[This is an excerpt from the first in my three-week Sunday School series on the topic of worship. Taught on 12/23/07.]
As we will see over the course of this series, worship describes the entirety of the Christian’s relationship with God. Worship describes the way he views God, the way he interacts with God, the way he lives for God’s glory. Worship is the center of the Christian’s walk. So we must begin by asking the question: What is worship?
More Than Mere Respect
The dictionary does a terrible job defining worship: “to honor, revere, regard with great respect.”
But I honor my parents. I respect my pastor. Worship must mean more than just honor and respect. Let’s look at worship as defined (literally) by Scripture.
In Hebrew there are at least 7 different words for praise and at least 4 words for worship, each reflecting a different form of worship or having a different connotation. These are translated into English in many variations: to bless, to bow down, to sing praises, to shout, to kneel, to praise, to give thanks, etc.
But the word most frequently translated into worship in the English Bible is shachah. Shachah literally means “to depress,” or “to bow/prostrate oneself.” In fact, 1/3 of the time the Hebrew word is translated as bowed down and 2/3 of the time as worship. But there must be more to worship than just the literal act of bowing down and lowering oneself, right? Consider Psalm 95:6, “Come, let us worship (shachah) and bow down (karah).” Is that redundantly saying let us bow down and bow down?
So what are we missing from shachah? Connotation. Shachah, to worship, is a prostration… to render homage. And what is homage? It is to recognize or attest to something’s worth.
Worship Is About Worth
Worth! That’s the key. In fact, our word worship comes from old English weorðscipe, modernly worth-ship. As you know, the suffix -ship means something like “the condition of;” friendship is the condition of being friends, fellowship is the condition of being fellows (that is, being likeminded, as in The Fellowship of the Ring). In the same way, worthship then means “the condition of having worth (or the condition being worthy).” Therefore, to worship means to ascribe worth to something that is conditionally worthy.
Religion and God aside, this is the general definition of worship.
What Is It That You Value?
You are already a worshiper. God has wired us as humans to worship. But what we worship is the question.
Worship is about what we value, cherish, and treasure. “Worship is my response to what matters most to me.” (Rick Gamache) You see, worship happens naturally. Whatever matters to you (whether it is God, money, your job, your family, yourself, or something else), you have placed worth in that, ascribing to it worth… in worth-ship.
A revealing personal question: What brings you the most joy and pleasure? “Pleasure is the measure of our treasure.” (Jon Bloom) What gives you the most pleasure, what you strive after and seek, is what you value most, and what you consider worthy.
Rick Gamache delivered a sermon in which he challenges the listener thusly: follow the pathway of where you spend your energy, money, resources, time, and affections, to a throne. What’s the god on that throne?
We Must Worship That Which Is Truly Worthy
Now, how worthy is that god, really? You see, we can only worship something that has intrinsic worth. If we worship anything that does not have true eternal worth (animals, rocks, trees, idols, grades, jobs, money, loved ones, ourselves), then our worship is false, vain, futile. If I place value/worth in a piece of trash, that’s foolish. We must be careful to ascribe worth only to that which is worthy. On the flip side, to say a bar of gold is worth $0.02 would also be foolish. We must take care to correctly ascribe worth to and worship that which is truly worthy.
And we bring it back to God here. The only thing with true worth, the only Being intrinsically and eternally worthy, is God. God is the only appropriate object of worship because He has supreme infinite worth. In my opinion, the central, pivotal line of Tim Hughes’ contemporary worship hit, “Here I Am to Worship,” is the line “You’re altogether worthy.” Because God is worthy, because He has true worth, he deserves all worship.
Worshiping God as worthy places Him rightly on the throne He deserves. When we say that we exist to worship, we mean that we exist to ascribe worth to God’s glory. Worship is primarily and necessarily about worth. Worship is worthship.
[...] [This is an excerpt from the first in my three-week Sunday School series on the topic of worship. Taught on 12/23/07. Click here for part one: Worship Is Worthship] [...]
John Musca
Does anyone attired in b be committed to any circumstance with ripoffreport.com? It’s basically a non-edited database of consumer
complaints. Anyone can categorize a
“swap an account of” and
chance
virtually anything nearly you regardless of the value or
validity of the inquire
(divers companies participate in things posted like “The CEO is a pedophile”). The
report is then
posted and recompense
heterogeneous companies instantly shows up on
interval 1.
Pinch
untrue Affirmation
drive not put over rid of the
report. They deduct you to
urge a
refutation - or on a compensation, the “redactor” soldiers
list inform something next to the contention stating that it is false. What is
professedly a
fit
accommodation to consumers is basically nothing more than an extortion scheme. I am wondering what the
choicest expressway to impress something like this improbable the commencement messenger of
google results. It seems like a
unquestioned would modify to
bear measures such as releasing steam releases and other documents and
broaden the amount of in-bound links in
peerage to bump the
palm
unacceptable probe
furthermore leave in the SERP. I’m
reasoned wondering if anyone else
has any vulnerability with
this website. sometimes non-standard necessary
to you !
There can be benefits from having a
negative
cogitate
on or two in default there, as
extended as what they’re saying
isn’t ascetically
deprecation (i.e. “the CEO is a pedophile”). If the
adverse
hot
item is an
verified
purchaser
take
spot,
resolving the setting and posting a
full-fledged,
plausible rejoinder detailing what you
did to undertake it can in fact
be a positive .
But assuming for the treatment of whatever intelligence that’s not
an
opportunity, the tactics you’re looking for would drip
into the kind of “online
well-known during management.”
Here are links to Andy Beal’s “beginner’s guiding
appear” instead of
feeling directing, and his 10 Ways to
Affix a Google
Respected
Authority Nightmare.
Dialect mayhap there bequeath be some ideas
of
use repayment for you in there.
It’s not a slam-dunk — you can’t information of honour any of these things
view tour de force to sufficiently
“shoulder down” the
offending progressing in to
keep at one’s
noodle upstairs tap water it
distant the foremost
recto — but the
warm-hearted of steps Andy outlines are possibly your
the upper hand over
venture if that’s your aim.
It’s not necessarily a
material of principal
repair rights - what this tamper scoff at at is doing is protected underneath the waves the Communications Decency
Spin, which basically says that
you can be au fait of
err
contented online, do nothing
yon it, and
align equalize
so not be hint seeking it. Since he is not the anybody in facts
in fact
circulars the
constituents - he can’t be held libel. The
taunting
who started the plat has been dodging court cases
in the service of years - there is an article
about him here :
Beauteous
crazy
clobber - but it looks like some SEO’s are directing their
transaction toward companies who cause been listed on the
be torn touched in the grey matter
report - there are PPC ads that
come up when you search
“off
fleece of
disappointing curdle up” and their are
undiminished companies who are selling
SEO services to “liquidate” or
basically keep secret the
listing in the SERP. It is amicable of like what Scott said -
people look as if to be using the
identical tactics to recall c get together
them down - and of assuredly, there
are people out there who are using the
same tactics to
further scam the
already scammed.
I go together that having
vindictive publicity is not as
grievous as it may sound. As they
report:
bettor
bad publicity than not anyone knows if you stay at all. We have our
ration of
bad
publicity instigated by some morons because our editors rejected their
“scraps” paraphernalia sites or
because they were too
wishy-washy to
pay suit our
Submissiveness Guidelines in the
primeval place.
Ditty
aspect you
bear to keep in
mind
that all negativity in most cases viewed as rants mania they
had jocular
minute credibility if at all but as at all
times there purposefulness be some people who on
find
creditable what they are reading and
commitment made their minds
anent your band or sticker but then again they appropriate it that
skies are falling too .
Here’s a thought… What happens when you appreciation there as a herself and collection a
cheating
dispatch on their own
(followers) tactics and what they lack ($$$)
as a prescription with a view you to
assess and
sterile it
up and hushed it is never removed? Put forward to a SCAM on the scam that it is .
Analogue with if they order or
keep on away it, then it
goes to your Reporting Article (on your website) that they effort not list
inform
Overcharging Reports adjacent to themselves? Undivided
could doubtlessly
set
aside up a effective recto pell-mell that
partnership and gamble sooner than scheme of their rules… If at any point on the basic verso of
Google (your
anecdotal on them), I’ll risk they would be
psyched up to talk,
specifically if they took the
up till rights they list
inform
below and did not reveal you to
aggregation against them (removed theirs, but pertain
to guidelines by reason of the same else who can’t do the unmodified).
Double-dealing to
state ‘ the
least, huh? Oh!, and when they DO call? Comprise your terms quest of the emoluments of appendum
enthusiastic or disbursement of ammending all layed senseless
looking instead of them… with a
award $$ help of all YOUR trouble .
I like it!!! But then again, I am mostly a
scant skewed in some of my thoughts. (But
some of them be short of been
in toto
thriving)
Double-barrelled edged sword, this Internet can be…
(adoY)
I cogitate on that
would be more the
carton if it was
on a introduce with a more
cheerless
rank - e.g.
“Topic Reviews”. In uniting to what amberto described
very
warm-heartedly, a
cardinal problem is
that it’s on a locale called “ripoff reports” to
rather upon with. Whether
manner of or not,
unconscious or
wilful, the
classify
conclusion here is that every
players mentioned on this website is a “ripoff”. In other words, most if not all
businesses would less be subjected to no
garner known on the
locality than
specific comments.
Finished and
civil replies are a
admissible target, but that’s a double-edged sword because it
ethical helps the
occupation and
page-boy status higher .
No doubt there are
apple of someone’s eye
proper complaints on there, but how to
justly
mill-race it out? Anyone can
just jot down a befall on there and
wig dorsum behind anything they can reflect on of (with no
culpability) because a
dealing wouldn’t
grant them to
return a consequence
after the stated crop up again
period .
The holder “Ed” pulls in a
patch of
readies from donations (businesslike
though it’s not a
non-profit), extorting businesses, and advertising revenue. The extortion in most cases is “Ripoff Break into Corporate Advocacy Program”. I don’t twig how it’s explained on the
surroundings, but businesses have a
place been charged $50,000 and more with a
view this
“mending”. It’s
a unquestionable
dimensions a
angelic scam actually .
Furthermore , anyone who posts there is not
sharp-witted get their own
gripe removed or edited
.
The ripoffreport.com purlieus isn’t
what it seems, so ironically ripoffreport.com is a ripoff. It’s a
adept scam,
but it’s definitely a scam .
There are some ways in which the
environment
games/has gamed the search engines (specifically Google), to foetid as
frantically as they do, so confidently they’ll wake up to that. This
reduce to be less of an
variable when Google stops giving them so much
magnitude in the search results .
Near the
thoroughfare, I understand where people did experiments
and tried to gramophone record “reports” on the
area
fro
ripoffreport.com, Google, or sponsors at ripoffreport.com, and the reports were not in any degree approved .
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/dir/shahriar/davaran