God is doing so many beautiful things in the Body of Christ in our generation. To name just a few,
He is expanding our understanding of the Kingdom and giving us a deep passion for justice on the earth.
He is teaching us to live more missional, befriending and reaching the lost as a lifestyle rather than an activity.
He is calling us all deeper into community and intimate relationships, beyond the rugged individualism that we once equated with normalcy.
He is enlightening our minds and giving us the privilege to be more thoroughly educated in the area of theology than possibly any previous generation.
He is exploding a movement of intercessory prayer throughout the nations, through which He is calling all people groups into the Harvest.
He is returning us to our roots, giving us a restored value for the great and wide Tradition that the mothers and fathers of our Faith have passed down to us.
And He is releasing waves of wild creativity that get us out of our comfortable boxes — both in the form of supernatural gifts and in artistic expression.
There is just so much forward movement happening right now.
Something that I think is most especially characteristic of what God is doing in our generation though is simply returning His Bride to her first Love. Another way this could be said is that God is making worship the fabric of all that we do.
John Piper said in a sermon in 1981, “Worship should never be pursued as a means to achieving something other than worship. Worship is never a step on our way up to any other experience. It is not a door through which we pass to get anywhere. It is the end point, the goal.”
You see, we were made to be known and enjoyed. We were created because the Trinity wanted to share Their divine romance with another (John 17:24). For this purpose the Lamb of God was slain — that the world might be reconciled to its Maker and that the relationship we were designed for would be fully accessed. The only proper course of action for those who realize all of this is to respond in kind with voluntary, happy love.
When we are truly caught up in this love affair, worship fuels, colors, and leaks from everything we do. It is not a stretch for the believer to say to live is to worship. There is nothing more priority and nothing more definitive of our calling than this.
If we were to describe the order of our plans, it would be simple. We are first grounded in a lifestyle of worship that readies us for the assignments we are given. Then, all that we accomplish is sustained through a heart given to worship and is recognized itself to be an act of worship. Finally, seeing the worship level on the earth increase is ultimately where this is all headed.
Habakkuk 2:14, “The earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.”
Worship is our preparation, our means and our end. Anything that falls outside of the scope of “worship in spirit and truth” falls outside the bounds of what our Beloved longs for from us (John 4:23).
Worship is our preparation, our means and our end.
We have failed to have a grand new reformation if personal and corporate worship does not become the center of everything for our spiritual communities. We have come short in seeing radical revival if we do not see our cities increasingly swept away in lovesick worship. And we have not truly succeeded in fulfilling our part of Lord’s Great Commission if we do not see our disciples lost in addiction to “the one thing that is needful.”
Our greatest hopes point in only one direction; Christ deserves the adoration of all humanity. We will fight for Him to have this inheritance.
For this reason ministries like Divulge exist.
The Presence of God is our everything.
Jesus is too good not to worship.
Christ is so worth all the fame we can possibly bring Him.
The beautiful One is jealous for our attention.
Let’s unite with every heart that loves to worship Him, and encourage them in making first things first. And let our cup overflow with crazy worship spilling into the public square.
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has been teaching me so many of the concepts in this book for the last ten years of my life through many different books, teachings, and resources. I often say I have personally gone through a drastic reformation. Throughout this time though I have never found one single book that encapsulates all the main themes of what God has been showing me. Live Like Jesus surprised me by succinctly piecing together these key ideas — each of which I believe have potential to bring widespread change to the way Christianity is expressed in this stage of history.