Introduction

Thanks for inviting me to share from God’s Word this evening. It is a special thing for me to speak in this building. The first time I ever had a chance to speak from this stage, I  was so overcome with stage fright that I stood here and said nothing. It was the Christmas program and I was 2 years old. I will try to make up for that tonight.

My wife and I attended the Refreshing Winds seminar last January and learned a lot about the things we have been trying to do this evening. We went home and attempted to do some of them in our home church in Manitou. A number of years ago, we realized that we needed to do something about our worship services. At the time, we had a simple goal and that was to design worship services that would be more meaningful. We did not have a lot of skills or ideas, but we tried and learned. The ideas we learned at the seminar and practiced here today were very helpful. They make a lot of sense in terms of what worship is and also in terms of what will help people worship. I appreciate the focus on coming into the presence of God, hearing from God, giving thanks to God and then going out into the world with the sending of God.

                Planning worship services is something that makes us think and demands a response. When you do the laundry, you don’t come out and say, “Oh, that was a good laundry session.” When we worship, we recognize that we have certain desires and goals and we sense an inner response. We have all raised the question, “how did you like the worship service” and heard either the criticism, “I didn’t feel anything” or “I got nothing out of that service” or perhaps we were encouraged by the response, “I was moved.” But all of this begs the question, “what is supposed to happen in a worship service?” Are we trying to help people feel something, or learn something, or respond to something? What is the goal of worship? I would like to address my comments primarily to those planning worship because I suspect that many of you here are those who do this. If you are not, please translate what you hear to the point of view of a participant in worship.

I. What is our desire for others?

A. Frustration

                This whole question of what worship is to  do is intensified in the season which is upon us. We are just around the corner from Christmas. Already, stores and television commercials have reminded us of that fact.

                I have to confess that I have a love/hate relationship with Christmas. I love the cookies and the Christmas cake, the feeling of Christmas and the joy of getting together with family. I love to go to church, particularly on Christmas eve and Christmas day. I remember well how it felt on the Christmases when we lived in The Pas and our church had no service on Christmas eve. It just didn’t seem right

At the same time, I find it very difficult to get excited about planning worship services and especially sermons for Christmas. I don’t know how it is for music leaders, but I suspect that there is tremendous pressure to produce something that is meaningful, nostalgic and powerful. The plethora of new Christmas music that is sent out in August or September tells me that there is a struggle to make the Christmas celebrations meaningful. You try to call choir practices and everyone has so much else happening that they only make it to a few practices. You want to make it special and yet you know you haven’t got the resources to do what the mega-church down the street is doing. You plan for a Christmas day service and only a handful of people show up. For me it is the most difficult time of the year to preach. This year, those who preach regularly will need to preach 4 advent messages, Christmas day, Boxing day and probably one or two banquets. What can you say from Luke 2 and Matthew 2 that has not already been said? When you multiply that over the years, the problem only intensifies.

Are you looking forward to this? What are your aspirations as you plan for worship over the next month? Do we only wish that people will be happy? That they will feel something? That they will enjoy our productions?

B. Opportunity

                I remember reading prayer letters from Gordon and Gwen Nickel when they were in Pakistan. They lived in a culture that did not celebrate Christmas, but knew that the west made a big deal out of Christmas. They were allowed to celebrate and through the “cultural” celebrations they had a tremendous opportunity to proclaim Christ at Christmas. How exciting in that context to plan for Christmas services. I wish it was more like that rather than the over sold, under meaning celebration we have. There is a house down the street from where we live that already has Christmas lights up and the glow from the house can be seen more than a block away. These people want to celebrate, but I suspect the meaning of the celebration is only in the celebration because they had the same glow coming from their house at Halloween. The only difference is that it was orange That is our context and that is the culture to whom we need to plan for Christmas worship.                

                And yet, perhaps there is a greater opportunity than we think.

                I just finished reading a biography of Malcolm Muggeridge who at a time when he was still an agnostic wrote,

“Two thousand years have passed of Church and King

And vast has been the flow of blood and speech,

But brothers do we know the simplest thing

He died to teach?”                             

                I wonder if perhaps Muggeridge hasn’t got something here? We know the facts of Christmas, but do we really know what it all means? We know the details of the Christmas story, but how do those details impact us? We try to teach all the different aspects of what God has done, but how is our own relationship to God? We teach people about Christ, but do we teach them to know Christ?

One of the passages which we read in the worship time was from Ephesians 1. In this passage, Paul prays for the Ephesian believers and his prayer, in verse 17 is “that you may know him better.” It was not that they did not know Christ. In fact, in 1:1-14 he has just written a catalogue of the wonder and glory of what they have in Christ and then has said in verse 15, “I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus.” Yet, he says that his prayer for them is that they will know Him better. What was already present, he desires will be strengthened. Is this our desire for the people we lead?

I invite you to think about what goal you have in mind as you plan for worship services. Does the passion Paul had for the Ephesians give us a helpful direction? The most significant first step in planning worship is to know where we are headed. Is it our goal to help people know God in Christ not merely as a matter of mental assent, but also of emotional assent? Do we desire to lead them not merely to a greater knowledge, but to a deeply personal and intimate relationship. If that is our goal, it will make a great difference in our attitude about planning worship, whether at Christmas or any time.

II. What can we do about it?

Of course having a goal is an important first step, but not the last step. The further question we then ask is, “how can we bring it about?” As I thought about this goal, I began to think about all the ways in which we could help people to know Christ. What words could be said? What songs could be sung? But then I went back to the text and it suddenly struck me that Paul does not discuss any of these things. Instead, as Paul expresses his passion that people know God better, what he does do is pray. As we seek to lead people into a closer relationship with God during this Christmas season, perhaps this ought to be our starting point as well.

A. Pray For Opened Eyes Of The Heart

1.Pattern Of This Prayer.

Notice the text, and see that Paul repeats the mention of prayer twice. He says in verse 17, ”I keep asking” and then in Vs. 18 – “I pray.” Whenever anything is repeated in the Bible, we need to take note. It is important. The prayer in both cases has a similar direction. Both times the word “that” indicates a direction and in both prayers, that direction is “that you may know.”

What intrigues me, however, is the specific request. It provides wonderful guidance for the way in which we pray as we plan for worship. In the prayer in verse 17, he asks that “God will give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation” and in the prayer in verse 18 he asks that “the eyes of your heart may be enlightened.”

2.God’s Eye Opening Work.

What is the essence of this prayer?

Last week, we were at my brothers place and his brother-in-law, who is deaf, came over. I would be totally unable to communicate with him because he can’t hear and I can’t sign. But my brothers family and particularly my 17 year old niece is very proficient at it. She is studying signing now and wants to go to university to further her understanding. She is already an interpreter for the deaf at the youth services at Calvary Temple. I watched her and her uncle communicate and through her, I as a hearing person and he as a deaf person were able to communicate.

                What Paul prays for is that the Holy Spirit will be the interpreter who will allow our hearts which are deaf to God to hear and know Him. The only way we will come to know God is if the Spirit of God does a work of illumination in our hearts. Therefore, this is the prayer we must pray as we begin our worship preparation.

                The essence of Paul’s prayer assumes certain things. It assumes that there is a gap in our lives which comes as a result of our spiritual blindness. That we have a desire to see God face to face – a desire which God himself has put within us. That as long as we are on this earth, we will not see God face to face. It assumes, however, that in Christ we have seen God and by the Spirit, we can see Him in our hearts and know Him more and more. The ability to know Christ is possible only by the Spirit, so growing to know more is possible only by the Spirit of God. I Corinthians 2:14-16 tells us that apart from the Spirit there is no seeing, but by the Spirit, “we have the mind of Christ.”

I think that this provides us with a wonderful guide as we plan for worship and preaching or participate in worship? We can present the facts, we can tell the story but if lives are going to be changed and if people are going to know Him better, inner eyes will have to be opened. Therefore the need for prayer and for this specific prayer.

And so as we plan for worship, we can pray that as unbelievers come, they will not only hear the story or the good music, but that they will hear God.

                We can pray that as believers hear the story for the “umpteenth time” it will not be a mere repetition of what they have heard a thousand times, but will be an encounter with God.

                Christmas provides us with a wonderful opportunity to make God known through Christ. May our prayer be that the eyes of peoples hearts will be open.

B. Pray To Know

As we read on in this text, Paul provides us with a few more specifics about this prayer. He helps us understand a little more about what such a prayer means. Knowing is not just intellectual knowing… it is dynamic and experiential…” The text indicates three specific and practical things which Paul means when he prays for this enlightenment.

1. Hope Of His Calling

As we pray this prayer, we pray that people will be sure of their hope. Knowing God is being sure of the hope to which he has called us.

                A few weeks ago, we saw a special on TV about the actions of people who get lost in the bush. When they realize they are lost, they lose hope and panic. As a result, their vision and focus is obscured. Some have been known to cross roads which would have gotten them out but they didn’t even see them. The loss of hope prevented them from healthy thinking and planning.

                People need hope. Unbelievers have no hope and even believers some times lose sight of the hope they have. Knowing God is knowing that we have hope.

                This is particularly important when difficulties and troubles strike. Sometimes, we have to go through life sustained by nothing but hope. For example, Abraham saw the fulfillment of hardly any of the promises which God had made to him. Hebrews 11:13 says that he and Isaac and Jacob all died without seeing the things they were promised. Yet they died in faith because they had a hope in God.

                Christmas is a wonderful time to communicate hope through a relationship with God. For all the centuries God had promised to help his people and at Christ’s birth he made his promise visible in the person of Jesus. At this season, we can pray that as we communicate the message of hope brought by Jesus, people will see and come to know God better as they know the hope to which he has called them. So let us communicate hope and let us pray that those who hear will know God better.

2. Riches Of His Inheritance

Knowing God also means knowing how rich we are in Him. Of all the people in the world, we in North America have the least to complain about yet we seem to complain as much or more than many others who are poorer than we are. Is it perhaps true to say that we have a much poorer understanding of our riches in Christ than believers who are much poorer materially than we are?

                A simple perusal of the rest of this chapter ought to be enough to let us know that we have so much. In 1:3-14 we read about having “every spiritual blessing in Christ.” We are reminded that we are chosen to be holy, adopted as His sons, redeemed, forgiven; that we have the knowledge of the mystery of His will, we have been given God’s Holy Spirit and have the promise of eternal life.

                What I like about the Freedom in Christ material is the focus on who we are in Christ and have often recommended that people read and study the last few pages of “Bondage Breakers” which gives scripture regarding who we are in Christ.

During this Christmas season, we have the opportunity to communicate our riches so that in seeing that, people will have a knowledge of God and of all he has done for us. We can pray that people’s spiritual eyes will be opened to how rich they are.

3. Resurrection Power For Us

Finally, we learn that knowing God is knowing His resurrection power. I love this passage because it says that the power of the God of resurrection is for us.

God is the God of resurrection. He is the one who, as Ezekial says, can make dry bones live again. He is the one who did make Christ rise from the dead.

But notice that it says that the power of the God of resurrection is for us. Last February at the Manitoba MB convention, we heard about how God brought about the production of God Talk. For years, many people had prayed about a way to impact Canada through English radio. They prayed and wondered how it could be done. With the development of God Talk, that has happened in a way that we could never have planned. That is the power of the God of resurrection.

                We need the power of the God of resurrection in our lives. We tend to rely on the power we have to make changes and we have tremendous power, but we have forgotten that the real power of the Christian life is the power of the resurrection. During this Christmas season, we can help people understand and know the power of the resurrection in their lives and we can pray that people will know that power and in knowing that know God better.

Conclusion

                Some people panic when they hear  “Only 29 more shopping days till Christmas”

                What feelings rise up in you as you realize 7 more services to prepare for on the Christmas theme?

Imagine what would happen if our goal was that those we lead would know God better? Imagine what would happen if we prayed that the people we serve would realize the hope of their calling, how rich they are and the power of the resurrection which is for us?