Ministering to the Lord
In our church culture today, worship is the dominant thing. People will put up with mediocre teaching and preaching because the church might have a great worship team. My goal in this newsletter is to help you understand how to worship God in a healthy way. During worship we are all ministering to the Lord. It’s not just the team on stage, but all of us in the congregation. Ministering to the Lord is the right way to worship the Lord. To minister simply means ‘to serve’. So, you can rename the title to ‘Serving the Lord.’ We all go to restaurants, and the finer the restaurant, the higher quality the service. If we receive poor service, we instantly become frustrated and annoyed, but if we receive good service at a restaurant, we are more likely to tip more; the same is true of God. If we serve Him well, He is more likely to move. Look at the below verse. A group of prophets and teachers were ministering to the Lord and fasting, then He moved.
Acts 13:1-3, “Now in the church that was at Antioch there were certain prophets and teachers: Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen who had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch, and Saul. 2 As they ministered to the Lord and fasted, the Holy Spirit said, “Now separate to Me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” 3 Then, having fasted and prayed, and laid hands on them, they sent them away.”
As they ministered to the Lord, the Lord moved and gave them instructions that would change the course of the world. Of course, we do not minister to the Lord so that He can move, we minister to Him because He deserves it. His movement isa byproduct of His love. So, how do we minister to the Lord?
Ezekiel 44:15-16, “15 “But the priests, the Levites, the sons of Zadok, who kept charge of My sanctuary when the children of Israel went astray from Me, they shall come near Me to minister to Me; and they shall stand before Me to offer to Me the fat and the blood,” says the Lord God. 16 “They shall enter My sanctuary, and they shall come near My table to minister to Me, and they shall keep My charge.”
Here in Ezekiel, the Lord instructs the priests in the OT on what ministering to Him is and how it looks. In the New Testament, Christ made us all priests (1 Peter 2:9). Jesus was the original sacrifice but after His death, burial, and resurrection, He charged us to be the daily sacrifice. So, now we have established that we are both the priests and the sacrifice, but how do we minister to the Lord?
Ezekiel details the answer very well. The latter part of Ezekiel verse 15 says, “Stand before God and offer sacrifices”. Romans 12:1, “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.” Before you minister to Him, you must be committed to Him. He must be your everything. That is why He is asking you to sacrifice yourself. We must die to self.
‘Enter His sanctuary’. In the Old Testament, you had to physically enter His sanctuary, but the New Testament says in, 1 Corinthians 6:19, “19 Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own?” We are His sanctuary! Here, He is trying to convey oneness with Him. He is in us, and He is one with us.
‘Go to the Lord’s table’. Ephesians 2:4-7, “4 But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, 5 even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), 6 and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” We are seated together with Christ in Heavenly places. We are at the table. We do not work to get to the table, Christ has brought us to the table. After ministering to the Lord, we keep His charge. This is what happened in Acts with Paul and Barnabas. They kept the Lord’s charge, which is being separated unto Him and being sent out.
So, what does all this mean? We are the sacrifice, and we should stay on the altar. What Christ did for us, though, is make us a worthy sacrifice and a pleasing aroma to God the Father. When we surrender ourselves to God and put all our fears, anxieties, passion, and will aside, and just focus on Him, that is ministering to Him. We do not need to worry about being perfect because Christ did that already. We do not need to worry about inviting Him to come and dwell with us because Christ did that already. We do not need to worry about God the Father inviting us in, because Christ did that already.
We minister to the Lord when we are focused on Christ the perfect one. The goal of the enemy is to distract us and place our focus on other things.
This is why we need to be sacrifices ourselves, because the sacrifice is only focused on death.
This is why we need to know we are temples, because the temple will only focus on the person in the temple.
This is why we need to know we are already at the table, because when you are at the table you can focus on the one who is at the head of the table.
Ministering to the Lord is when we engage Him in worship, and not the song.
