do more than something you say. It is an act of kindness which demonstrates that you are a child of God. You can worship God better with your life than with your words. The New Testament book of James says we will be judged at the end of time on whether or not we are doing what Christ wants us to do.

Faith without works is dead. Sure we are saved by faith in Jesus Christ, but true faith produces good works. To say, "Jesus, I love you," and then go through life without showing it, helps absolutely no one. When we stand before the Lord on Judgment Day, he’ll ask us, "What have you done? What do you have to show for your life? How have you served me and my church?" And if we respond, "Well Lord, I was planning on it, but you know how busy I was all week, and the weekend was about the only time I had for myself. I enjoyed church when I went, and I tried to lead a good life. Lord, I didn’t ask for the heart attack ... I really didn’t expect to die so soon." Then the Lord is going to say, "I’m sorry. You didn’t have time for me and my work in your life now I don’t have time for you in death."

Albert Schweitzer once said, "If there is something you own that you can’t give away, then you don’t own it, it owns you." What owns you? What makes you tick? What is important enough in life to keep us awake at night thinking about it? If we call Jesus Christ our Lord and really mean it, he must be number one in our life. God’s revealed truth in Christ must be the one thing that owns us. We must constantly desire to get really close to Jesus. And in our quest, our Bible must wind up with fingerprints all over it. Our presence in church must be weekly, and our contribution to God’s work must be felt and known because it’s so evident.

Let us begin each day with the words, "Lord what will you have me do today? Fill my mind with your mind." Only then can we go about our day giving praise to him, especially in our doing.

A Christian salesman was in a strange town over the weekend, so on Sunday morning he went to the church closest to his hotel. He noticed that the worship was a little different but soon became so inspired by the sermon that at one point he just couldn’t control himself and shouted out loud, "Hallelujah!" as he had been accustomed to doing in his home church.

Not noticing the stares of his fellow worshipers, he shouted, "Praise the Lord!" when another stirring sentence came along. After this second outburst, an usher came forward, tapped the man on the shoulder, and whispered sternly, "Nobody can praise the Lord in this church!"

A Christian should be an Hallelujah from head to toe. Long faces, stooped shoulders, the downward glance are products of a life foreign to Christianity. Much of the church must begin to realize that Christianity is more than breast beating and pious pretense.

At Pentecost, spirit came into the church. POW! The Holy Spirit arrived in full power. God rocked that band of fearful, squeaky, sometime-followers right out of their inactivity. Out they came from behind locked doors - right into the streets - telling about Jesus.

The placenta was now broken, the labor subsided and the church was born. Peter and John stood in the market place telling everyone who would listen that Jesus was the Lord. And nobody and nothing except death itself could quiet them.

Hey Christians, listen! Our God is a happening God. He belongs to the living present, the passing moment, the now. His powerful Spirit wants to make its impact upon our lives. God wants to happen in us.

Let him in and your whole being will "Praise the Lord!"

A child, with her father and mother, had been to a service of worship at their church. That night, saying her prayers, she put this in: "... and, Lord, we had a good time at church today. I wish you could have been there!"

Well, of course, the Lord had been there. He is always there. And one of the essential requirements for true worship is that the worshiper understand the truth of this. You know, Jacob almost missed the Lord at Bethel - perhaps he did altogether. You remember, he had a dream there, and it was only afterward, when reflecting on it, that Jacob began to suspect what had happened. He said, "Surely, the Lord was in this place, and I did not know it."

Please know, my friend, that as we meet here today, God's presence is very real. Worship is an interaction between the worshiper and the worshiped. When we worship, God participates in it. There is an interflow of giving and receiving between us and him: as we offer our penitent hearts, he gives forgiveness; as he offers us his grace, we open our hearts to receive; and there is a flowing back and forth of love - from our hearts to him and from him to us.

Yes, today God is here - not passively standing by, but actively present. Let us be aware of this, and may this awareness make this a time of true communion between each of us and our Lord.

An ancient legend tells us that when the Great Lord of All Being created all things - animals, birds, mountains, seas, and human persons - when he finished his work, there was only silence. No sound was anywhere. The angels, having examined the creation, reported to the Great Creator that, to be complete, it needed the sound of the Creator's praise. So then the Lord God put a song in the throats of birds, gave a murmur to running brooks, gave the wind a voice to whisper as it moved among the trees, and put a melody in the heart of humankind.

In worship here today let's let the sound of God's praise be heard. Let us joyously participate in creation's song of praise; let us supply some of that without which creation is incomplete. Don't be timid about it, the psalmist says - "O bless our God, you people, and make the voice of his praise to be heard!"

Let us then give voice to the melody that is implanted within us. Let it be heard - from our lips and from our hearts, in our singing and in our living, now and always.

Athanasian Creed: Athanasius, known as Athanasius of Alexandria, was the 20th bishop of Alexandria. His intermittent episcopacy spanned 45 years, of which over 17 encompassed five exiles. He is traditionally thought to be the author of the this Creed named after him. It was created to guard Nicene Christianity from the heresy of Arianism. It is widely accepted as orthodox and some abbreviated versions of it are still in use today. And yes, the intro and outro are actually part of the original text. 

Whoever desires to be saved should above all hold to the catholic faith.

Anyone who does not keep it whole and unbroken will doubtless perish eternally.

Now this is the catholic faith:

    That we worship one God in trinity and the trinity in unity,
    neither blending their persons
    nor dividing their essence.
        For the person of the Father is a distinct person,
        the person of the Son is another,
        and that of the Holy Spirit still another.
        But the divinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is one,
        their glory equal, their majesty coeternal.

    What quality the Father has, the Son has, and the Holy Spirit has.
        The Father is uncreated,
        the Son is uncreated,
        the Holy Spirit is uncreated.

        The Father is immeasurable,
        the Son is immeasurable,
        the Holy Spirit is immeasurable.

        The Father is eternal,
        the Son is eternal,
        the Holy Spirit is eternal.

            And yet there are not three eternal beings;
            there is but one eternal being.
            So too there are not three uncreated or immeasurable beings;
            there is but one uncreated and immeasurable being.

    Similarly, the Father is almighty,
        the Son is almighty,
        the Holy Spirit is almighty.
            Yet there are not three almighty beings;
            there is but one almighty being.

        Thus the Father is God,
        the Son is God,
        the Holy Spirit is God.
            Yet there are not three gods;
            there is but one God.

        Thus the Father is Lord,
        the Son is Lord,
        the Holy Spirit is Lord.
            Yet there are not three lords;
            there is but one Lord.

    Just as Christian truth compels us
    to confess each person individually
    as both God and Lord,
    so catholic religion forbids us
    to say that there are three gods or lords.

    The Father was neither made nor created nor begotten from anyone.
    The Son was neither made nor created;
    he was begotten from the Father alone.
    The Holy Spirit was neither made nor created nor begotten;
    he proceeds from the Father and the Son.

    Accordingly there is one Father, not three fathers;
    there is one Son, not three sons;
    there is one Holy Spirit, not three holy spirits.

    Nothing in this trinity is before or after,
    nothing is greater or smaller;
    in their entirety the three persons
    are coeternal and coequal with each other.

    So in everything, as was said earlier,
    we must worship their trinity in their unity
    and their unity in their trinity.

Anyone then who desires to be saved
should think thus about the trinity.

But it is necessary for eternal salvation
that one also believe in the incarnation
of our Lord Jesus Christ faithfully.

Now this is the true faith:

    That we believe and confess
    that our Lord Jesus Christ, God's Son,
    is both God and human, equally.

     He is God from the essence of the Father,
    begotten before time;
    and he is human from the essence of his mother,
    born in time;
    completely God, completely human,
    with a rational soul and human flesh;
    equal to the Father as regards divinity,
    less than the Father as regards humanity.

    Although he is God and human,
    yet Christ is not two, but one.
    He is one, however,
    not by his divinity being turned into flesh,
    but by God's taking humanity to himself.
    He is one,
    certainly not by the blending of his essence,
    but by the unity of his person.
    For just as one human is both rational soul and flesh,
    so too the one Christ is both God and human.

    He suffered for our salvation;
    he descended to hell;
    he arose from the dead;
    he ascended to heaven;
    he is seated at the Father's right hand;
    from there he will come to judge the living and the dead.
    At his coming all people will arise bodily
    and give an accounting of their own deeds.
    Those who have done good will enter eternal life,
    and those who have done evil will enter eternal fire.

This is the catholic faith:
one cannot be saved without believing it firmly and faithfully.

This ecumenical creed (428 A.D.) is probably unknown to most Christians because it is seldom, if ever, used in worship services. It is probably not used because of its length. The Nicene Creed has eighteen printed lines, whereas the Athanasian has 69. It is difficult for congregations to use because of the creed's intricate and complex terms.

Though the creed carries the name of Athanasius, he did not write it. It was the product of the church of his time. The creed was named after him to honor him for his brave and forceful defense of the Trinity. Athanasius (289-373) was a bishop in Alexandria, Egypt.

The creed deals primarily with the Trinity and Jesus as the Son of God. At this time, the heresy of Arius was prominent. He taught that Jesus was not fully human or divine and that the Holy Spirit was not God but only a divine influence. The Athanasian Creed denounced these false teachings and upheld the doctrine of the Trinity. Luther's high regard for this creed was expressed: "I doubt, since the days of the Apostles, anything more important and more glorious has ever been written in the church of the New Testament."

After the tomb was found empty and Jesus appeared to the early church on many occasions, doubt disappeared, and the early church had overwhelming confidence in the Lord. The church today must live and be about its ministry with the same Easter confidence. We say we rely on God’s mercy for our salvation; we need to give over all areas of our lives to God’s control. What aspects of ourselves are outside God’s control? Our temper? Our money? Our time? We need join the psalmist and say, "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me." Our trust in the Lord must be complete. We are no longer defeated people but powerful Easter people. Little children in danger or in despair literally run and throw themselves into the arms of their mother. This is confident faith. When was the last time we ran and thrust ourselves onto the Lord? A cautious step in his direction is better than none at all, but believing with abandonment is called forth by an empty tomb. God wants us to fall head over heels in love with him so he can bring the greatest joy and purpose possible into our lives.

God also encourages us to hold fast to hope without wavering. Scripture says, "Where there is no hope, the people perish." Too many of us view too much of our lives and the world as hopeless. Without hope, no great strides will be made in the future; there is no venturesome faith without hope. Without hope we burrow into the ground and live the life of a mole instead of walking freely in God’s sunlight. In a difficult situation, a hopeful people find the challenge and opportunity to do something great with God.

Confident in our faith, with an unwavering hope, the Lord also encourages us to stir up one another to love and good works. We must do something. Faith and hope must move from the abstract to the particular.

Easter people are called upon to celebrate the Festival of the Resurrection each Sunday, for each Sunday is a little Easter. "... Not neglecting to meet together," is how it is written in Hebrews. To break fellowship with the worshiping community is to pursue a weakening faith. It is also a form of denial of all that Christ means. True faith, strong faith, is never faith in isolation but must always be faith shared and strengthened through regular worship. We must encourage one another to be regular in worship and strong in the faith.

The end is drawing near. The Lord will return soon to reclaim his fallen creation. When the Lord of the church comes again, how will he find us? Will we be acting like people who have been touched by the meaning of the cross and the empty tomb? Therefore, let us continue to draw near to the Lord with a true heart and a confident faith. We hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering. We consider how to stir up one another to love and good works. We do not neglect to worship but encourage one another. In sum, we will all be Easter people.

In coming to church this morning, you are responding to an invitation, and I do not mean merely the invitation of the church, although the church does, of course, invite you. In coming to church, you are also coming to worship, and the service of this hour is merely the context in which you do this. The church may invite you to the service, and it does, but it is God who invites you to worship. It is he whom you worship; it is he to whom you come; it is he before whom you bow; it is he to whom you pray. And you do all of this because he invites you to do it: he has said, "Come unto me," and this morning you do this, you come to him. And he bids you welcome.

As you come to the Lord, in your heart you are saying:

Here I am, Lord; it is I again;
I present myself before you.
Consider me mercifully, I ask,
And look on me as tenderly as you can.
Touch me as gently as is proper,
And give me, not what I deserve,
But what your love wishes me to have.

And God meets you, and you will go away from here this morning knowing that in your heart you have been in touch with him.

Many invitations may come to you from many sources over many years, but no invitation that comes can ever have a loftier meaning for your life than the invitation that comes from God, the invitation which reads, "Come unto me," the invitation to which you make response in your heart just now.

It was one of the most wonderful and exciting moments in the history of the Christian faith. The Holy Spirit had fallen fresh on the lives of believers. People were filled with the passion and fires of the Holy Ghost. They were shouting joy from all directions. They were gathered from every persuasion and city, every nation and province, all glorifying God, speaking in foreign tongues but understanding each other, expressing different voices but still in one accord. This was the time of Pentecost, when God saw fit to pour out the spirit which spawned the birth of the Christian Church.

Today we need the fervor, fire, tongues, passion, and Spirit of Pentecost. Today the Christian Church needs a rebirth of the spirit, where souls are on fire with the love of Christ, where barriers are broken down and superficial divisions which sequester and divide people are bridged through a unity of the Spirit. Today more than ever the church needs to recapture the fires of Pentecost so that souls can break free from bondage, and healing, deliverance, and the full power of God's anointing can be experienced in every medium and every idiom by people filled with Holy Ghost madness.

Too many churches today are devoid of the Spirit of Pentecost because they are dry, stale, and discordant, where parishioners are in a somnambulist stupor; where worship services are vapid, staid, and wooden; where the preaching is dull, flat, and insipid; where the singing is Geritol-tired and without the vim, verve, and verse which speaks of a crucified, died and risen Lord; where if anyone taps his foot and says, "Amen," he is stared into silence, and if anyone shouts, "Thank you, Jesus," or "Help me, Holy Ghost," parishioners call EMS, the DS or 911! Too many churches have become mausoleums for the dead rather than coliseums of praise for a living God. They have lost the spirit of Pentecost! They have lost their enthusiasm. They have lost their joy for Jesus and find themselves suffering from what William Willimon calls "Institutional and Spiritual Dry Rot." Pentecost marks the beginning of a new spiritual movement in Christ; a movement birthed through the fires of the Holy Spirit; a movement steeped in the spirit of hope, renewal, and spiritual transformation. It is a movement where souls are on fire with the passion of the Holy Spirit and the Church today more than ever needs to recapture that spirit. If the Church is to survive the next millennium it must recapture some of the praise and enthusiasm it had two millennia ago. The spiritual energy and vitality of Pentecost has sustained the Church through two millennia.

On July 23, 2002, nine miners in Western Pennsylvania became trapped in a flooded mine. The injured and desperate men tied themselves together so that the stronger ones could sustain the weaker ones as they waited to be rescued. Journalists from across the nation reported the rescue effort, which took five long days. No one could believe it when all nine miners emerged safely from the mine.

On July 30, the people of the small mining community gathered for a worship service to thank God for saving the miners' lives. At the ceremony, there were ten miners' lamps set up on the altar, even though there were only nine miners. According to the pastor who presided over the worship celebration, the tenth lamp represented God's presence, which the miners claimed they could feel as they waited to be rescued. It was this "10th Man" they honored as they read Psalm 103: "Praise the Lord . . . Who redeems your life from the pit."  Welcome to this celebration of our "tenth man" the One who has rescued us from the pit.

I am the least of the apostles. 1 Cor 15:9

I am the very least of all the saints. Eph 3:8

I am the foremost of sinners. 1 Tim 1:15

Humility and a passion for praise are a pair of characteristics which together indicate growth in grace. The Bible is full of self-humbling (man bowing down before God) and doxology (man giving praise to God). The healthy heart is one that bows down in humility and rises in praise and adoration. The Psalms strike both these notes again and again. So too, Paul in his letters both articulates humility and breaks into doxology. Look at his three descriptions of himself quoted above, dating respectively from around A.D. 59, 63, and 64. As the years pass he goes lower; he grows downward! And as his self-esteem sinks, so his rapture of praise and adoration for the God who so wonderfully saved him rises.

Undoubtedly, learning to praise God at all times for all that is good is a mark that we are growing in grace. One of my predecessors in my first parochial appointment died exceedingly painfully of cancer. But between fearful bouts of agony, in which he had to stuff his mouth with bedclothes to avoid biting his tongue, he would say aloud over and over again: "I will bless the Lord at all times; his praise shall continually be in my mouth" (Ps. 34:1). That was a passion for praise asserting itself in the most poignant extremity imaginable.

Cultivate humility and a passion for praise if you want to grow in grace.

The Old Testament psalmist said: "My cup runneth over!" And that's a wonderful thing for anyone to be able to say. But there is an implication here. The implication is that the cup had been held open-side-up under a flowing stream. A cup isn't going to fill if it is bottom-side-up on a closet shelf somewhere. The stream may be flowing abundantly, but the inverted cup is only a roof that turns it away.

When we come to worship, we bring our cups; and in worship we turn them upright and hold them firmly under the stream of God's outpouring goodness. So let's do this. Let's align our lives to receive what God is trying to give. Let's take our cups and lift them up to the Lord as though we expect them to be filled. It is an act of faith to do this; but then, this is the way faith ought to act, isn't it? If we bring our cups to the Lord and hold them up before him, I strongly suspect that in due time we can say as the psalmist did: "My cup runneth over!"

The psalmist said this as though suddenly surprised to discover how utterly full that cup was. So, as we lift up these cups of ours and hold them there, perhaps we too will have the joyous surprise of discovering how wonderfully full they are. This is worship - the time of the uplifted cup.

Every Sunday morning, the people of a church in the Pacific Northwest say, "Peace be with you." They begin the worship service with a hymn of praise. The people confess their sins together, and hear of God's forgiveness. Then they are invited to turn to others around them and pass the peace. It has become an exuberant moment in an otherwise sober occasion. Friends leave their pews to embrace one another. Newcomers are warmly welcomed with a kind word or a hug.

Nobody thought much about the weekly ritual until the pastor received a letter from a man who had recently joined the congregation. The new member was a promising young lawyer from a prestigious downtown law firm. He drafted a brief but pointed letter on his firm's letterhead. "I am writing to complain about the congregational ritual known as 'passing the peace,'" he wrote. "I disagree with it, both personally and professionally, and I am prepared to take legal action to cause this practice to cease." When the pastor phoned to talk with the lawyer about the letter, he asked why the man was so disturbed. The lawyer said, "The passing of the peace is an invasion of my privacy."

I have no doubt that there are people who would take their church to court if too many people shook their hands, or if neighbors were too friendly, or if fellow pewsitters interrupted their private little religious moments. To that end, I think the pastor's response to the lawyer was right on target.

He said, "Like it or not, when you joined the church you gave up some of your privacy, for we believe in a risen Lord who will never leave us alone." Then he added, "You never know when Jesus Christ will intrude on us with a word of peace."

Someone writing in The Upper Room a few years ago told of a school-days experience when the music teacher drew a profusion of black dots on a white sheet of paper. None of the pupils could make anything of them. Then the teacher drew a few connecting lines, put in a few rests, and a clef at the beginning. It was then seen that the black dots took the form of a musical score. On sounding the notes, the pupils found themselves singing The Doxology: "Praise God from whom all blessings flow ..."

Here in worship we can connect our life's disconnected dots. Daily living is made up of a little of this and a little of that, small events and brief moments that occur now and then along the way. And often it is difficult for us to see that these have any meaning, or, if so, what the meaning is.

In worship we seek a God's-eye view of what we are; we seek to see ourselves as we are seen by him. This is to see our life in perspective and entire - not as a meaningless scattering of random dots on a blank page, but as a musical score that sings "Praise God from whom all blessings flow ..." Then each new day of living, each common task, becomes simply another note in this one majestic song.

As you know, one of the most magnificent artistic masterworks of all time is that memorable painting by Michelangelo on the vaulted ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome. A central element of this art is the portrayal of a hand reaching down. It is the hand of God. Another hand is reaching up. It is a human hand. The two hands are straining toward each other, and they are almost touching.

In worship we are reaching for the reaching hand of God. This is what worship is - our reach for the reaching hand. In Christ the heavenly Father is reaching to us; by our faith in Christ, we are reaching to him. And worship is the most perfect expression of this reach.

Here in worship we look up to God. May we see him not as a potentate who sits on a distant throne, his hands folded in his lap. A better picture would be that of a loving Father leaning hard over the parapet of heaven, his hand stretched forth, beckoning us to come. Worship time is tiptoe time - when we stand as tall as we can and reach as far as possible. Today, as we worship here, it is our prayer that each of us may be in touch with God.

In worship, we come to God. This is what worship is - a coming to the Lord. How accessible is he, how available? How difficult is it to get his attention, to get through to him, to get his ear?

"Because he has inclined his ear to me, therefore I will call upon him as long as I live." So wrote Israel's ancient singer in Psalm 116, verse 2. Here is the psalmist's picture of God: he is inclined, he has inclined his ear. To be inclined is to be sloped or slanted in some direction; and the psalmist is quite confident of God's inclination: "His ear is inclined toward me." Putting it another way, God is leaned forward listening.

Ordinarily, we should not think of God as having human or physical form. But if, for just a moment, we may picture him in this way, we can visualize the great, kind King on his throne, his body bent forward, an elbow on a knee, a hand cupped to an ear, intently looking in our direction.

This is the kind of God to whom we come when we worship, when we pray. It isn't difficult at all to get his attention; we have it already.

We pastors call it The Worship Wars. One can see the frowning battlements in the faces seated in pews, hear the rumble of its artillery in negative comments, and feel the white heat of its lethal shrapnel in board meetings.

"It's boring!"

"Why, those songs are so old, every time I sing them I get a backache!"

"Worship is becoming a nightclub act! What will we do next?"

"Choruses are 7-11 worship. Seven words repeated eleven times!"

Any pastor, any active church member alive today is in the trenches of this warfare. Thankfully, the scriptures can be our guide through the mine-fields of this battleground. And today's text, a parable of Jesus, is a good place to begin. [read Luke 18:9-14]

Well, ladies and gentlemen, there you have it. Two men. The same church service. Two totally different approaches to worship.

Mr. Pharisee about whom Jesus said "... trusted in himself that he was righteous and regarded others with contempt," so cleverly told us he came to church with one eye on himself, one eye on his neighbor, and no eye on God. And I might point out that Jesus said even though this man went to church, he was not a part of the community for he was "standing by himself." And Jesus said pointedly that he was never forgiven by God, for "all who exalt themselves will be humbled." I guess you might say he was so self-conscious he lost his God-consciousness.

The second gentleman, however, the tax collector, "went down to his home justified." It seems that even though he was not satisfied with himself, God was.

So, from the text, which of these two men do you relate to in worship? You went to church today. What happened?

Many years ago there was a country preacher who asked his new little rural congregation to obey the call of Christ Jesus. He gave them all index cards in worship and asked them to write down the names of every family member, every neighbor, and every co-worker they knew that didn't go to church anywhere. He stopped long enough for them to do just that in worship. When they got through writing, they had identified 1200 names.

Then the preacher asked them to begin to pray for all the people on their card – to place it on the refrigerator or in their Bible as a prominent reminder to pray daily for these people. Then he asked them to invite the people to come to worship, and keep inviting, and keep inviting, and keep inviting. That dying little church suddenly had new life, because the disciples in that little church had been sent to the lost sheep of their community!

The Church is not about us. It's about God. God wants to save us from ourselves. God knows who among us have been possessed by unclean spirits (somebody is going to all those so-called adult video stores and so-called gentlemen's clubs; somebody is frequenting those prostitutes that keep getting arrested). God knows who is sick and what's ailing them. God knows who is dead in their faith and damned near close to death in their bodies. God knows who is a modern-day leper and needs to be healed. God knows what kind of demons have hold of lives, and God wants to save people from hellish lives and from hell itself. And you may have been sleepwalking through worship so long that you don't know that God cares about all that stuff!

It was question and answer time at the worship workshop. Pastor and Author Thomas Long had been speaking on the theme of worship all morning to a group of people gathered in a church fellowship hall in a suburban neighborhood in Indiana. Dressed in sweatshirts and jeans, they had given up a Saturday of golf and gardening to sip coffee and listen politely as he rambled through discussions of Vatican II, Calvin's view of the Lord's Supper, the pros and cons of children's sermons, the development of the lectionary, the meanings of baptism, and other assorted topics about worship. Now, the lecturing done, he gulped down a little coffee and asked if there were any questions.

A hand shot into the air. It belonged to a fiftyish man with plump cheeks and rimless glasses who was, judging by the way his hand waved and bobbed, eager to speak. "There's one thing about our worship service here which really gripes me," he complained. "To me it's like fingernails being scraped

across a blackboard."

"What's that?" he cautiously asked, fully expecting him to say something about gender inclusive language, newfangled hymns, politics in the pulpit, or sermons on tithing. But it was not one of these issues which caused his aggravation.

"The announcements," he declared. "I just hate it when the minister spoils the mood of worship with all those dull announcements." Heads bobbed in vigorous agreement all around the room. The announcements were out of favor in that corner of Indiana, no question about it.

Thomas Long said he knew what the man meant. You're soaring above the pews on Sunday, your wings catching the strong breeze of the Spirit carrying you upward from "Joy to the World" toward the choir's lofty "For Unto Us a Child is Born," and then, thud ... the Christian Education Committee will meet in the library on Thursday at 7:30 .... " Like Icarus striving for the sun, you

find your wax wings suddenly melting, and you plummet back to the world of flesh, dust, and committee meetings.

The announcements do seem like a bag of peanuts at the opera, an ungainly moment of mundanity wedging its way into an hour of inspiration. What he tried to say to the questioner was that he understood how he felt and that, yes, the announcements were often rattled off without care or passion, and, yes, they did sometimes seem to be somewhat uninspiring, but that, after all, the details of the church's institutional life were important, and five minutes of them couldn't hurt, and so on.

After the meeting Rev. Long realized he blew it. He didn’t give the right answer. What he should have said is that, properly understood, the announcements are one of those places where the rubber of the church's theology hits the road. Indeed, it just may be that by moving seamlessly from "Holy, Holy, Holy" to "the telephone crisis counseling ministry is in need of additional volunteers," by punctuating its soaring praise with the commas of the earthy details of its common life, the church is expressing in its worship one of its most basic convictions about the character of God:

"The Word became flesh and dwelt among us....

Shortly after the turn of the century, Japan invaded, conquered, and occupied Korea. Of all of their oppressors, Japan was the most ruthless. They overwhelmed the Koreans with a brutality that would sicken the strongest of stomachs. Their crimes against women and children were inhuman. Many Koreans live today with the physical and emotional scars from the Japanese occupation.

One group singled out for concentrated oppression was the Christians. When the Japanese army overpowered Korea one of the first things they did was board up the evangelical churches and eject most foreign missionaries. It has always fascinated me how people fail to learn from history. Conquering nations have consistently felt that shutting up churches would shut down Christianity. It didn't work in Rome when the church was established, and it hasn't worked since. Yet somehow the Japanese thought they would have a different success record.

The conquerors started by refusing to allow churches to meet and jailing many of the key Christian spokesmen. The oppression intensified as the Japanese military increased its profile in the South Pacific. The "Land of the Rising Sum" spread its influence through a reign of savage brutality. Anguish filled the hearts of the oppressed and kindled hatred deep in their souls.

One pastor persistently entreated his local Japanese police chief for permission to meet for services. His nagging was finally accommodated, and the police chief offered to unlock his church ... for one meeting. It didn't take long for word to travel. Committed Christians starving for an opportunity for unhindered worship quickly made their plans. Long before dawn on that promised Sunday, Korean families throughout a wide area made their way to the church. They passed the staring eyes of their Japanese captors, but nothing was going to steal their joy. As they closed the doors behind them they shut out the cares of oppression and shut in a burning spirit anxious to glorify their Lord.

The Korean church has always had a reputation as a singing church. Their voices of praise could not be concealed inside the little wooden frame sanctuary. Song after song rang through the open windows into the bright Sunday morning. For a handful of peasants listening nearby, the last two songs this congregation sang seemed suspended in time. It was during a stanza of "Nearer My God to Thee" that the Japanese police chief waiting outside gave the orders. The people toward the back of the church could hear them when they barricaded the doors, but no one realized that they had doused the church with kerosene until they smelled the smoke. The dried wooden skin of the small church quickly ignited. Fumes filled the structure as tongues of flame began to lick the baseboard on the interior walls. There was an immediate rush for the windows. But momentary hope recoiled in horror as the men climbing out the windows came crashing back in their bodies ripped by a hail of bullets.

The good pastor knew it was the end. With a calm that comes from confidence, he led his congregation in a hymn whose words served as a fitting farewell to earth and a loving salutation to heaven. The first few words were all the prompting the terrified worshipers needed. With smoke burning their eyes, they instantly joined as one to sing their hope and leave their legacy. Their song became a serenade to the horrified and helpless witnesses outside. Their words also tugged at the hearts of the cruel men who oversaw this flaming execution of the innocent.

Alas! and did my Savior bleed?
and did my Sovereign die?
Would he devote that sacred head
for such a worm as I?
Just before the roof collapsed they sang the last verse,
their words an eternal testimony to their faith.
But drops of grief can ne'er repay
the debt of love I owe:
Here, Lord, I give myself away
'Tis all that I can do!
At the cross, at the cross
Where I first saw the light,
And the burden of my heart rolled away
It was there by faith I received my sight,
And now I am happy all the day.

The strains of music and wails of children were lost in a roar of flames. The elements that once formed bone and flesh mixed with the smoke and dissipated into the air. The bodies that once housed life fused with the charred rubble of a building that once housed a church. But the souls who left singing finished their chorus in the throne room of God. Clearing the incinerated remains was the easy part. Erasing the hate would take decades. For some of the relatives of the victims, this carnage was too much. Evil had stooped to a new low, and there seemed to be no way to curb their bitter loathing of the Japanese.

In the decades that followed, that bitterness was passed on to a new generation. The Japanese, although conquered, remained a hated enemy. The monument the Koreans built at the location of the fire not only memorialized the people who died, but stood as a mute reminder of their pain.

Inner rest? How could rest coexist with a bitterness deep as marrow in the bones? Suffering, of course, is a part of life. People hurt people. Almost all of us have experienced it at some time. Maybe you felt it when you came home to find that your spouse had abandoned you, or when your integrity was destroyed by a series of well-timed lies, or when your company was bled dry by a partner. It kills you inside. Bitterness clamps down on your soul like iron shackles.

The Korean people who found it too hard to forgive could not enjoy the "peace that passes all understanding." Hatred choked their joy.

It wasn't until 1972 that any hope came. A group of Japanese pastors traveling through Korea came upon the memorial. When they read the details of the tragedy and the names of the spiritual brothers and sisters who had perished, they were overcome with shame. Their country had sinned, and even though none of them were personally involved (some were not even born at the time of the tragedy), they still felt a national guilt that could not be excused. They returned to Japan committed to right a wrong. There was an immediate outpouring of love from their fellow believers. They raised ten million yen ($25,000). The money was transferred through proper channels and a beautiful white church building was erected on the sight of the tragedy. When the dedication service for the new building was held, a delegation from Japan joined the relatives and special guests.

Although their generosity was acknowledged and their attempts at making peace appreciated, the memories were still there. Hatred preserves pain. It keeps the wounds open and the hurts fresh. The Koreans' bitterness had festered for decades. Christian brothers or not, these Japanese were descendants of a ruthless enemy. The speeches were made, the details of the tragedy recalled, and the names of the dead honored. It was time to bring the service to a close. Someone in charge of the agenda thought it would be appropriate to conclude with the same two songs that were sung the day the church was burned.  The song leader began the words to "Nearer My God to Thee."

But something remarkable happened as the voices mingled on the familiar melody. As the memories of the past mixed with the truth of the song, resistance started to melt. The inspiration that gave hope to a doomed collection of churchgoers in a past generation gave hope once more. The song leader closed the service with the hymn "At the Cross." The normally stoic Japanese could not contain themselves. The tears that began to fill their eyes during the song suddenly gushed from deep inside. They turned to their Korean spiritual relatives and begged them to forgive. The guarded, calloused hearts of the Koreans were not quick to surrender. But the love of the Japanese believers not intimidated by decades of hatred tore at the Koreans' emotions.

At the cross, at the cross
Where I first saw the light,
And the burden of my heart rolled away ...

One Korean turned toward a Japanese brother. Then another. And then the floodgates holding back a wave of emotion let go. The Koreans met their new Japanese friends in the middle. They clung to each other and wept. Japanese tears of repentance and Korean tears of forgiveness intermingled to bathe the site of an old nightmare. Heaven had sent the gift of reconciliation to a little white church in Korea.

We have come today to a time of very special observance - Sunday! This is the Lord's Day, the sabbath. And here is how it came to be:

It was on this day of the week, Sunday, that Jesus, having been crucified, arose from the dead. His disciples and friends began immediately, on the first day of each week, to celebrate his resurrection and his continuing presence with them.

With only a few exceptions, those people were Jewish, worshiping in their synagogues on the seventh day, Saturday. After Jesus' resurrection, his followers continued to take part in the synagogue worship; and then on Sunday they would meet again, just the disciples themselves, for their own special celebration of the resurrection of their Lord.

Persecutions began, and as these increased, these Jewish followers of Jesus were more and more unwelcome in the synagogues, and the synagogue experience was less and less satisfying to them. Gradually, as their Saturday worship diminished in its importance to them, the importance of their Sunday experience increased immensely. At last, instead of having two days of worship, they had only one, the only remaining one, Sunday - and they called it the Lord's Day.

On this day each week they arranged to meet in small groups somewhere - in their homes, in caves or catacombs - wherever they could. In Antioch they were first called Christ Followers, or Christians. Ostracized and maligned by many of their own countrymen and hounded and hunted by Roman authorities, and later, under whatever conditions prevailed at the time, the "Christians" have, without interruption, maintained this practice of Lord's Day assembly from those first days until now.

It is a magnificent tradition in which we stand, you and I, as we meet here today.

In the year 1873, Horatio Spafford, a Christian lawyer from Chicago, placed his wife and four children on the luxury liner Ville de Havre sailing from New York to France. Spafford expected to join them in about three or four weeks after finishing up some business, but with the exception of his wife he never saw them again. The trip started out beautifully. But on the evening of November 21, 1873, as the Ville de Havre proceeded peacefully across the Atlantic, the ship was suddenly struck by another vessel, the Lochearn, and sank a mere thirty minutes later, with the loss of nearly all on board.

On being told that the ship was sinking Mrs. Spafford knelt with her children and prayed that they might be saved or be made willing to die, if such was God's will. A few minutes later, in the confusion, three of the children were swept away by the waves while she stood clutching the youngest. Suddenly the youngest child was swept from her arms. Mrs. Spafford became unconscious and awoke later to find that she had been rescued by sailors from the Lochearn. But the four children were gone.

Back in the United States, Horatio Spafford was waiting for news of his family, and at last, ten days later (after the rescue ship had reached Cardiff), it came. "Saved alone" was his wife's message. That night Spafford walked the floor of his rooms in anguish, as anyone would have done. But this was not all. For as he shared his loss with His Lord, a loss which could not be reversed in this life, he found, as many have, that peace which indeed passes all understanding. Toward morning he told a friend named Major Whittle, "I am glad to be able to trust my Lord when it costs me something." Then, sometime later, as he reflected on the disaster at sea, he wrote this hymn:

When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea-billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say,
It is well, it is well with my soul.

Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come,
Let this blest assurance control,
That Christ has regarded my helpless estate,
And hath shed His own blood for my soul.

My sin-Oh, 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!

And, Lord, haste the day when the faith shall be sight,
The clouds be rolled back as a scroll,
The trump shall resound and the Lord shall descend,
"Even so"—it is well with my soul.

Most of you don't know the name of the great Christian hymn writer Ira Sankey, who wrote over 200 hymns. He was an associate of Dwight L. Moody. He lived in Brooklyn, New York during the last years of his life. After years of blindness due to age and ill health, he died in 1908. Just before his death, in his blindness and his frailty, he dictated this farewell message: "I have only a little longer of earthly darkness, and then the sunshine of the Father's throne. God is love. Good night, good night."

Those words by a man who left forever his mark on earth by writing great hymns of praise to God tell us something very important about why we have gathered here this Easter Day to celebrate the risen Christ. For Ira Sankey's blind eyes could see God when it mattered the most, as he was passing from this life into the life immortal. He had learned through a lifetime of praise and service to his Lord, that Jesus Christ is that missing piece in human life, and that in the end, God is all that matters.

The first homemaker placed her cake in the oven and went about her duties. With watchful care in time she presented her family a beautiful and delicious cake.

The second homemaker prepared her cake and placed it in the oven and in time was greatly disappointed for the cake was flat and a failure. She had left out one ingredient, the baking powder.

There are ingredients in life that cannot be left out without contributing to failure and defeat.

Among them are appreciation, which is registered in worship and adoration of God. Respect which is included through worship of God. Love which is expressed in worship.

The love and worship of God are the ingredients which put all things under the light of His truth and beauty.

Do not leave out the ingredients!

One of the great celebrative anthems that comes to us out of African-American culture is the powerful spiritual "Ain't Got Time To Die." It was written by Hall Johnson and it has these joyfully dramatic words:

Been so busy praising my Jesus,
Been so busy working for the Kingdom,
Been so busy serving my Master…
Ain't got time to die.

If I don't praise him,
If I don't serve him,
The rocks gonna cry out
Glory and honor, glory and honor…
Ain't got time to die."

In this inspiring and wonderful spiritual, the composer is underscoring and celebrating the joy and excitement of being a Christian, the joy and excitement of serving our Lord in gratitude for what he has done for us. The point that this spiritual is trying to drive home to us with great enthusiasm is… that when we really become Christians, when we really commit our lives to Christ… then, we can't sit still… we become so excited, so thrilled, so grateful for our new life in Christ that we can't help but love Him, praise Him, serve Him, and share Him with others.

This is precisely what happened to Andrew. He found the Messiah, he encountered Jesus – and he was so excited he couldn't sit still.

From the top of a towering big-city skyscraper a woman looked down on the streets and sidewalks below. Seeing the people moving about, she observed that they looked to her like ants. Then she added, "I imagine this is the way people look to God."

No, no, not so, my dear lady - you are wrong about this! God sees each of us and all of us life-size. He is not far away that we should appear small to him. He is very near, and he sees us as we are.

Some people have thought we are pretty small, but God doesn't see us that way. One of the hymn writers has said we are "weak worms of the dust," and a philosopher that "we are not more than a bubble." But God says that we are only "a little lower than angels," and "crowned with glory and honor." Life-size, as God sees it, is pretty big. After all, we are the creatures he sent his Son into the world to die for. He looks on us as really worth something.

In worship, we are saying, "Thou, God, seest me." As we say this today, we can be sure that he sees us in the full dimension of what we are. May God help us to see ourselves this same way. For, ultimately understood, it is as we value ourselves that we manage our lives - in the decisions we make, the directions we take. In our worship today, may we see ourselves as the persons God sees as he gives his Son to redeem us.

What other gods could we have besides the Lord? Plenty. For Israel there were the Canaanite Baals, those jolly nature gods whose worship was a rampage of gluttony, drunkenness, and ritual prostitution. For us there are still the great gods Sex, Shekels, and Stomach (an unholy trinity constituting one god: self), and the other enslaving trio, Pleasure, Possessions, and Position, whose worship is described as "The lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life" (1 John 2:16). Football, the Firm, and Family are also gods for some. Indeed the list of other gods is endless, for anything that anyone allows to run his life becomes his god and the claimants for this prerogative are legion. In the matter of life's basic loyalty, temptation is a many-headed monster.

Leslie Weatherhead in his book, A Private House Of Prayer, suggests that the structure of the content of prayer be likened to a house of seven rooms. Each room is a division of prayer. There may be some duplication with ACTSS which we just discussed.

The first room is for the affirmation of God's presence. If prayer is a conversation with God, obviously it is necessary for him to be present. When we pray, are we aware of his presence or like Moses do we see only a burning bush? In a hymn Tersteegen sings, "God himself is present; let us now adore him and with awe appear before him." What applies to worship, applies also to prayer. When we pray, we are talking to a real person, not to an idea, or ideal, or ideology, or a theological concept. In prayer we are not talking to ourselves or to the ceiling. In spirit God is there to hear our prayer. We need to realize this and pray accordingly.

The next room is for the thanksgiving and praise. We have been blessed beyond measure and therefore to thank and praise God is in order. Before we begin our prayer, we need to review how good God has been to us. If we are bereft of blessings, our greatest gift is Jesus who loved us enough to die for us.

Go to the next room for the confession of sins. Sin separates us from God. Sin erects an impenetrable curtain which prevents us from seeing God. The separation prevents our hearing the voice of God. We come out of a dirty world with the dirt of sin clinging to us. Before we can be presentable to a holy God we need spiritual cleansing. Thus, in prayer we confess our sins and plead for his mercy.

The fourth room is labelled "Reception of God's grace." We have confessed our sins and begged for mercy. What is God's response? It is grace in terms of pardon and acceptance. At this time in our prayers we remember his promises to be with us always, to forgive us, and to bless us with the Holy Spirit.

Now it is time to go to the room of petition. We have the opportunity to tell God about our personal needs in our own lives, or in our family, or in our work. But, we have petitions not only for ourselves, but others want and need our prayers in their behalf. This takes us to the sixth room of prayer. When we pray for others, it is called intercessory prayer. When his co-worker, Melanchthon, was sick, Luther prayed for him: "I besought the Almighty with great vigor ... quoting from Scripture all the promises I could remember, that prayers should be granted and said that he must grant my prayer, if I was henceforth to put faith in his promises."

The effectiveness of a friend's prayer on our behalf depends on the relationship of the pray-er to God. James wrote, "The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective" (James 5:16). That is why we want a godly mother or a pious pastor to pray for us. Roman Catholics ask the saints and the Virgin Mary to pray for them. On the eve of a historic boxing match, a friend was visiting the champ in his hotel suite. During the conversation a murmuring feminine voice was heard. "That's my wife," the champ explained. "She's praying for me to win." "Oh, and I suppose you pray, too?" The champ replied, "My wife is more devout than I am. If God won't do it for her, He certainly won't do it for me."

The seventh room in the house of prayer is meditation. Some do not understand what meditation is and consequently do not know how to meditate. It is the act of reflecting, of silence, and listening to God. It calls for thinking about God and our relationship to him. It is a time to review past dealings with God. Then we reflect on how good God has been in those past dealings. After that, we remember God's promises to us: promises of peace, protection, and provision. Meditation can be summed up in three R's: review, reflect, and remember.

It was a spectacular fall day when the leaves in the Pennsylvania mountains were at their zenith of color. Robert Raines drove up the mountain road higher and higher with the scenery becoming ever more vast and spectacular.  Just as he reached the top of the mountain, he spotted a car parked just off the road. Curious, he stopped.  A man was standing about two hundred yards away on the side of the mountain overlooking a wondrous sea of color.  The man had a trumpet lifted to his lips.  Do you know what he was playing?  It was the doxology.  "Praise God from whom all blessings flow.  Praise Him all creatures here below.  Praise Him above ye heavenly hosts.  Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost." 

I'd like to know that trumpet player.  He could teach me two things.  One, I need to be more aware of the untold blessings of God in my life.  Two, I need to be bold in expressing my gratitude to god and to others.  I need to forget what others might think and play my trumpet to the sky when joy and thanksgiving wail up within.

Becoming good at the things that build inner confidence and calm takes practice and a dash of creativity! The following list might provide some cloudseeding for a brainstorm or two of your own:

1. Pay off your credit cards.
2. Take off ten pounds or accept where you are without any more complaints.
3. Eat dinner together as a family for seven days in a row.
4. Take your wife on a dialogue date (no movie, guys).
5. Read your kids a classic book (Twain's a good start).
6. Memorize the Twenty-third Psalm as a family.
7. Give each family member a hug for twenty-one days in a row (that's how long the experts say it takes to develop a habit).
8. Pick a night of the week in which the television will remain unplugged.
9. Go out for a non-fast food dinner as a family.
10. Pray for your spouse and children every day.
11. Plan a vacation together.
12. Take a vacation together.
13. Read a chapter from the Bible every day until it becomes a habit.
14. Sit together as a family in church.
15. Surprise your teenager. Wash his car and fill up his gas tank.
16. Take an afternoon off from work; surprise your child by excusing him from school and taking him to a ball game.
17. Take a few hours one afternoon and go to the library as a family.
18. Take a walk as a family.
19. Write each member of your family a letter sharing why you value them.
20. Give your spouse a weekend getaway with a friend (same gender!) to a place of their choice.
21. Go camping as a family.
22. Go to bed early (one hour before your normal bedtime) every day for a week.
23. Take each of your children out to breakfast (individually) at least once a month for a year.
24. Turn down a promotion that would demand more time from your family than you can afford to give.
25. Religiously wear your seat belts.
26. Get a complete physical.
27. Exercise a little every day for a month.
28. Make sure you have adequate life insurance on both you and your spouse.
29. Write out information about finances, wills, and important business information that your spouse can use to keep things under control in the event of your death.
30. Make sure your family car is safe (tires, brakes, etc.) and get it tuned up.
31. Replace the batteries in your smoke alarm.
32. Put a security system in your house.
33. Attend the parent/teacher meetings of each child as a couple.
34. Help your kids with their homework.
35. Watch the kids on Saturday while your wife goes shopping (but if a friend calls, don't say that you're "babysitting").
36. Explain to your spouse exactly what you do for a living.
37. Put together a picture puzzle. (One thousand pieces or more.)
38. Take time during the week to read a Bible story to your children and then discuss it with them.
39. Encourage each child to submit to you his most perplexing question, and promise him that you'll either answer it or discuss it with him.
40. Finish fixing something around the house.
41. Tell your kids how you and your spouse met.
42. Tell your kids about your first date.
43. Sit down and write your parents a letter thanking them for a specific thing they did for you. (Don't forget to send it!)
44. Go on a shopping spree where you are absolutely committed to buying nothing.
45. Keep a prayer journal for a month. Keep track of the specific ways that God answers your needs.
46. Do some stargazing away from the city with your family. Help your children identify constellations and conclude the evening with prayer to the majestic God who created the heavens.
47. Treat your wife to a beauty make-over (facial, manicure, haircut, etc.). I hear they really like this.
48. Give the kids an alternative to watching Saturday morning cartoons (breakfast at McDonald's, garage sales, the park, chores, etc.).
49. Ask your children each day what they did at school (what they learned, who they ate lunch with, etc.).
50. After you make your next major family decision, take your child back through the process and teach him how you arrived at your decision.
51. Start saying to yourself "My car doesn't look so bad."
52. Call you wife or husband from work just to see how they're doing.
53. Compile a family tree and teach your children the history of their ancestors.
54. Walk through an old graveyard with your children.
55. Say no to at least one thing a day even if it's only a second piece of pie.
56. Write that letter to the network that broadcast the show you felt was inappropriate for prime-time viewing.
57. Turn off the lights and listen to a "praise" tape as you focus your thoughts on the Lord.
58. Write a note to your pastor praising him for something.
59. Take back all the books in your library that actually belong in someone else's library.
60. Give irritating drivers the right to pull in front of you without signaling and yelling at them.
61. Make every effort to not let the sun go down on your anger.
62. Accept legitimate criticism from your wife or a friend without reacting or defending yourself.
63. If your car has a Christian bumper sticker on in drive like it.
64. Do a Bible study on the "wise man" and the "fool" in Proverbs...and then apply what it takes to be wise to your life.
65. Make a list of people who have hurt your feelings over the past year...then check your list to see if you've forgiven them.
66. Make a decision to honor your parents, even if they made a career out of dishonoring you.
67. Take your children to the dentist and doctor for your wife.
68. Play charades with your family, but limit subjects to memories of the past.
69. Do the dishes for your wife.
70. Schedule yourself a free day to stay home with your family.
71. Get involved in a family project that serves or helps someone less fortunate.
72. As a family, get involved in a recreational activity.
73. Send your wife flowers.
74. Spend an evening going through old pictures from family vacations.
75. Take a weekend once a year for you and your spouse to get away and renew your friendship.
76. Praise your spouse and children in their presence to someone else.
77. Discuss a world or national problem, and ask your children for their opinion on it.
78. Wait up for your teenagers when they are out on dates.
79. Have a "quiet Saturday" (no television, no radio, no stereo...no kidding).
80. If your children are little, spend an hour playing with them but let them determine the game.
81. Have your parents tell your children about life when they were young.
82. Give up soap operas.
83. De-clutter your house.
84. If you have a habit of watching late night television, but have to be to work early every morning, change your habit.
85. Don't accept unnecessary breakfast appointments.
86. Write missionaries regularly.
87. Go through your closets and give everything that you haven't worn in a year to a clothing relief organization.
88. Become a faithful and frequent visitor of your church's library.
89. Become a monthly supporter of a Third World child.
90. Keep mementos, school projects, awards, etc. of each child in separate files. You'll appreciate these when they've left the nest.
91. Read the biography of a missionary.
92. Give regularly and faithfully to conscientious church endeavors.
93. Place with your will a letter to each family member telling why you were glad you got to share life with him or her.
94. Go through your old records and tapes and discard any of them that might be a bad testimony to your children.
95. Furnish a room (or a corner of a room) with comfortable chairs and declare it the "disagreement corner." When conflicts arise, go to this corner and don't leave until it's resolved.
96. Give each child the freedom to pick his favorite dinner menu at least once a week.
97. Go over to a shut-in's house as a family and completely clean it and get the lawn work done.
98. Call an old friend from your past, just to see how he or she is getting along.
99. Get a good friend to hold you accountable for a specific important need (Bible reading, prayer, spending time with your family, losing a few pounds, etc.).
100.  Establish a budget.
101. Go to a Christian marriage enrichment seminar.

Much of Holland was once part of the ocean; but the industrious Dutch built great dikes far out in the shallow sea, and so reclaimed the land. As their dikes hold the ocean back, on the landward side the people occupy their homes, farmers till their land, and the wheels of commerce turn.

Many of the rural lowlanders have a quaint way of referring to Sunday, the Christian sabbath. They speak of it as God's dike. Why? one might ask. Because what God's people do on this day each week serves society in the same way a dike serves the land. As the dike holds back the sea, so does Sunday and the worship experience help to hold back the flood of evil which is forever threatening to overflow the people.

God interposes the instruction and inspiration of Christian worship as a bulwark against wrong. The Christian sabbath is civilization's strongest social buttress against the overwhelming flood of evil and fear and despair which are forever pressing hard upon us. By means of it, the forces of righteousness are made stronger against all the powers that would undo us.

What we do in worship today and every Sunday is to strengthen our dikes, to help keep them in good repair. Today we are not merely doing something for ourselves - we are also doing something for the world. We are taking part in an unceasing effort which involves many millions of people and stretches over many centuries of time. Let's be aware of the vast enterprise we're involved in, and let's be glad we're in it.

According to a traditional Hebrew story, Abraham was sitting outside his tent one evening when he saw an old man, weary from age and journey, coming toward him. Abraham rushed out, greeted him, and then invited him into his tent. There he washed the old man's feet and gave him food and drink. The old man immediately began eating without saying any prayer or blessing. So Abraham asked him, "Don't you worship God?"

The old traveler replied, "I worship fire only and reverence no other god."

When he heard this, Abraham became incensed, grabbed the old man by the shoulders, and threw him out of his tent into the cold night air.

When the old man had departed, God called to his friend Abraham and asked where the stranger was. Abraham replied, "I forced him out, because he did not worship you."

God answered, "I have suffered him these eighty years although he dishonors me. Could you not endure him one night?"

Deuteronomy 26:4 - "Then the priest shall take the basket from your hand, and set it down before the altar of the Lord your God."

Among the nomadic tribes there was no developed priesthood. Religion partook of the general simplicity of desert life; apart from the private worship of household gods, the ritual observances were mainly visits to the tribal sanctuary to salute the god. with a gift of the first-fruits. These acts required no priestly aid; each man slew his own victim and divided the sacrifice in his own family circle; the share of the god was the blood which was smeared upon or poured out beside the stone set up as an altar. In the beginning, therefore, we find no trace of a sacrifical priesthood.

With the beginning of nationality, however, starting with the Exodus and developing into the Conquest, there was developed a unity of worship. However, even then, this unity was still not expressed in fixed institutions; the first-fruits were still a free gift, and every household represented and consumed them with his own family circle in a sacrificial meal without preistly aid.

In fact, rather than being just an officiator at sacrifice, the priest was the organ of revelation and he gave guidance in the ordinary affairs of life, the word for priest as adopted by the Hebrews from a Canaanite word, means "soothsayer," or "revealer." So, then, the function of the early priests was to reveal the word of God, either by reference to a legal code which contained the revealed will of God and the accumulated experience of the past.

Even after the people settled and sancturies were built, the role of the priest continued to be more of a judge than the person we think of as offering sacrifice. However, as more and more sanctuaries appeared and the Hebrews absorbed more of the ways of their neighbors, and, ultimately, with the establishment of the monarchy, a more and more elaborate ritual developed that required a professional priesthood.

There were regular public offerings maintained by the king and offered by the priests; private sacrifices required priestly aid; their judicial functions also brought them profit, since fines were exacted for certain offenses and paid to them. The greater priestly offices were therefore in every respect very important places, and the priests of the royal sanctuaries were among the grandees of the realm, but there is no indication of a hierarchy existing by divine right.

It was in post-exilic Israel that the priesthood as we usually think of it came into existence, although the reform by Josiah in 621 B.C. gave the prerogative of sacrifice to the priests alone. Already in the time of Josiah, altar service and not the judicial or "teaching" function had become the essential thing, but by the time of Ezekiel it had mainly to do with ritual, with the distinction between holy and profane, clean and unclean, with the statutory observances at festivals and the like.

The holiness of Israel centered in the sanctuary, and round the sanctuary stood the priests, who alone could approach the most holy things without profanation, and who were the guardians of Israel’s sanctity, partly by protecting the one meeting place of God and man from profane contact, and partly as mediators of the continual atoning rites by which breaches of holiness are expiated. In the old kingdom the priests had shared the place of the prophets as the leaders of thought were the psalmists and the scribes, who spoke much more directly to the piety of the nation.

From the foundation of the Hasmonean state to the time of Herod the history of the high priesthood merges into the political history of the nation; from Herod onward the priestly aristocracy of the Sadducees lost its chief hold over the nation and expired in vain controversy with the Pharisees.

Today, aside from the Roman Catholic Church, and the High Episcopal Church, we prefer to use the term "pastor" rather than priest for our spiritual leaders. But we must recognize the influence of the Hebrew priesthood on the thought and organization of Christendom. Two main points were taken over - the doctrine of priestly mediation and the system of priestly hierarchy. We cannot here go into doctrinal matters, but it is enough to say that the concepts of sacrifice which are still retained in the Roman system are the stumbling-block on which Protestant apologists fall. Within the Roman Church the old priestly system still is evident in many ways.

It was Sunday morning in the mountain country of central Europe, and the church bells were ringing. A man walking a mountain path came upon a shepherd lad with his father's flock of sheep. The boy was kneeling, and, looking up, was reciting the alphabet.

The man asked, "What are you doing?" and the boy answered, "I am praying." Somewhat sternly, the man said, "Praying? What kind of praying is this? Just saying letters, no words at all?" The lad replied: "I've never learned any prayers, sir. But it's Sunday morning and the bells are ringing in the valley, and I thought I wanted to pray, and I thought maybe - well, maybe - if I just said all of the letters, God might hear them and put them together for me, and spell out what I ought to say."

This, my dear friend, is true worship - worship in its essence, worship at its purest and best: simply to place ourselves before God and turn it all over to him. This is the ultimate devotion, the first act of worship and the final one -here it begins and here it ends. Whatever else we may do - all our praying, all our preaching, all our singing - nothing ever surpasses this: simply to turn it all over to him and say, "Here it is, Lord; take it, and make it come together as it should; take it, and spell it out for me, if you please."

When we have done this, we will have prayed something pretty close to the perfect prayer.

"Mother, isn't our Church better than the one Eddie goes to?"

"Billy, we do not talk that way about places of worship," replied the mother. "God, our Heavenly Father, is worshiped in each place."

"But he says his is better," Billy persisted, "and I say it is not. Which of us is right?"

"Perhaps his is better for him, and ours is better for us. We do have a freedom of choice in America, and that is a fine blessing," stated the mother.

"What do you mean? One has to be better than the others, doesn't it?" asked the son.

Faced with the question while shopping for clothes, the mother used the material at hand to explain her answer. She pointed out the many different pairs of trousers on the counters. There are some that fit better than others, and even with the size correct her choice of color, style and purpose, as well as cost, would determine the selection. All the trousers were made to clothe the wearer, yet some were most suitable for work or play.

"Yes, there are some who will criticize you for what you wear, and for where you worship. But, Billy, you will come to know what fits best and feels best, and suits your needs. But you may proudly wear what you have chosen," reasoned the mother.

We are all made by the same Heavenly Father and dwell within the boundaries of what God has made for man. We worship Christ in many different ways. Some honor Him as a great Teacher, as a perfect Example, as the Son of God, and as a personal Saviour.

We all may honor Him in remembrance of the Words He spoke, "In this shall ye know my disciples, that ye love one another," and "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath."

Each disciple saw Christ from his own point of experience and belief, but all sought to follow as best he knew how. Yet they quarreled among themselves.

Through our faith in God, Human hatreds are to be overcome by Godly Love.

The war-time song "Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition" parallels a truth revealed in a true story of a local Bedford citizen.

During the war this army pilot and his co-pilot and crew were flying a B24. One day its controls jammed as they took off and they skimmed precariously low as they neared the mountains.

The co-pilot folded his arms and said, "Our number is up," but the pilot, helped by the gunner, feverously worked at the controls and finally cleared the controls.

The pilot reports, "I got a transfer to another plane to get rid of the co-pilot. I want no fatalist at my side."

Prayer is not a resignation to fate, but true prayer in Christ's name is employing the power that God makes available for Christian living.

We sing, praise God and pray, but the ammunition to fight life's battles must be employed daily. Prayer is God's channel of power to bless mankind.

We must pray, believe, and work!

In the old days of ocean sailing, a small boy was traveling on shipboard with his father. About once a day the boy saw the captain stand on deck with sextant in hand, and, as they used to say, "shoot the stars." The boy said to his father, "Daddy, what is the captain doing?" His father replied, "The captain is taking our bearings, seeing where we are, finding out if we are going in the right direction."

As a matter of fact, my dear friends, it is something of this kind that each of us is doing as we are in worship on Sunday morning. We are checking in with God; we are seeing where we are; we are finding out about our directions in relation to his will concerning our journey of life.

We can so easily become confused or lose our way out there in the weekday world of days, and we need this checkpoint. Here we touch base with the Lord of our life, and from him we take our bearings for going on. We can deviate from the course, by winds and currents be carried far astray, unless from time to time we check in with God to set our course again. You see, it is a very important thing we do each week in this Sunday morning hour.

Many churches have been designed in response to consumer surveys. In several Midwestern suburban areas the surveys have had similar results. People want the church to provide a good community center with an excellent gym and Nautilus-caliber training equipment; they want quality affordable day care and after school care for children; they want a variety of self-help and support groups; and they want sermons dealing with timely issues like money management and enhancing self-esteem. What they do not want are worship services where they are asked to participate or sing hymns; and they do not want sermons dealing with topics like sin, personal ethics, world hunger, or self-sacrifice. In response to such trends, a few years ago one of the larger churches in Evansville discontinued serving communion or baptizing people during regular worship services. They discovered that people didn't want religious rituals that talk about the new birth or the body and blood of Christ; they wanted a fellowship that will basically affirm who they are as good and worthwhile individuals and encourage them to maximize their potential. Maybe it's good for the planners to ask what people want out of a church, but it might not hurt also to ask what God wants out of the church.

There is the control issue again. Does God have any control over the church, or is the church simply an institution designed to meet the articulated desires of its members? The woman at the well felt comfortable turning Jesus down. Sometimes we do too.

There was a church where the pastor and the minister of music were not getting along. As time went by, this began to spill over into the worship service.

The first week the pastor preached on commitment and how we all should dedicate ourselves to the service of God. The music director led the song, "I Shall Not Be Moved."

The second week the pastor preached on tithing and how we all should gladly give to the work of the Lord. The director led the song, "Jesus Paid it All."

The third week the pastor preached on gossiping and how we should all watch our tongues. The music director led the song, "I Love to Tell the Story."

With all this going on, the pastor became very disgusted over the situation and the following Sunday told the congregation that he was considering resigning. The musician led the song, "Oh Why Not Tonight?"

As it came to pass, the pastor did indeed resign. The next week he informed the church that it was Jesus who led him there and it was Jesus who was taking him away. The music leader led the song, "What a Friend We Have in Jesus."

Ethan Allen was a big, voluble, rather flamboyant Vermonter, Colonial patriot, a somewhat controversial hero of the American Revolution. He organized a rag-tag army of freedom-lovers known as the Green Mountain Boys. On May 10, 1775, Allen and his "Boys" captured from the British the strategic Fort Ticonderoga. Having returned from this successful venture, Allen did something which he was wont to do sometimes as the mood suited: on Sunday morning he attended church. During the service the pastor offered a long prayer, a great deal of which was an offering of praise to God for the liberation of Fort Ticonderoga. How great was God, and how good, to have wrested that fort from the enemy! Ethan Allen, having sat through as much of this as he could endure, interrupted the pastor, saying, "Parson Dewey ... Parson Dewey, please mention to the Lord that the Green Mountain Boys were there!"

The plain fact is, of course, that wherever God has done things in the world somebody has been there helping him do them. Yes, perhaps Jesus could have fed that multitude without the five loaves and two fish which the disciples brought to him, but he didn't. He let his disciples help, and he used what they brought.

The coming of the Pilgrims from England to America is a story well known by almost everyone. Not so well known, however, is the fact that before they sailed for this continent these people had spent about ten years as refugees in Holland. From Leiden, in that country, they crossed the Channel to England where they boarded the Mayflower for their voyage to the new world. Their pastor was John Robinson, and the last Sunday prior to their leaving Leiden was an historic experience of worship for this pastor and these people. John Robinson recognized the occasion as such a time, but he also reminded the people that every time of worship is of paramount importance.

Standing in their pulpit that day, this is what he said: "Every assembly is a time big with destiny. Every Sunday men and women go forth from their tryst with God to face nameless responsibilities. Before the week is out, some may have launched their Mayflower and embraced a God-given adventure."

In our assembly here today, neither you nor I can know what Mayflowers may be launched before another week goes by. In this hour, we are here together before God to prepare ourselves for whatever launchings there may be, for whatever new seas we may be called to sail, for whatever new shores we may touch before the voyage is done. May God give us grace for the living of this week, for new ventures of faith, courage for the hard places, and joy for all the journey.

If you are like most people, the first time you looked into a microscope all you saw was a fuzzy gray blur. But when you got everything in right adjustment, and got your seeing eye in precisely the right position, there it was! A living thing pulsating with life, a tiny paramecium or amoeba, or whatever it was you were trying to see.

Here we are today in Christian worship. Here we look at life: we look into heights and depths - deep within ourselves and into the far reaches and ranges of what we are. And we look to God.

May God help us to adjust the powers of our vision that we may see as we have not seen before, that things may come into focus for us and be clear, that by the aid of faith we may discover what we otherwise could never know. May this time of worship be a discovery time, a time of better seeing, a time of deeper understanding. And so may we go from here equipped with a finer insight for the ventures of living which are out there ahead of us.

Fred Craddock tells a wonderful story about a young minister, newly graduated from seminary, serving his very first church. He gets a call telling him that a church member, elderly woman who has given her life in service to the church, is in the hospital. She's so weak she can't even get up out of bed, and the doctors don't hold much hope for her recovery. Would he go up and visit? Well, of course he will and he does.

All the way to the hospital he's thinking about what he will say to this Christian lady, what words of comfort he can give her to prepare her for her eminent death. He arrives at the hospital, goes up to her room for the visit. He sits and talks with her a few minutes, just small talk really, nothing earth shattering. When he makes ready to leave, he asks if she would like him to have prayer with her. She answers, "Yes, of course. That's why I wanted you to come."

He then asks politely, "And what exactly would you like me to pray for?"

"Why, I want you to pray that God will heal me," she answers in a surprised tone of voice.

Haltingly, fumbling over the words, he prays just as she wanted, that God will heal her, even though he's not really sure that can happen. When he says the "Amen" at the end of the prayer, the woman says, "You know, I think it worked! I think I'm healed!" And she gets out of the bed and begins to run up and down the hallway of the hospital, shouting, "Praise God! I'm healed! Praise God! I'm healed!"

Meanwhile, the young minister, in a stupor, stumbles to the stairwell, walks down five flights of stairs, makes his way to the parking lot and somehow manages to find his car. As he fumbles to get his keys out of his pocket, he looks heavenward and says, "Don't you ever do that to me again!" He had a mountaintop moment, but he didn't know what to do with it!

Wallace D. Chappell tells that following one of his sermons a little girl came to the front of the church to meet him. He was the guest evangelist in the church for the week, so he did not know her nor her older sister who stood close by. The older sister was encouraging her to tell something to Chappell, the nature of which was not immediately clear. Finally, after considerable coaxing, the little girl told that on the day before she had received a telephone call from a lady who was visiting in the city from out of state. The lady had dialed the wrong number. Although the little girl did not know who the lady was, she began to talk to her. Reaching to make conversation, as children often do, the girl remembered that there would be preaching at her church that evening so she passed along that bit of information and invited the lady to attend. The little girl, warming to her story as she told it, said, "The lady said she hadn't been inside a church in 20 years." Then, with excitement in her voice, the child said, "She was at church tonight. I talked to her. And when you asked for people to accept Jesus, she was one of those who came forward."

The lady was from out of state. She was in that particular city for a particular purpose and had her own agenda. To go into a strange church and hear a visiting evangelist preach was not a big item on her list of things to do. It was not a good time. But something about the little girl's invitation led her to take advantage of the opportunity. Probably a dozen reasons why she could not go raced through her mind: the circumstances were not right, she didn't have time; you can imagine the other reasons. At some point, however, it came to her that although things were not as she would have arranged them, it was an opportunity and she would seize it.

When you are waiting on the "right time" to come to Christ or if you are delaying your commitment until circumstances are "right," remember the woman in Luke's story who was so full of joy and gratitude that she would take advantage of any opportunity to praise God for what he had done for her through Christ Jesus her Lord! Those who are resolved will "catch as catch can." Those who have no resolve will never catch up to just the right opportunity. It will always be the wrong time.

A boy and his grandfather were at the beach playing together - as grandfathers and their grandchildren should and sometimes do. They made small boats of paper, and placed them on the sand alongside the water. Then the tide came in, reaching the boats, lifting them, and carrying them delightfully dancing on its ripples.

Make your boat and await the tide! Make your boat and be ready when the tide comes in. We are doing something of this kind when we worship. In worship, we are preparing our hearts for the moving Spirit of God. In worship, we are adjusting the focus of our faith so that we may see the great glory of God when it next appears.

Leave your unfolded sheet of boat-making paper at the water's edge, and when the tide comes, it will be only a sodden mass, soon shredded by the sand. But make a boat of it, and the incoming tide will lift it and set it dancing.

What tides time will bring we do not know. But we know this: when the tide comes, if we are not ready, we're likely to be overwhelmed by it; if we are ready, we will rise with it and ride on its crest. So let's let this time of worship, and every such time, be a time of building boats that can ride the crest of whatever tides may come.

As I greet you this morning, I think of something the Apostle Paul wrote to the church at Rome: "I thank God for all of you." As I look about me here today, a swelling tide of gratitude rises within me, and I thank God for all of you.

You know the kind of world we live in; you know about the problems, the troubles, the conflicts and struggles; you know about the bad news we constantly read and hear, about the human tragedies that plague us in our society. We look upon all of this and we tremble almost.

Well, have you ever looked about you on Sunday morning? Really looked? With seeing eyes? Have you looked upon the faces of those who are with you in faith and fellowship? Who surround you in a community of caring? Who are with you, who will stand with you on your mountaintops and walk with you through your valleys?

It is an enormously enriching aspect of worship to reach out in grateful embrace of those who worship with you. Do it. Look around you. And from your heart say: I thank God for all of you.