It's Time To Praise The Lord!

It’s Saturday morning, and I’m preparing for our monthly Pavilion Worship Gathering tonight at Peninsula Baptist Church in Gig Harbor (by the way, if you're free tonight at 6:30, come join us!).

As I was praying over this time this morning, the Holy Spirit brought to mind a worship song that I learned in the 1980’s called, simply, “Praise The Lord.” I looked it up on the internet because I couldn’t remember all the lyrics, and the words of the chorus impacted me in a fresh way. It goes like this:

Praise the Lord! He will work through those who praise Him,
Praise the Lord! For our God inhabits praise!
Praise the Lord – for the chains that seem to bind you,
Serve only to remind you that they drop powerless behind you,
When you praise Him!

Then the second verse of the song goes on to make some powerful declarations:

Now Satan is a liar, and he wants to make us think
That we are paupers when he knows himself we’re children of the King!
So lift up the mighty shield of faith, for the battle must be won
We know that Jesus Christ has risen, and the work’s already done!
Praise the Lord!

This is why we gather as the people of God in a city to praise Jesus Christ, to declare His power and worth, and to agree with Heaven concerning who we are as His children, and with His desire that the will of God to be done on the earth as it is in His presence.

Worship is the essential element of spiritual warfare, and when we gather together as God’s people, not separated by denomination or theological position, we stand as one in agreement with Him and with His purposes on earth.

Wherever you are today, whatever physical location or spiritual condition you’re in, give yourself to worshipping the King of Glory. If you can find other believers to join with in this, all the better! It’s more important than any other activity you can give yourself to, for the worship of Jesus and the glory of God is the eternal priority of Heaven.

Let it be so! Amen.

Gary Wiens

Deferring to the King of Glory

Psalm 24:3-5 Who may ascend into the hill of the Lord? Or who may stand in His holy place? 4 He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who has not lifted up his soul to an idol, nor sworn deceitfully. 5. He shall receive blessing from the Lord, and righteousness from the God of his salvation.

These verses from Psalm 24 have long been a challenge to my own heart, one that on my best days calls me to a standard of holiness and purity that leads to the powerful place of encounter with the Living God. On those good days, I find myself with some measure of confidence that I, too, may stand on the holy hill of God’s Presence, and live in the full blessing that He has promised to the generation that seeks Him with a whole heart.

However, like Joshua standing before the Lord in Zechariah 3, the enemy of my soul is right alongside, even on my best days. Satan does his job well, pointing out that my hands in fact are not clean, that my heart is not pure, that I have in fact lifted up my soul to false things, looking for fulfillment where it can’t be found. Again, like Joshua, I’m faced with the fact that my garments are soiled, and that I too, on my best day, am disqualified, and need the cleansing that only God can provide.

As the enemy’s voice echoes in my ears, the hope of Psalm 24 seems very distant, unreachable for me. If on my best day, I stand accused and disqualified, where’s the hope?

This past week, I was meditating on that Psalm, again in that familiar place of being weighed in the scales of righteousness and found wanting. Suddenly, another voice came into my mind, and the Spirit of the Lord spoke to me. He said, “There is One who ascended the hill of the Lord, with clean hands and a pure heart. He never lifted up His soul to anything false, He was never deceitful, and He has inherited all righteousness and all blessing from His Father. And He carries you with Him into the Father’s Presence, qualified by His life.”

Something quickened in my heart in that moment, a new ray of light and understanding. Psalm 24 is speaking, primarily, about the entrance of Jesus, the King of Glory, into the exalted place of the Father’s Presence. He alone is qualified to do so, He alone has been weighed in the most exacting way and found to be worthy. He has opened the way to the Father, and He carries me, and He carries you, with Him into the Most Holy Place of the Presence of God.

Because He carries me, because I am in Him, my best days and my worst days are the same. I need Him, and He is willing. I am my Beloved’s, and His desire is for me; therefore, every day He  washes me, He gives me His own garment of righteousness, He places a new and clean covering on my head, and enables me to stand with Him in the Holy Place, before the Father, having been qualified by the King of Glory.

So, I will no longer measure myself against Psalm 24. Rather, I will worship Him who is the fulfillment of that Psalm. I will defer to the King of Glory, receive His merciful cleansing, letting His Word wash me every day, and receive the grace I need to live like a son of God, a brother to the King.

That’s a good day.

Gary Wiens

Jesus' Gift To The Church

It's Pentecost Sunday this weekend, and I wanted to share some thoughts on the ministry of the Holy Spirit. I read this article in my prayer time this morning, and realized that I couldn't say it any better. 

The Father's Gift in Christ – St. Hilary of Poitiers

Our Lord commanded us to baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. In baptism, then, we profess faith in the Creator, in the only-begotten Son and in the gift which is the Spirit. There is one Creator of all things, for in God there is one Father from whom all things have their being. And there is one only-begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom all things exist. And there is one Spirit, the gift who is in all. So all follow their due order, according to the proper operation of each: one power, which brings all things into being, one Son, through whom all things come to be, and one gift of perfect hope. Nothing is wanting to this flawless union: in Father, Son and Holy Spirit, there is infinity of endless being, perfect reflection of the divine image, and mutual enjoyment of the gift.

Our Lord has described the purpose of the Spirit’s presence in us. Let us listen to his words: “I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. It is to your advantage that I go away; if I go, I will send you the Advocate. And also: I will ask the Father and he will give you another Counsellor to be with you for ever, the Spirit of truth. He will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine.” (From John 15).

From among many of our Lord’s sayings, these have been chosen to guide our understanding, for they reveal to us the intention of the giver, the nature of the gift and the condition for its reception. Since our weak minds cannot comprehend the Father or the Son, we have been given the Holy Spirit as our intermediary and advocate, to shed light on that hard doctrine of our faith, the incarnation of God.

We receive the Spirit of truth so that we can know the things of God. In order to grasp this, consider how useless the faculties of the human body would become if they were denied their exercise. Our eyes cannot fulfill their task without light, either natural or artificial; our ears cannot react without sound vibrations, and in the absence of any odor our nostrils are ignorant of their function. Not that these senses would lose their own nature if they were not used; rather, they demand objects of experience in order to function. It is the same with the human soul. Unless it absorbs the gift of the Spirit through faith, the mind has the ability to know God but lacks the light necessary for that knowledge.

This unique gift which is in Christ is offered in its fullness to everyone. It is everywhere available, but it is given to each man in proportion to his readiness to receive it. Its presence is the fuller, the greater a man’s desire to be worthy of it. This gift will remain with us until the end of the world, and will be our comfort in the time of waiting. By the favors it bestows, it is the pledge of our hope for the future, the light of our minds, and the splendor that irradiates our understanding.

May the Lord bless you this weekend with His great gift of the Holy Spirit!

Gary Wiens