According to John 4:24, “God is spirit, and His worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.” We cannot simply approach worship on our own terms. Both individual and corporate worship must be biblical and should conform to the will of God rather than to the whims of fallen humanity. Scripture makes evident that acceptable worship means approaching God on His terms and in the manner that He makes possible.[1] “Even if every aspect of our worship is as close to the bibli

Worship involves the assembling of God’s people. In fact, believers are commanded, through Scripture, to “not give up meeting together” (Heb. 10:25). There is a direct correlation between how a congregation understands itself to be a church and how they worship as a church. When churches gather corporately through a biblical understanding of worship, it transforms how they engage in the process and with each other. Corporate worship involves communion with Christ by His Spiri

The Protestant Reformation began with Martin Luther amid his protests against abuses within the church. Being fundamentally conservative, he felt the need for the church to revisit and refurbish genuine Christian beginnings. He was unwilling to and disputed any notion to disturb the faithful with new radical innovations.[1] Luther himself composed a liturgy, German Mass and Order of Divine Service, that broke with the practice of using Latin. He altered the canon to exclude a

Certain theological words gain such defined meaning in the history of theology that to affirm that one holds to them is equal to affirming their historical meaning. The Regulative Principle holds to this standard, so affirming the Regulative Principle of worship and yet holding different views is simply misleading to one’s theological convictions. The foundational premise of the Regulative Principle is the idea of sola scriptura. Once the Reformation churches affirmed sola

Mary lived in the hope that God’s promise of a Messiah would soon come to pass. What she never expected, however, is that she would be the one God chose to help bring this miracle to pass. Throughout history, God has chosen people who, by outward appearances, did not seem to have much to offer but were open to following His will. Mary knew this truth. She was self-aware and understood her place compared to others with more money, position, or power. She had learned to become

In the Scriptures, we are given just a little glimpse of Mary and Joseph before Jesus was born. We know that they lived a simple life in the hill country of Galilee. Joseph was a religious and just man, which means he obeyed the will of God. Imagine, though, his thoughts and his suspicions about the girl to whom he was engaged. Imagine what he was thinking when the same angel who appeared to Mary appeared to him. What faith it must have taken on Joseph’s part to believe that

The stars must have shone like diamonds in that cold crisp sky. On the hills outside of Bethlehem, the flocks had been gathered, and watch was being kept. The shepherds outside Bethlehem, like most of the people of Palestine, were poor and insignificant men. They had no reason to expect that this night would be different from any other. But God had other plans. As proclaimed by the angels, this was the night when God Himself would come to earth. The Christmas story takes us

Christ is born! But He wasn’t born into a perfect world and into the perfect situation. Christ came into a world with problems much like the ones we grapple with today. We often imagine that the world to which Jesus came was not complicated and that its issues were not complex. But history tells us a different story. It tells us that the problems of that day were similar to the problems of today. What does Christ’s birth mean to you, personally? This is what Scripture tells u

The message of Christmas that resounded 2000 years ago is still relevant to us today. First, it is a message of love and peace. Second, it is a message of joy and hope. The message of Christmas reminds us that God not only exists, but that He is a living heavenly Father who seeks to restore us to what we were created to be – His children, and He wants to restore us so that we can properly do what we were created to do, which is worship Him. When we, like Mary, humble ourselve