Quotes

H.B. CHARLES, JR

May we never forget that we gather not to please ourselves or to please others. We worship to please the Lord. 

WILLIAM TEMPLE

To worship is to quicken the conscience by the holiness of God, to feed the mind with the truth of God, to purge the imagination by the beauty of God, to open the heart to the love of God, to devote the will to the purpose of God.

JOHN STARKE

The way from a performative life to a life hidden in Christ is death. And it feels like death too.

LAMAR BOSCHMAN

When I worship, I would rather my heart be without words than my words be without heart.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

Quotes [Part 4]

I like to spread out my ‘quotes’ posts - but these were too good to hold on to for much longer!

WINFIELD BEVINS

“In many ways, worship is theology in motion.”

JOHN ELDREDGE

“Modern worship bands not only need to be extraordinarily talented musicians, young, and beautiful, but their live events employ multimedia to keep your attention as well. Now church service compete with concert-level staging, lighting, special effects, and films. The terrible, unspoken assumption creeping in is this: if you’re going to find God, if you’re going to have more of God, it’s going to come through some amazing experience, something totally wild and over the top. Or we think that once we have God, the proof will be an over-the-top life. Not true. So unhelpful, and immensely unkind. This expectation actually makes those deeper experiences of God seem inaccessible for most of us.”

OSWALD CHAMBERS

“We have the idea that we can dedicate our gifts to God. However, you cannot dedicate what is not yours. There is actually only one thing you can dedicate to God, and that is your right to yourself. If you will give God your right to yourself, He will make a holy experiment out of you - and His experiments always succeed.”

ROBERT E. WEBBER

“Worship does God’s story! In worship, we remember God’s story in the past and anticipate God’s story in the future.”

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Quotes [Part 3]

More than bite-size inspiration, I hope these quotes will be words that you can turn over, and over in your heart and mind as you move into this weekend:

KOSUKE KOYAMA

God carries us. Appreciation for this is the secret of our priestly energy and active life.

MICHAEL REEVES

The more gifted you are, the more power and talent you have, the more good you may find you can do in the world - but also, the more harm you can do. And the path that you will follow depends upon whose mind you have. Will you follow your own mind? Or do you have the mind of Christ Jesus, who did not grasp his rightful equality with God, but emptied himself? Great good or great harm depends on this. Especially if you recognize yourself as naturally ambitious, put pride to death before disaster happens, whether that be slow or subtle or swift and catastrophic.

HENRI NOUWEN

And ministers frequently find themselves in fierce competition with people and institutions who offer something more exciting to do that they do. But our task is the opposite of distraction. Our task is to help people concentrate on the real but often hidden event of God’s active presence in their lives. Hence, the question that must guide all organizing activist in a parish is not how to keep people busy, but how to keep them from being so busy that they can no longer hear the voice of God who speaks in silence.

ANN VOSKAMP

Our rhythms become our everyday liturgy, the sacred cadence of the hours that reorient our tired souls.

Quotes [Part 1] | Quotes [Part 2]

Quotes [Part 2]

As we were finding our feet in the new year, I posted a handful of quotes I hoped would help in the process. Not just a bit over the halfway point through this year, I’m sharing some more. I hope these quotes will inspire you for the next six months and beyond.

MIKE COSPER

Worship services are… ground zero for spiritual formation.

CHARLES SPURGEON

You cannot be Christ’s servant if you are not willing to follow Him, cross and all. What do you crave? A crown? Then it must be a crown of thorns if you are to be like Him. Do you want to be lifted up? So you shall, but it will be upon a cross.

BETH MOORE

Nothing on earth will put us at greater risk of divine wonders than worship.

ISAAC WATTS

The power of singing was given to us chiefly for this, that our warmest affections might break out into melody.

JOHN CALVIN

The music must not turn the church into an audience enjoying the music but into a congregation singing the Lord's praises in His presence.

Quotes [Part 1]

A full week into a new year. As you find your feet, I hope these quotes inspire your heart, shape your imagination, and fuel your worship:

C.S. LEWIS

Praise is the culmination of our enjoyment of anything.

JEN WILKIN

Songs of faith are teaching tools, and effective ones. In an age of widespread biblical/theological illiteracy, leaders must choose those songs with care. Many who will sing them under our leadership are spiritual infants. Imagine if the lyrics of the ABC song were 85% accurate.

J.C. RYLE

All services without heart-service are unprofitable and vain.

JOHN CALVIN

We need to have songs which are not only honorable but also holy. They should spur us on to prayer and the praise of God, to meditation on his works, so that we love, fear, honor and glorify him.

In true worship the believer exercises faith and repentance as he meets with God according to His Word and grows in grace.

Singing has a great force and vigor to move and inflame the hearts of men to invoke and praise God with a more vehement and ardent zeal.

23 July: Tuesday Refocus

‘My heart is like a country but half subdued, where all things are in an unsettled state, and mutinies and insurrections are a daily happening.’ – John Newton

The topography of our heart is vast, varied, and largely unexplored.  There are corners of unreached people groups, languages, and cultures we do not understand.  Indeed it is true, ‘I’m a mystery to myself…’ (Rom 7:15, TPT).

To ourselves, we are a mystery.  To God, nothing is unknown:

‘O LORD, You have searched me and known me!

For You formed my inward parts; You knitted me together in my mother’s womb.

My frame was not hidden from You when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.  Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in Your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.’ Ps 139:1,13,15-16)

As we step into the mystery of our own hearts, we follow the God who makes known to us the path of life (Ps 16:11).  He does not ravage, or colonize, He invites us to bring our half subdued, unsettled states of mutinies and insurrection into submission to Himself (James 4:7).  Submission to Christ is the exchange of our death for His life (Matt 10:39).

‘For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.’ Galatians 5:1

Lord, You have searched and known us.  We are not a mystery to you.  There is no hidden part of our heart that You do not pursue with Your kindness.  Help us, by Your Spirit to bring every corner of ourselves into submission under Your rule and reign.  For Your glory, and our good.  We love You, in Christ’s name, amen.

Known,

AB