²⁷But immediately Jesus spoke to them, saying, “Take heart; it is I. Do not be afraid.”
²⁸And Peter answered him, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.”
²⁹He said, “Come.” So Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came to Jesus.
Matthew 14:27-29

Our worship always begins with Jesus calling to us – He is the instigator of our relationship as we only love because He first loved us (1 John 4:19). Once we have heard Him calling it is our responsibility to respond, He is standing at the door knocking and waiting for us to open the door (Revelation 3:20). But it doesn’t stop there as we see in the passage from Matthew shown above: Jesus calls, Peter replies, Jesus calls with the instruction “come”, Peter acts and gets out the boat and walks on water! Our worship is this continual process of Jesus calling and us responding with the relationship growing all the time and us becoming more mature.

Whenever we worship we need to make sure that our response is an honest one right from our heart. Our response to the Word of God should always be life changing, just like it was when we accepted Jesus as our Lord, or when we were baptised in water, or when we were baptised in the Holy Spirit – we should wake up the next morning knowing that life will never be the same again. Imagine how Peter felt the day after he’d walked on water! His life wouldn’t be the same again knowing what had happened when Jesus called him and he responded. When we respond to God it needs to be a lasting response, a response from the heart that means that life will never be the same again.

Another couple of scriptural examples of people responding to God with a lasting response are:

• Matthew 4:18-20. Jesus calls to Peter and Andrew and immediately they drop their nets and follow Him. They give up their old life to start living the life that God has for them – a decision that isn’t reversible, their lives will never be the same.
• Matthew 16:13-19. Jesus asks Peter who people are saying He is, and Peter responds with words that can’t be retracted, he declares that Jesus is the Christ. Now that he has this revelation of the divinity of Jesus he will never be able to treat Jesus the same again – it’s a life changing moment. On top of this we see that Jesus replies by telling Peter what God’s plans and purposes for him are. Peter would have again woken up the next morning and thought ‘the Christ told me that He will give me the keys of the kingdom of heaven’. How could his life ever be the same after finding this out.

I encourage you that whenever you hear Jesus calling to you decide to make a lasting response – a response that means that your life will never be the same. We need to thoroughly embrace the words that Jesus speaks to us and not let them leave our minds but instead meditate on them (Joshua 1:8) and not go back to our old ways of thinking and acting as “we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Corinthians 3:18).

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²⁷But when they told him all the words of Joseph, which he had said to them, and when he saw the wagons that Joseph had sent to carry him, the spirit of their father Jacob revived. ²⁸And Israel said, “It is enough; Joseph my son is still alive. I will go and see him before I die.”
Genesis 45:27-28

The background for this scripture is that there’s a man who’s name was Jacob who was then blessed by God then given the name “Israel” (Genesis 32:24-29). Later Israel believes that his son Joseph is dead, but he finds out in the above passage that Joseph is still alive and living as Pharaoh’s right-hand man in Egypt. The important thing to note is the change between verses 27 and 28, it says “the spirit of their father Jacob revived. And Israel said…” As Jacob’s spirit revived he remembered his name of promise, who God had called him to be, and went back to being that person – Israel.

As we worship it is vital that we only worship the name of Jesus (Philippians 2:10) as it’s only by His blood that we are saved. In addition to this I believe that the passage above shows us that we need to make sure that we are worshipping with our correct name. When we were born again we became new creations and co-heirs with Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17, Romans 8:17) – we joined Jesus’s family as sons of the Father! This new name that He has given us, like Israel’s, is accompanied by God’s blessing towards us (Galatians 3:14). Our worship needs to start from this position of us knowing who we are in Christ, what He has blessed us with, and the new name that He has given us. The family name that we have inherited means that we can boldly approach the heavenly throne of grace (Hebrews 4:14-16), and it’s at this throne that we bow in worship.

Just like Israel we need to cling on to the name of promise that He has given us and not let our spirits grow faint to the point that it needs reviving like Jacob’s did. When we come to worship we first need to stop and remind ourselves of the good news that we’re new creations that have been adopted into His family. Let’s make sure that we always remember our new name so that our spirit’s can truly worship Him at all times – His name and our names are very important!

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Refresh 2010 is Ministries without Borders annual conference held at the Staffordshire show ground. It is always a great time of fantastic worship and inspiring teaching and this year was better than ever!
It’s always a great time to hear from God and to have quality time together as the Church family. Thanks to Sheila and Chris there was always food available in the Church marquee.

It was also fantastic to hear the number of testimonies of healing and lives changed and encouraged during the week. If you have a testimony you would like to share please feel free to comment against the post.

I’m very happy to announce that on 24th July 2010 Ministries Without Borders released a CD of worship songs written by people within the UK churches. It’s called We See Your Glory, and can be heard by using the player below.

Have a look at the official We See Your Glory website for more information on the songs and all the lyrics. PDF versions of the music for the songs will be available soon, I’ll update this post when they are.

Enjoy the songs and praise Jesus!

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