Worshiping With Our Lips & Lives

I love worship and praise and communion and fellowship with our church family on Sundays. I love the energy and enthusiasm for our Lord and for one another when we’re all in the building at the same time. I love the singing and reading and praying and preaching and talking and laughing and hugging all done in Jesus’ name.

But as beautiful and transcendent as our Sundays are together, it’s mostly meaningless if we don’t carry it into the rest of our week. If we really praise God on Sunday for the redemption of the world through Jesus Christ, then we must do what Paul says in Romans 12: “Offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God — this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”

The pattern of this world is one of injustice, inequality, discrimination, war, hate, immorality, and all the human abuses the New Testament and the early church fathers described as the way of death. The true worship of our God leads his people into positive social action in our communities. Our calling, our mission, our focus is to worship God not only with our lips but also with our lives.

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I’m so ready for Stream DFW  that begins tonight at the South MacArthur church in Irving. Ken Young and the Hallal Singers will lead the worship and Jeff Walling will preach the Word in a weekend that will focus our attention on our Savior and the promises of heaven.

There’s nothing as great as singing with a bunch of people who have sacrificed to be there. There’s nothing like praying together during events like this, studying together, amen-ing a preacher together, because there’s nobody in the building who doesn’t want to be there. Everybody’s given up something — money for gas & hotels & registration, their weekend, a baseball or football game — everybody’s sacrificed something to be there because they want to be there. Nobody’s checking off a square on a spiritual list. Nobody’s there out of an obligation. Everybody’s there to worship, to celebrate salvation, to encourage others, and to be encouraged.

We’ve been looking forward to this for months. Hope I see you there.

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Only 16 more days until the Cowboys open up their regular season in Tampa Bay. And we’re counting down the days by recognizing the second-best players in Cowboys history according to jersey number.

This will be unsettling to you, but our #16 in the Red Ribbon Review is quarterback Vinny Testaverde.

Look, I don’t know what to do with this number. If Steve Pelluer is the best #16, then it comes down to Testaverde or Ryan Leaf. That’s it! Those are the choices. What would you do?

Testaverde was a number-one overall pick as the Heisman Trophy winner out of Miami and played for seven teams in his long, long, long NFL career. Among his stops, a one-year stint in Dallas in 2004 when Bill Parcells brought him in to back up Quincy Carter. We all know how that went. Quincy was cut in training camp. Testaverde got the starting spot. And the Cowboys finished 6-10, last place in the NFC East.

It wasn’t that Testaverde was awful.

OK, I take that back. He was awful. He fumbled. He got sacked. He led the NFL with 20 interceptions. And he finished with a 76.4 quarterback rating.

Testaverde was so bad that Parcells replaced him the following year with 81-year-old Drew Bledsoe.

The dubious distinction Testaverde owns that will probably never be taken away is the fact that he has thrown TD passes to 70 different receivers. Seventy! That’s an NFL record and it’ll never be broken. Forever held by the second-best #16 in Cowboys history.

Peace,

Allan