!0 Days in Matty 10: Day 2

So here we are. Day 2 of "Ten Days in Matty Ten." Click here for more...

So yesterday we talked about going to the lost in our worship. Today we look at the topic Jesus told his disciples to speak about.

"As you go, preach this message: "The kingdom of heaven is near."


The second thing that Jesus said should describe their ministry in their message, "The kingdom of heaven is near." So again we have a question. How can I "preach" that the kingdom of heaven is near in worship?

I recently read a book called "Future-Ancient Worship." It was a pretty good book. Heavy on theory; light on practicality. But it definitely inspired me. The idea of the book is that the early church told God's story in their worship. They told the story of the beginning when God created the earth. They told the story of what God had been doing in the earth. They told the story of what God is doing now. And they told the story of what God would do. And right here is this verse, Jesus is telling his disciples to tell the story of what God will do. So how does that happen in worship?

We tell the story of what God will do. It's that easy. Well not really. But there are a lot of ways to do this.

The easy way to do this is to sing about what God will do. Sing about how Christ is coming again or how God will soon crush Satan under our feet. Or we can show videos of ways God has blessed us in the past and use them to show people that we believe God will bless us in the future. Or we can do a number of other things. But there's one thing that we are leaving out.

We can show people what God has planned for their life.

All to often this is left to the preacher. We expect the preacher to give the alter call at the end of the message. Or we expect the preacher to tell people how his message is applicable to their life. But we rarely if ever do this in worship. Now, this is a little hard to nail down on how to do, but here's what I've come up with...

We can show people God's plan for their life by making our worship service an environment that best reflects the kingdom of heaven. No one really knows what heaven is like, I know I don't have a clue. But scripture does give us some good ideas. Music, light, gold streets, worship, no fears, no tears. We can reflect this in our worship. We can have music(really?) and lights, and we can paint the floor gold(just kidding, unless you really want to, then go for it!), and we can worship. But seriously, we can strive to represent what heaven will be like.

A huge way to show people what God has planned for their life is through showing real life change. I love seeing videos of some one's testimony. This weekend, a 15 year old girl shared about how God has blessed despite her sickle cell anemia. That really got the place stirring. It moved people. She got a standing ovation. And you know what else? It revealed to people how selfish they are. They responded with life change of their own.

So that's just a couple of ideas of how to share "The kingdom of heaven is near" in our worship. Tomorrow we will look at God's call to heal people(Matthew 10:9, 10).