The Manifesto!

Live Worship and Live The Mission!

This is my declaration! This is my plea. Live Worship, and Live The Mission of Jesus Christ! Declare His Gospel, and herald His Hope. This is our objective and this is what our declaration must be!!! Worship leads to Mission, for Worship is to be on Mission. Am I saying this to be provocative?  Yes! Am I being overly provocative?  No! My intention is to provoke others to truly live, and of that I am guilty. This is my hope. This is my prayer (Ephesians 5:1-2, 8-14). A prayer for awakening. A hope of destiny.

Life is life. Life is to be lived. Life is what it is, but it is also what we make it. To truly be alive we must live as we have been created to live (Matthew 22:36-40). We must live faith, live hope, and live love (1 Corinthians 13:13). We must live life fully alive in Christ (Ephesians 2:4-6, 2 Corinthians 5:17)! We must Live Worship and to do so we must Live The Mission of Jesus Christ.

What we do is worship! We were made to worship! We were made worshiping! Harold Best in his insightful book Unceasing Worship states, “Worship is at once about who we are, about who or what our god is and about how we choose to live. It is about something that is quite simple yet wrapped in...mystery”. Worship becomes us, for we become like what we worship. Our identity is found in what we worship, and worship leads us in how we live our lives. It commands much of us. It determines who we are and how we live. It determines our desires, and it determines what we will sacrifice in order to achieve our desires.

Worship requires devotion. It requires obedience to command
 and true desire to obey. The tendency to worship is naturally within us, for we naturally devote ourselves to something. However, the tendency to worship the one true God is not naturally within our being (Romans 3:10-12). We are are indeed worshipers. However, we are indeed worshipers of false gods (Romans 1:18-25).

What then? How are we to Live true Worship if we are indeed unable? By grace! By grace our desires change and by grace we become worshipers of the one true God. By grace, God becomes what we Worship. By grace, what we Worship becomes what we love, why we love, and how we love. I would be a fool to say that I completely understand this profound mystery. However, I do understand this mystery to be true.

To know the truth, to believe the truth, to act according to the truth, and to love the truth will naturally result in true Worship and The Mission of Jesus Christ (John 14:6). Worship is a response and a reception of God's truth and grace through Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 5:21). It is not a matter of what we do but a matter of what God has done. The Law (what we do) leads to death, yet Christ is the way to life (Romans 8:1-2, Colossians 2:8). Even The Law of Love is a law that leads to death (Matthew 22:34-40). We Worship not by our love. We Worship by God's grace, and our response to His grace is to Love. Our Love is conditional upon God's grace. We Love because God first Loved us, and we act out of this Love because God acted first (1 John 4:19). We are able because He enables us. We continue in worship. However our object of worship has changed. Worship and The Mission is how we respond to what God has done, and it is by grace that we have been granted this ability.

How then shall we keep God's commands (John 14:15)? By grace! Christ has interceded on our behalf, and He has become our righteousness (Colossians 1:22). In Christ we now have a holy given desire. If we Love God, our obedience will naturally follow because our desires have changed to Love God. Failure is inevitable, yet our new desire shall remain unchanged. Our destiny shall also remain, for God's Love perpetuates Jesus Christ as the manifestation of grace and propitiates His wrath (John 1:1-5).  In turn, our Love perpetuates from Jesus Christ in Worship and Mission (Psalm 40:8). For what is Worship without Love and what is Love without service? Mission becomes a continuum of our Worship, for Mission is an act of Worship. Worship is what we do. Our Worship is unceasing. However, our sinful nature may break this continuum. So how then shall we Worship? By grace, through grace, and because of grace! May the joy and gladness of Jesus Christ fill our hearts (Psalm 100: 1-5)!

May a revolution ensue (John 17:3)! May God's Love revolutionize our hearts and may we revolutionize the world with and by His Love. May a resurgence revive dead, beating hearts to Live Worship and Live The Mission of Jesus Christ. May our hearts beat and our feet march with this rhythm. May Christ be our declaration. May His Gospel be our clarion call. May His Great Commission be our Mission (Matt. 28: 18-20)! Take initiative. Be engaged by grace. Engage in Faith. Engage in Worship. Engage in The Mission of Jesus Christ. May we Live Worship and Live The Mission of Jesus Christ!