Adoption is often viewed as plan B, or only something that’s done if you can’t have “your own kids.” However, adoption is really an act of worship. Our motivation in orphan care and adoption should be the same reason we perform any act of biblical obedience, namely: “that they may see your good deeds and glorify our Father in heaven” (Matt. 5:16). We don’t do orphan care to be seen by others, or receive praise from others, but rather, we do it to put the love of God on display before a watching world that they may come to know and worship our perfect Heavenly Father. Orphan care is an offering of ourselves to God for the good of millions of orphans and for the glory of His name.

But adoption is not only an act of worship; it also demonstrates the Gospel, inspiring others to worship, as they consider the character of God.

5 years ago, I never dreamed of adopting five children, and the thought of writing a book on it was nowhere on my radar. But it has been awesome. Every day I see visual reminders of the Gospel that compels me to worship our gracious God. For example…

When we returned at 2:00AM from our 30+ hour trip from Ethiopia, where we adopted our fifth child (and second son), we were in great need of a bath. We all cleaned up, including our new addition Joshua, and introduced him to spider-man pajamas. Then we got the kids up to meet their new brother. I was interested in seeing how his new older brother, James, would respond.

James walked over and casually put is arm around Joshua, saying, “hello.” Joshua did the same, and then … he jumped up and kissed James on his cheek! He began smiling from ear to ear his two cracked two-front teeth. They continued mingling, and James said, “Papa, I’m so excited.” Now, I know that type of thing will not always go on – there will be fights and feuds – but it was amazing to see these two boys together. What a strange combination, a ten year old Ukrainian from the border of Belarus, and a five year old Ethiopian from the Sudanese border, gathered in a house in Hattiesburg, MS: made brothers through the grace of adoption.

As we witnessed this first meeting of the brothers, I immediately thought about Russell Moore’s book, Adopted for Life and the chapter entitled, “Are They Brothers?” Dr. Moore brought up how he received questions after their adoptions like “Are they brothers?” He would respond, “yes” repeatedly. But then follow up questions would come like: “I mean, are they really brothers?” To which Dr. Moore would respond, “They are now.”

And so it is with Joshua and James. They are really brothers. Two kids from tiny obscure villages, one from a mud-hut in Africa, and one from a poor village where they still drive horse and buggies, gathered under the roof of a house in Hattiesburg.

This is a picture of what has happened to us in Christ. We’ve been adopted by God, in his grace, and placed into the family of God, even though we may look quite different.

The Apostle John said it well:

See what kind of love the father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. (1 John 3:1a).

When you consider afresh what God has done for us in Christ through adoption, how can we not give Him praise? J.I. Packer wrote that adoption is the highest privilege that the Gospel offers. This privilege of knowing God as Father should prompt us to worship.

*** Tony Merida serves as Teaching Pastor at Temple Baptist Church in Hattiesburg, MS as well as Assistant Professor of Preaching at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. He is the author of Faithful Preaching and the soon to be released book Orphanology. In the last 15 months, he and his wife have five adopted children.

In the grand scheme of the life, songs are the smallest expression of worship we have, so why are they so important? Shouldn’t we place the primary emphasis on obedience, sacrifice, servant-living, and generosity as a lifestyle of worship? Yes. But I don’t think we should do so at the expense of emphasizing singing. The Bible doesn’t think so either. Songs, when combined with those other forms of worship, still have a significant place in the life of the believer because songs accomplish something that other forms of worship can’t.

All of life is worship, but when you worship through song frequently, you focus your heart & decrease your chances of misdirecting the rest of your life-worship. Notice I said when you worship through song. The simple act of mindless singing while neglecting truth and right living does nothing.

Worship through song is a gift from God. It most powerfully engages the heart where the mind alone can’t go. It pulls out a deeper meaning & emotion that words alone cannot express. Our prayers and reading can be effective at engaging our minds and thoughts, but the emotional capacity laden in those words is endless when accompanied by tones, melodies, progressions, and voices.

God designed this communicative device called song to bring life to the truth that our minds are tempted to simply lock away as information. He designed music to be the sunset that makes a ball of fire in the sky beautiful to us. All day long the sun has hung there in the sky and you had a general subconscious knowledge of what it was and what it did, but you were not likely grateful for it. You probably didn’t even give one thought to it.

But then God started to play the harp of hues and color and began singing the cool breeze of dusk. It took a subconscious knowledge of an everyday reality and made it a moment of beauty in your life. That’s what songs do to our worship.

We subconsciously know that we are worshiping with every breath. But when we put words of worship to song we tap into a dormant power to transform us and empower us. It’s when we sing that it takes root in our minds and gives the maximum expression possible to the truths of our heart. We were designed to delight in God and songs enable and intensify that delight more than any other tool can.

So I’m asking God today to remind me of the joy of singing to Him. I’m marking out moments in my day to sing and worship God. Would you join me?

I was excited to have them come, but at the same time nervous about what they would experience at our church. You see, though we had been friends for years, none had actually worshiped with us before.

I was naturally curious about what they would say, so I planned to pick their brains about their observations, whether good or bad. Interestingly, they all had the exact same comments, specifically on the music portion of our worship and how deeply it had impacted them.

These were their observations and just a few of the core values we strive for in our worship through song at the Austin Stone.

1. God-centered: Who is the hero of the song? Man or God. We pick songs that are God-centered, God-aimed and God-exalting. It is shocking how many songs coming out of worship culture today are not truly centered on the person and work of God.

2. Theologically sound: We believe that our worship music is an extension of the sermon. Music teaches and music preaches. Music will often stick in the mind and heart of the believer long after the sermon has been forgotten. We make absolutely certain that every line of every song fits with the theology we hold to.

3. Celebratory: We do have slow and contemplative music, but the general theme of our music is celebration. God is amazing, powerful and awe-inspiring! He has done great things and His love endures forever! The gospel produces joy and we want our worship to reflect that.

4. Outwardly expressive: All through Psalms you see an inward and outward expression of worship. Mouths and hearts as well as hands and feet. You can worship God in silence and stillness, but often times worship of God will express itself outwardly through raising hands, shouting, clapping, dancing, you name it. Sorry Baptists, it’s not charismatic, it’s biblical!

These are simply some of the aspects of our worship philosophy that will be expressed on any given weekend. However, we strive to ensure that what makes our church a church is not an hour on a Sunday, but individual people who make up the Body of Christ, living together on mission, for His glory, all over the world. If worship isn’t taking place in that context first, then it’s not taking place at all.

*** Matt serves as lead pastor at Austin Stone Community Church, which he planted in 2002. The first meeting of 30 people now encompasses 4000 worshippers on Sundays, making Austin Stone one of the 100 fastest growing churches in America. Matt’s vision is to foster the churches passion for Christ, love for each other, and outreach to their communities – ultimately planting churches throughout America and the nations, supporting missionaries who are loving the peoples of the world and bringing them the hope of the gospel. In addition to pastoring at The Austin Stone, Matt is a cancer survivor, author and speaker for camps and conferences nationwide. Matt holds a MDiv from Southwestern Seminary and lives in Austin with his wife Jennifer and their three children.

In his inaugural address, Jesus tells us how to become a follower: repent and believe the gospel. There may be no greater barrier to believing the gospel than idolatry, which I say is the sin beneath all other sins. In a nutshell, idolatry is removing God as the object of worship, replacing him with a God-substitute. And we do it all the time. We worship idols when we elevate good things to the status of best things.

So if idolatry is the primary barrier to believing the gospel (initially and continually), then it follows that repenting of idolatry is the key to deepening our gospel belief.

In repentance, we must do three things in relation to sin:

• See it.
• Own it.
• Turn from it.

To see our sin in specific is to understand that it is grievous to God and hostile to his law (see Romans 8:7). This means that we see our sin as not just wrong in general, but in a specific and definite sense. A repentant person takes responsibility not just for the lawbreaking, but acknowledges that he or she is the lawbreaker. Finally, repenting means we turn from our sin. If idolatry is turning our backs on God while turning our whole selves to sin, then repentance is turning our backs on our idols while turning our whole selves to God.

How do you know if you are repenting deeply? One sign of true repentance is that we begin to see and know that we are bigger sinners than we thought. In other words, the bad news is actually worse than we thought.

But true repentance, the turning from sin, means seeing and knowing that the good news is better than we thought. Though in repentance we see that we are bigger sinners than we thought, through faith in the gospel, we see that he is a bigger savior than we thought.

The way to deal with sin and idolatry is to repent of them and believe the gospel. In his first letter to the church at Thessalonica, Paul praises the church for how they “turned from idols to serve the living and true God” (1 Thessalonians 1:9). May this be said of us and of our churches as we repent and believe the gospel.

**Darrin Patrick is the founding and lead pastor of The Journey, a multi-site church in the metropolitan St. Louis area. He is also vice-president of the Acts 29 church planting network, and the author of Church Planter: The Man, The Message, and the Mission.

“Without faith it is impossible to please [God],” it says in Hebrews. But pleasing God is obviously the goal of worship. So what does living a life of worship through faith look like?

Hebrews 11, the great faith chapter, opens by saying that everyone in the Old Testament that pleased God did it through trusting in Jesus. They hoped for a promised Savior and lived in light of that promise. The author tells us they:

- Lived in reverent fear (vs. 7)
- Obeyed God’s call (vs. 8 )
- Trusted that God is faithful to His promises (vs. 11)
- Generously and sacrificially offered up their greatest earthly treasures (vs. 4 & 17)
- Chose suffering and mistreatment over comfortable living (vs. 25 & 36-38)
- Treasured Christ over wealth and earthly treasures (vs. 26)
- Weren’t afraid (vs. 27)
- Enforced justice (vs. 33)

The list goes on. For these believers, trust and hope led to obedience and sacrifice. Because they knew God would keep His promises, their whole lives were oriented toward pleasing him. And because they lived by faith, they were able to.

The Old Testament heroes cited in Hebrews 11 hadn’t seen the fulfillment of those promises, and yet still lived by faith. How much more should we trust God, having already received the promised Redeemer?

Consider all that he has done for us:

- He left His throne in heaven to be born as a helpless baby
- Grew up as a perfectly innocent man
- Fulfilled all Old Testament prophecies concerning the Messiah
- Died to satisfy the wrath of God against us because of our sin
- Was raised from the dead
- Sent his Holy Spirit as an Encourager, Helper and deposit to assure us of His promise
- Always intercedes for us before the Father
- Is coming soon to restore all things

Given all that we have seen, you might think we could teach the Old Testament heroes a thing or two.

But we still trust in ourselves, our talents, our riches, and our goals. We have fooled ourselves into thinking those please Him. We believe that we can live a life centered on ourselves, come to church to sing and take communion, and those will please Him.

But true worship does not happen apart from faith. Let’s ask God to help us in our weakness and “increase our faith!” so that we can earnestly desire and pursue Him in a way that truly does please Him.

Recently, there has been a real surge in the “social gospel” approach to ministry. All the cool, emerging and emergent churches are all of the sudden fixated on this thing. Honestly, it’s pretty sexy. It makes the church appealing to people who want to make a difference and change the world – namely, my generation. Unfortunately, there has been at the same time a dropping of the proverbial ball as it comes to evangelism and mission and the ultimate authority of the inerrant word of God and a bunch of so-called “pastors” starting to think they know better than God.

They all unwaveringly cling to a lifestyle that is so eloquently put in the famous and powerful, yet slightly flawed statement of St. Francis of Assisi, “Preach the gospel at all times and if necessary, use words.” Sounds good to me. It lets me live morally, be a good guy, doing good stuff, not smoking, drinking, cussing or having sex with my girlfriend and then people are gonna come to Jesus without you having to talk about Jesus. Or if you’re an emergent person, you can smoke, drink, cuss and have sex with your girlfriend, but as long as you’re taking care of the poor, you’re good. It’s funny how both the most conservative and liberal people cling to the same sandy foundation and ignore the heart of the matter. We’re always trying to work out our own salvation, one way or the other… we really would like to claim at least SOME credit.

And then there’s the world. They have no theological basis to try to weigh everything to, or any Biblical argument to try to put up for why to do what they do. It’s so black and white. Either take care of the poor because it’s obviously right, or don’t do it because you’re a lazy punk. It’s almost like the God who made them in His image put it in their hearts, whether they acknowledge Him as Lord or not. This leads to stuff like these ONE campaign ads on TV. Great organization… doing a lot of good… uniting the world to do something that God is very passionate about – taking care of impoverished people. Brad Pitt, Justin Timberlake, George Clooney, Jamie Fox, P Diddy and other uber-sexiest-man-alive types stand on a black and white screen with their white v-necks and say in a cool movie star kind of way, “One by one, we can make poverty history.” It’s the sexy thing to do and everyone wants to be sexy, so it’s kind of the in thing right now. I’m glad for this! But there’s one problem. Where’s the gospel in that? Is Brad Pitt going to go and give food to the poor and starving and then feed their need for Jesus? Most likely not… but, does this make it wrong or impractical? I would say, no.

There has been an unfortunate extreme reaction by some evangelicals in response to the emergent social gospel movement… sometimes far too extreme. And in that extreme reaction, some churches have thrown out the baby with the bath water. I have heard it said recently that if you have a piece of bread or the gospel to give someone starving in Africa, you should give them the gospel, to which I responded, “No, you should give them both!” While it’s true that ultimately the most loving thing you can do for someone is share Jesus with them, and that the gospel is complete and powerful and effective, what causes us to believe that the gospel, incomplete in us without works of love and service, will be effective if the person we are sharing it with doesn’t feel and know that we truly care for them?

It seems like I read somewhere “If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.” Maybe I was hallucinating or something. Maybe that hallucination was continuing when I read Matt 25:31-46.

“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left. Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’
“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?’ Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

Or even Isaiah 58:6-7, “Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover him…”

I could name countless other scriptures that discuss God’s preoccupation with taking care of the poor! It is obvious from the scriptures that it’s on His mind! That he desires it… even requires it! When his people fail to do this, he plugs up his ears and stops listening to our worship. And the majority of the time He is not saying, “You must only give a hungry man bread to eat if you can also spend the time to give him an accurate account of the gospel.” In fact, I would dare say that us taking care of the poor is a lot less about the great commission (though it can be an integral part of reaching the lost) and a lot more about obedience to a desire that’s on God’s heart – namely, worship!

Please don’t hear what I’m not saying. The Great Commission is exactly what every believer ought to be about! It should consume our thoughts and hearts. The glory of Jesus and eternally worshiping Him in Heaven should always motivate us toward the greatest good for someone, namely that they know Christ and enjoy Him forever. But if we are to call ourselves Christians, we need to take stock in what God was passionate about from the beginning and that is worship… John Piper says that the very reason missions exist is because worship doesn’t. We tell people about Jesus so that they can know him and worship him. But what if, in the process of being so centered in on other people’s worship, we forget our own? Notice the wording God uses in Isaiah 58… “Is this not the FAST I choose…” When I consider fasting, I consider worship.

Or take for instance Luke 11:42, “But woe to you Pharisees! For you tithe mint and rue and every herb, and neglect justice and the love of God. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others.” This is a solid indicator that not only is tithing a new testament/new covenant form of worship as well, but that, directly tied to that relationship of worship is that we care about justice… and that God is just as passionate about it in the New Testament as He is in the Old! Our sacrifice of justice and love is just as much an expression of worship as our tithe.

All this can be summed up in 3 words. “Justice is worship.” I think that this is the case for 2 reasons:

1. I look at the account of the rich young man in Matt. 19. He asks the Lord what he must do to inherit eternal life, to which the Lord responds, “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” And then we see that once the the young man heard this he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions. Obviously Jesus isn’t saying that we can go to heaven if we do enough good things. But what He is saying is to settle the Lord issue. Is Jesus really our Lord? Or is our wealth, or even our lack of wealth? Nothing can help us settle this issue faster than spending ourselves for the poor. When we are the object of our worship, and our comfort and excess are the trappings, God is not honored or glorified. But when we live sacrificially for the poor, we are in essence saying, “Jesus is enough for me.” What a statement of worship for the world to look at our lives and see that?

2. Jesus truly cares for the poor and when we care for the poor, we reflect Him, His nature, and His character to an unbelieving world and to Himself. When we take care of the poor, we can more greatly appreciate our own impoverished state and see how much God indeed did sacrifice for us.

As a result, both of these will rightly produce worship in us as we begin to look less and less at us and more and more at the holiness, majesty, compassion and love of our Savior. That lifestyle is sure to give us an unquenchable passion for the things God is passionate about, and produce the fruit of love in us, which is what people will know us by anyway, right?

Bottom line, obedience is our true worship. If God says it, we certainly ought never believe we know better right? He obviously has our best in mind. He never commands anything that’s not our best. He wants us to get involved in what He’s doing. I hold strongly to this view that God is sovereign in all things, including our salvation. That there is nothing I can say or do that would ultimately make someone’s heart of stone become a heart of flesh and they could receive Christ as their savior. I believe it’s a work of the Holy Spirit only and that He’s chosen some whom He would call and woo and overcome all opposition that our dead hearts could give. However, this doesn’t mean that I will not share the gospel with every person I come in contact with, does it? Certainly not! I’m not missional because ultimately I can cause a person to accept Christ. I’m missional because ultimately God gives me the opportunity to get in on what He’s doing and in my obedience to His call to be missional, I get the benefit of enjoying Him in worship!

I think this is a very similar situation. If we fail to serve the poor and meet their needs simply because of whatever reason or excuse we can come up with, God is not honored in our lack of obedience and we do not get the joy of feeling His pleasure by joining in what He’s doing! Certainly God could feed the poor all at once if He wanted, in the same way that He could convert every sinner to Himself. But He chose us to be the vessels of both his temporal and eternal mercy and grace to this hurting world that He loves.

And ultimately, if we call ourselves Christians and say we love Jesus, but do not obey His call, we really don’t love him at all…

We headed out to Navasota, TX to the Third Day Ranch, where we congregated to worship Jesus together. Steve Farrar, from Promise Keepers spoke to the men and was an absolute stud and spoke with power and conviction. It was truly a great weekend.

I think that the greatest part for me though was that these men really stepped up to lead in the area of justice and mercy. I presented the need for children all over the world to be rescued out of poverty and 25 men stepped up to sponsor a child.

So I just wanted to personally say thank you to all of the men who did and challenge everyone else to be asking the Lord how He would have your worship completed through justice and mercy.

Songs and offerings are not enough, He desires justice.