You are what you eat.

Every diet assumes that, right?

I wonder if there’s ever been a more diet-obsessed and overweight culture as ours?

Have you seen the new Alec Baldwin? Back to his slimmer version of years past. No more sugar he says. Even Charles Barkley is on the bandwagon. A friend of mine lost twenty pounds recently after a physical indicted that he had become pre-diabetic. What he was eating was threatening his health.

A more serious issue?

You are what you worship.

Oops. Was that what my son, Jon calls a ‘Jesus-juke,’ an abrupt shift to spiritual talk ? Maybe, but not entirely surprising in a church blog.

This Sunday at the Gathering Church we will look at what the Bible defines as the most critical issue of human experience: how we respond to the incredible God who is. In Romans 1:14:25 it describes that response as worship.

And it says that everyone is worshipping in one way or another. That is, spending their life, their energies, their affections and devotions on something. You will never meet anyone who is not worshipping something. Even atheists and agnostics are serving something or someone.

Some passages in the Bible give us a clear look at the world that God imagines.

This is one of them.

It first gives us a clear look at the world that is.

In this message series, First Things First, we align our lives with what works for God. And that’s only always good.

I have a responsibility both to Greeks and to those who don’t speak Greek, both to the wise and to the foolish.
God’s righteousness is revealed

That’s why I’m ready to preach the gospel also to you who are in Rome.  I’m not ashamed of the gospel: it is God’s own power for salvation to all who have faith in God, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.  God’s righteousness is being revealed in the gospel, from faithfulness for faith, as it is written, The righteous person will live by faith.
Gentiles are without excuse

God’s wrath is being revealed from heaven against all the ungodly behavior and the injustice of human beings who silence the truth with injustice.  This is because what is known about God should be plain to them because God made it plain to them.  Ever since the creation of the world, God’s invisible qualities—God’s eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, because they are understood through the things God has made.  So humans are without excuse.  Although they knew God, they didn’t honor God as God or thank him.  Instead, their reasoning became pointless, and their foolish hearts were darkened.  While they were claiming to be wise, they made fools of themselves.  They exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images that look like mortal humans: birds, animals, and reptiles.  So God abandoned them to their hearts’ desires, which led to the moral corruption of degrading their own bodies with each other.  They traded God’s truth for a lie, and they worshipped and served the creation instead of the creator, who is blessed forever.

Amen.

-Romans 1:14-25 (Common English Bible)

THIS WEEK’S MUSIC

Change.

What’s the best change that could happen in your life?

I don’t even have to know you but I can know what the best change would be?

I know what would make you the very best version of who you could be.

I know what would make you the best person for your family, for your job, for your neighborhood, for every environment that needs you to be the best person you could be.

And, by the way, it would give you the best shot at being content and becoming a person of love, joy and peace.

The change?

To grow your ability to worship God.

That is, learning how to love, trust, adore, enjoy and honor the God who made us and has loved us through Jesus.

Nothing aligns us better to what we were made to be than worshipping God.

This Sunday at the Gathering Church we will begin a new message series, First Things First with a focus on growing our ability to worship God.  The book of Romans is going to be our guide, but we will introduce the series this Sunday from Psalm 100 which gives a great picture of the world that God imagines.

This series will not be about how to behave in a church service (although I may have to bust out a dance move before it’s over).  It’s going to be about how we best experience God.

It begins this Sunday.

Shout triumphantly to the LORD, all the earth!

Serve the LORD with celebration!

Come before him with shouts of joy!

Know that the LORD is God—

he made us; we belong to him.

We are his people, the sheep of his own pasture.

Enter his gates with thanks;

enter his courtyards with praise!

Thank him! Bless his name!

Because the LORD is good, his loyal love lasts forever;

his faithfulness lasts generation after generation.

-Psalm 100 (Common English Bible)

THIS WEEK’S MUSIC

***Mild Spoiler Alert***

Read with caution if you've never seen the 1999 M. Night Shyamalan movie The Sixth Sense.

These past several weeks we've looked at "big moments" in the Old Testament where God encountered people: Abraham, Moses, David, Isaiah.  These, all in their own way, showed them something about the nature of God, who God is, and how they can get in on the act of what God is doing.  We looked back at these stories to find this.

This week, we'll do something risky.  We'll look forward.  We'll dive into the scene in St. John's Revelation and see, as it were, a throne room.  We'll get that full picture of the future, pulling back the curtain on the way things really are.

But why look forward?

Because when you see the end, the way things really are, it changes the now.  You begin to live into that odd overlap of what you know to be true.  Think of the difference between the first time you saw the Sixth Sense and every subsequent time…

Knowing what you know about Bruce Willis' character by the end of the movie, there is no way you can ever watch the movie the same way again.  What surprised you, what held you in suspense, what puzzled you, what threw you through a loop, has dissolved because you know the ending.  Instead of being distracted by all of that, you find that your movie-watching senses become more keen.  You notice the red door knobs, the temperature changes in the room, and dialogue cues.

As we close our series on Big Moments, encounters with the living God, my hope is that our peek into the throne room in Revelation 4 will set a scene for our worship that we can't forget, can't pretend we haven't seen, and wouldn't want to even if we could.

After this I looked and there was a door that had been opened in heaven. The first voice that I had heard, which sounded like a trumpet, said to me, “Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this.”  At once I was in a Spirit-inspired trance and I saw a throne in heaven, and someone was seated on the throne.  The one seated there looked like jasper and carnelian, and surrounding the throne was a rainbow that looked like an emerald.  Twenty-four thrones, with twenty-four elders seated upon them, surrounded the throne.  The elders were dressed in white clothing and had gold crowns on their heads.  From the throne came lightning, voices, and thunder. In front of the throne were seven flaming torches, which are the seven spirits of God.  Something like a glass sea, like crystal, was in front of the throne.

In the center, by the throne, were four living creatures encircling the throne.  These creatures were covered with eyes on the front and on the back.  The first living creature was like a lion.  The second living creature was like an ox.  The third living creature had a face like a human being.  And the fourth living creature was like an eagle in flight.  Each of the four living creatures had six wings, and each was covered all around and on the inside with eyes. They never rest day or night, but keep on saying,

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is coming.”

Whenever the living creatures give glory, honor, and thanks to the one seated on the throne, who lives forever and always, the twenty-four elders fall before the one seated on the throne. They worship the one who lives forever and always. They throw down their crowns before the throne and say,

“You are worthy, our Lord and God, 

to receive glory and honor and power, 

because you created all things. 

It is by your will that they existed and were created.”

-Revelation 4 (Common English Bible)

THIS WEEK'S MUSIC