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Sept. 6, 2008

Good Sabbath,

As I continue to add resources to the Sound a Trumpet website and many more ideas are waiting for time in my schedule to allow me to bring them to you, it occurred to me that a better method of communication was needed. The goal of this website has always been to bring together and share the wealth of God’s truth and resources with his chosen ones in the world today.

Often I just place items on the website with little or no explanation. I know the reasons or the purpose for which they were intended, but that information is often never conveyed to the body of Christ on the receiving end.

To change that, I have decided to begin adding a Sabbath message on a regular basis as a means of communicating more personally with each of you. These messages will be in the form of a letter and will include information of all kinds—about the website, spiritual growth, worship of God, and much more. They are not intended as studies or as part of the Sabbath, so they could just as easily be called a weekly message. Although, from time-to-time, they may include something that is worthy of study. I don’t promise a message every single week, but I’ll do my best to make them frequent.

We are not a formal organization in any sense of the word, but there are a number of independent worshipers of God and his Word who have faithfully come back to this website week after week looking for new material. You could say we are a portal for independents to find some things they might need or want. Many of you have emailed me to let me know what you would like to see or to comment about what is already on the website. Your communication with me has confirmed the need for a site such as this and brings home to me regularly how much more work needs to be done.

As independents, many of us often feel like we are floundering or that our Sabbath observances could be more than what they are. We often feel that we are outsiders when, in truth, we are far from it. God has called us and brought us into his family of the elect in this age for a purpose. We are following him as independents for a number of reasons — possibly because there is no congregation we can join anywhere close to where we live or because we have left a congregation where we recognized there was something wrong in the teachings or in the organization of that group. Some have been thrown out of a group because of their independent thinking. There are numerous reasons why an individual or a family might choose to remain independent rather than attaching themselves to an already organized group.

The goal for all of us is to live our lives in obedience to God’s laws to the best of our ability. We keep the Sabbaths, the Holy Days, and the New Moons faithfully, but lacking the fellowship with a congregation, there are times when any one of us might feel less than satisfied with our times of worship.

Worship services among nearly all of the organized Church of God groups are not really worship services at all. For the most part, they are bible studies. The major weakness I find in all of them is the lack of engaging the people in worship. God wants and demands his people to worship him. Singing songs of praise is one way of doing that, but it is not the only way. But, in the so-called worship services of the Churches of God, that is all you get. The rest of the time is devoted to the leadership. As for the sheep, they are supposed to just sit and listen.

Now … I want to be really clear about this. Listening to a good sermon, message, or bible study is a good thing. Don’t get me wrong. If you can find an online group (of which there are many) that is preaching a good message, then listen — tune them in regularly, open your bibles and study along with them. I do it on a regular basis. It is important to continuing the necessary work on our spiritual growth that we all need.

But understand, listening to a message or bible study, while very important, is not the same thing as worshiping our God. Worshiping God is an active process of praise and prayer. It is falling on our faces before our Lord and acknowledging that we are nothing without him. God demands this worship from us, not because he is on some ego trip and needs our praise to make himself feel good or important. No — that is a human thing! God demands our praise and worship because WE NEED IT!

We need a constant reminder to humble ourselves. We need to constantly remind ourselves that our very existence depends on God and his grace. Without him and his love of mankind, the entire physical universes would melt away and cease to exist. We need to have a thankful and grateful attitude always for what God has done and is doing for us. Praise and worship of God for who he is and what he has done also teaches us how to love God with our whole heart, mind and soul — and as a result, we learn how to love our neighbors as ourselves.

I do not know of one Church of God congregation that is meeting this need for true worship for their people. Some may be teaching it as something the people can do on their own, but they are giving no living, physical examples of it in their worship services. Even prayer is all corporate, offered up by one of the elders of the group. They don’t even allow a time of silence when the congregation could offer up their own personal silent prayers. No — the services are all about the shepherds and very little about the sheep.

Is it any wonder that there are so many of us now calling ourselves independents. For many of us who have come to recognize how great our need for time with God is, separating ourselves from the organized church was, and is, the only way.

But it comes with some hurdles to overcome. What exactly is worship and how do we do it? How does a single individual, a couple, or a family actually engage in a formal worship service on their own? Most individuals are uncomfortable with the idea of singing a hymn all by themselves. I know I am.

If we have spent any time inside one of the Church of God groups, we know we haven’t been taught the need for a formal worship service. All we know is what they are doing. All we ever learned from them was the necessity for fellowship. If we came from an earlier church experience, Protestant, Roman Catholic, or otherwise, we have memories of worship services that probably didn’t mean very much to us. Furthermore, since those days, we have learned that most of the religious organizations on the earth today are false religions based on pagan rituals and practices, so we don’t want to fall back into that trap. So what do we do?

First, we need to recognize that God does require his people to worship him in a formal way. The scriptures are filled with examples of God’s people coming to him in a formal way for worship. He gave complete instructions to ancient Israel for how he wanted to be worshipped. In the early years, the New Testament church continued to worship God according to the ways he ordained until they fell into apostasy and allowed paganism to take over.

Ancient Israel was given a complete system of sacrifices that pleased God. After the ultimate sacrifice of Christ, the same system was still in effect, but now we worship in spirit and in truth. Very early on the Apostles taught the fulfillment of the animal sacrifices through the blood of Christ and taught the people how to keep the laws for worship in a spiritual way.

Over the next few weeks I will share what I have learned on this subject. I definitely do not have all the answers — far from it — but I have been looking deeply into this subject for the past couple of years and have identified some very important aspects of worship that I want to share. That study has been the motivating factor behind this website and the various resources that have been added and those that are still to come. God wants us to worship him in a formal way and that takes planning and care; it takes learning God’s ways and the reasons why he commands us to come before him in praise, joy, confession, and prayer.

I don’t want any of these messages to become too long, so the subject will be broken into several parts. The message today is merely an introduction so you can get acquainted with the idea.

Beginning this week also, I have added a formal order of worship service, complete with prayers, hymns, and scripture readings as a jumping off place. You can make use of it if you like, or not. It is entirely up to you. All of the hymns are available on the site also. Both can be found on the home page.

My goal is to upload a service and a message on either Thursday or Friday each week so they are available to any who want to make use of them for the Sabbath. In the beginning, the services may seem like a crutch and not real worship. That is OK. Many of us have a lot to “unlearn” from our days of sitting in halls, facing forward, and listening to leadership deliver a message. It doesn’t seem natural to recite or read printed words that purport to be a formal worship. But, if you will bear with me for a couple of weeks, I’ll explain it more thoroughly and you’ll be able to see for yourself that worshipping God does have a structure. Many will claim they would rather just allow the spirit to speak to them in whatever way it will. I used to think that also, but it is somewhat of a dangerous game. I’ll explain that also. In the meantime, give the printed service a try, even if it doesn’t seem to mean anything to you in the beginning.

However you celebrate this Sabbath, have a great day!

Sincerely,
B.J. Lord
www.soundatrumpet.com