True Worship

Glory to God!

One of the greatest privileges of every redeemed believer is access to the glory of God. The Lord invites His children to His throne of grace and mercy to encounter Him, to worship Him and to enjoy Him forever. As God reveals Himself to us, we have a choice to respond to Him or exchange the truth of God for a lie (Rom 1:20-25). The true worshipper responds to the revelation of God in repentance by aligning him or herself to his or her knowledge of God.True repentance always leads to action as the believer responds to God, and depends on God to reflect Him. God created man in His image to reflect His glory!

Unless our knowledge of God affects our lives, we are not true worshippers.

As we worshipped God yesterday, the Lord revealed Himself to us and His presence became tangible, causing many to bow down before Him in repentance and adoration. It was an amazing time and the depth of worship was profound. Worship in song led into encountering God in the reading of His Word as Richard and Antje read the testimonies about people of God who encountererd the glory of God and how they responded in repentance, reverence and fear. The passages we looked at were: Exodus 34:5-9; Isaiah 6:1-8; Ezekiel 1:25-28; Daniel 10:4-11, 15-19; Luke 5:4-11; Luke 7:36-38 and Revelation 1:10-18. You can listen to the reading with Rony's instrumental accompaniment followed by the sermon entitled Show me your glory! here.

Upcoming events

02.09. KLF prayer meeting at 19:00 at Leipzigerstr.60
21.09. Bengt Wedemalm will be our guest at KLF
28.09. Francois Botes will be our guest at KLF

Returning to Essence

Glory to God!

The Lord is taking us back to the essence of what it means to be God's children who live the Kingdom life. Two Sundays ago Frances spoke to us about faith, hope and love and showed us how faith and love spring from the hope we have and that all three of these Kingdom essentials look like something (see Col 1:3-5; 1 Thess 1:3; 1 Pet 3:14,15). You can listen to the message here.

On Sunday we experienced a powerful time of worship that led into praise and proclamation to destroy every obstacle in our lives that was hindering our moving forward with God. The Holy Spirit led us to stand together and proclaim God's truth over our lives resulting in the enemy's strongholds being torn down and people being set free. Hallelujah!

After some of our people shared powerful testimonies of reconciliation, healing and the power of praise, Elizabeth and Renate shared the wonderful news of the publication of their new book entitled "Cross-Over." We are so excited about seeing our people use their gifts for God's glory and for boldly moving with God's Word to them until fruition!

Richard then shared a message on True Worship and showed us the difference between essence and form. Looking at John 4:23,24 where Jesus tells the Samaritan woman that the Father is looking for true worshippers, we noted how the essence of worship concerns our internal reality and response to God rather than how or in what form we worship (see Isa 29:13). We then briefly looked at the Worship Cycle which illustrates the essence of worship as the believer responds to the revelation of God. You can listen to the message here.

The Worship Cycle

Revelation: worship begins with God's revelation of Himself. Mt 16:13-17; Rom 1:20-23; Rev 1:17
Repent: in response to the revelation of God, a true worshipper will align him- or herself to the revelation and knowledge of who God is to be like Him. Isa 6:5; Mt 11:20,21; Eph 4:24, 5:1 
Respond: true repentance produces the fruit of repentance that is a visible response to God as the believer changes the way s/he lives to serve God with his or her life. Mt 3:8, 4:10; Rom 12:1,2; Heb 9:14; 1 Thess 1:9
Remain: to worship God is to depend on God as the believer lives in Him. Jn 15:4; Acts 17:28
Reflect: to worship God is to reflect the Lord as the believer keeps his or her mind and heart on things above and is transfigured by the Holy Spirit. 2 Cor 3:18; Col 3:1,2
 
We praise God for His revelation to us and for helping us understand the essence of worship.

Upcoming events

02.09. KLF prayer meeting at 19:00 at Leipzigerstr.60
21.09. Bengt Wedemalm will be our guest at KLF
28.09. Francois Botes will be our guest at KLF

Living for the King and His Kingdom

Glory to God!

These past weeks God has been speaking to us about calling - the call to worship Him unreservedly, the call to find rest in Him and the call to live for the Audience of One. You can listen to the sermons here:

"What's higher than world cup praise?" Alexander Blair
"Come to Jesus and find rest" Aris Maniatis
"For the audience of One" Richard Morschel

Yesterday's meeting was a great family time as we worshipped and fellowshipped together. Richard and Frances have returned from their 2 week trip to the Philippines and gave us a brief report about what they did and in particular about the inauguration of our first church plant, Kingdom Life Butuan. This exciting faith-venture is part of expanding God's Kingdom in the Philippines by touching individuals to reach a nation. You can find out more about Richard and Frances' trip on the Kingdom Life Butuan blog here.

Yesterday Richard spoke to us about the God who sees me and living for the audience of One. Looking at the account of Hagar's experience with God and how she named Him, the God who sees me (Gen 16:13), as well as King David's expression of his experience of God in Psalm 139, we saw that they knew God as the God who sees us and knows us intimately. Knowing that the Father sees us and that our ways are not hidden from Him should move us to live for Him alone - for the audience of One. Rather than living for the approval of many, Jesus tells His disciples to live for the approval of the Father alone. In Matthew 6, Jesus shows us how we are to live a life of secret obedience for the audience of One. Developing this secret relationship with God increases the believer's awareness of God in everyday life to the point that he or she can entrust himself or herself entirely to God despite the opinions or injustice of man. Jesus endured injustice and false accusations by living for the audience of the Father alone (1 Peter 2:19-23).

"Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you." Matthew 6:4