Freaking Out Path Five

Greetings my friends
This blog should challenge many to their core. In fact it should be a wake up call for many Born Again believers. How many times have you sat in church while a song was being played and thought to yourself, "I don't like this kind of music" or "Hymns are for old people". As a result you filed a protest vote by keeping silent during the time of worship. How do you think God will look upon your actions. My guess is that God would not be very happy. You see being a Jesus Freak means that we worship God in spirit and in truth. We worship Him free of the tradition or style. we simply worship Him
Someone very dear to me had an unfortunate experience in recent days. He is a worship leader and a good one at that. His church was making a transition to a more contemporary style of worship while still singing hymns. Under the leadership of his pastor he led worship and the church grew and was successful. However some approached him saying that it is the baptist tradition to sing hymns and that praise music was more charismatic and didn't belong in a baptist church. He was made to feel as though praising the King of Kings with the use of the Guitar was somehow evil and against God's will. Well let me tell you that I am a Southern Baptist preacher, I have been on 8 mission ventures and seen thousands come to the Lord Jesus. I love praise music and I love hymns. The two are not mutually exclusive nor are they evil in any way. I have clapped to the guitars and tambourines in a Brazilian worship service where not one person ever uttered the words "thy" or "thou", yet I tell you the Holy Spirit was present and active in that worship service. I have been in worship services where young African men praised God in a way that made me ashamed for not being as bold, and God was present with these as well. It is utter arrogance to say that God is only honored by your style of worship learned by the traditions of your parents, grand parents and great grand parents. God ask you to worship Him in spirit and truth not in comfort and familiarity.
Remember when the ark came back to the children of Israel after being in Philistine control. David praised God by singing and dancing yet his wife called him foolish. She said would the king look foolish in the eyes of his subjects. David was right to be foolish for the Lord if man would count praising the most high foolish. How many jumped or hooted and yelled when the Saints won the Super Bowl or when Alabama won the national championship? Yet it is foolish to sing and yes even dance in the presence of the King of Eternity. I think not!
Psalm 150 says
Praise the Lord!
Praise God in His sanctuary;
Praise Him in His mighty firmament!
2 Praise Him for His mighty acts;
Praise Him according to His excellent greatness!
3 Praise Him with the sound of the trumpet;
Praise Him with the lute and harp!
4 Praise Him with the timbrel and dance;
Praise Him with stringed instruments and flutes!
5 Praise Him with loud cymbals;
Praise Him with clashing cymbals!
6 Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.
Praise the Lord! NKJV
If I did exactly what the Psalm said, I would not be welcome in many churches in the United States today. That is a shame but since I am a Jesus Freak, I say Sing and Dance my brothers and sisters, Sing and Dance since the Lord will bless you for your praise. After all this is what it truly means to be a Jesus Freak.


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Freaking Out Path Four

I am writing on the night before Easter, on the night before we celebrate the most incredible miracle of all time. Path four means so much to me because it is the call to faith. Simply put a Jesus Freak must have faith. You must have faith beyond challenge. We celebrate Easter where God came to earth as a man, suffered then died and was buried. On the third day Jesus rose from the dead. You must have unbreakable faith and that means no matter what the pundits say, no matter what the politicians say, even no matter what even the preachers say. A freak never waivers in the belief that Jesus is the Messiah just as He said He was. In this day of compromise and watered down gospels the freak can see the truth and will not deviate.
Each freak has a very personal story of how Jesus changed their life forever. Just as the disciples did not recognize Jesus when He rose again, our friends and family do not recognize us because of the change that has taken place since3 coming to Christ. Our faith in Jesus is the catalyst that begins it all. Jesus said if we believe in him we will not be disappointed. It is our faith that must remain throughout our entire lives. It is our faith that must carry us through the tough times. It is our faith that must endure when all others fall into disbelief. Not faith in faith but faith in Jesus the Christ as the one who took away our sins. It is not enough to say it a freak has to believe it.


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