2 articles
- Worship
Prayer is the desire to receive something. Worship is to give something: to give honor and praise to Him whom we worship, combined with a deep acknowledgment of our own impotence and His unlimited and exalted power. The “Lord’s Prayer,” as it is called, begins with prayer and ends with worship. Psalm 30:6-7: “Now in my prosperity I said, ‘I shall never be moved.’ Lord, by Your favor You have made my mountain stand strong; You hid Your face, and I was troubled.” David knew that all his strength was by God’s grace and that he could not prevail without Him, yet he was not always mindful of it. As soon as God hid His face from him, he realized that he was dust, and he worshiped. 1 Corinthians 10:13 tells us plainly that there is no such thing as absolute victory for any person. Every victory we gain occurs because we are never tempted above our ability to bear it, because God is very exact and faithful in seeing to it that we are not tempted above what we are able to bear. If He did not weigh our temptations, we would be tempted above what we are able to bear and all of us would fall. Acknowledging and remembering this calls forth worship from us, as for example at the end of the letter of Jude: “To God . . . be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and forever. Amen.” And in Revelation 7:12: “Wisdom, thanksgiving and honor and power and might, be to our God forever and ever. Amen.” Rev. 7:12. It is very important to take note of Job when he was told of the destruction of his children together with his house and his goods. He did not pray for anything at all, but fell down and worshiped. In acknowledgment of his own lowliness and God’s greatness, he did not want to meddle in what had happened. “Wisdom . . . be to our God forever and ever.” It is just as important to worship without ceasing as it is to pray without ceasing. We progress from praying for all manner of things for ourselves— without worshiping—to mainly worshiping.Elias Aslaksen
- The Divine Power of the Bible
By R. A. Torrey The Bible possesses divine power to regenerate men, to make them new creatures, to impart to them a new nature, to make them partakers of the divine nature. This is a fact that has been proven tens of thousands of times. While some have been speculating about the authorship of the various books of the Bible and trying to construct a philosophical theory of inspiration, wiser and more practical men have been studying the actual contents of the book and expounding its truth to a lost world. God has set His seal upon their labours in a wonderful way. While the former class has succeeded only in filling the minds of men with questions and doubts or, at best, have simply convinced them intellectually of the authenticity of the book, the latter have transformed men from lives of sin, selfishness, and despair into lives of holiness, self-renunciation, likeness to God, peace, joy, and hope. In actual use, the Bible proves itself to possess regenerating power. On the board of deacons of the writer’s church, there are at least six men who were once drunkards, outcasts, and thoroughly reprobate, but who are now living most exemplary lives and are centres of power in the community in which they live. The change was wrought in each one of them by the power of the Bible. One of them was a most wicked mocker and ungodly fellow. He has stood outside the church in which he is now a deacon with a pitcher of intoxicating liquor and offered it to people as they came out. It seemed necessary to warn people against his influence in the inquiry meeting which he frequented. But he went home one night and went to bed a godless wretch. In the middle of the night, he woke up with a passage of the Bible burning in his heart. Without getting out of bed, he closed with God’s offer of mercy in Christ and arose in the morning a transformed man. The transformation has stood a quarter of a century of testing as to its reality. The Bible will make any man who will study it, believe it, and obey it, a new creature. It will impart to him new tastes, new affections, new purposes, a new disposition, and a new character through and through. It will make him a true child of God. He will be “born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which lives and abides forever.” 1 Peter 1:23. This power to transform fallen men into the likeness of God, to make them actual partakers of God’s own nature, is unquestionably divine, and this power the Bible unquestionably possesses.