Praise-Worship Instead of Praise and Worship. Pentecostal theologians say that if you truly praise God, then show it physically. Van Cleave added that a showy-praise practice is an aid to worship. (See Guy P. Duffield and Nathaniel M. Van Cleave. Foundations of Pentecostal Theology. L.I.F.E. Bible Colleg, San Dimas, California 91773. 1987.) In Pentecostal meetings you will find some dancing, clapping, crying, shouting, speaking in tongues, among other forms of worship-disorder. They call it as “praise and worship.” Further examinations of this teaching, however, show that it more fitting for the doctrine to be named as PRAISE-WORSHIP instead of “praise and worship.”
One significant question is that if we are real born-again Christians, do we need to celebrate or observe the Holy Week? In just a mouse click away, we could google dozens of the list of religious holidays (or holydays?) The Jewish religion, Islam, Catholicism, Seventh Day Adventism, among other religious groups observe “holidays requiring absence from work beyond existing Statutory Holidays.” What is the meaning of the Christian Holy Week observance among the Catholics and other Christians denominations?
True happiness is all about yourself, your inner emotion or response, and not any stimulus outside of yourself. You cannot buy happiness, they say, as you don’t purchase what you already own. The character of your heart and mind, therefore, plays a huge role in maintaining a life of peace and happiness.
God’s love continues to overshadow our hearts and beings even if we deliberately ignore or reject Him. Termed as God’s common grace or undeserved love and kindness that is not salvific in form, He provides rain or the sunshine to both believers and unbelievers; to the righteous as well as to the unrighteous.
The “refrain” portion of this poem conveys precisely the life of the Christian worker in the mission field: “Brave faith I must have—brave I must be to Jesus.” I wrote somewhere about the conversion of the Mouk tribe in New Guinea. Brave faith is the only fitting description of what the Christian missionaries did to this people group.
Jun P. Espina 1 min read
Updated on February 17th, 2020
C. H. Spurgeon once commented that little minds need Latin to express their shallow thoughts, more so on how to enter God’s kingdom. Unlike the artful deception of falsehood, truth needs but simple words. Its beauty and might is easily seen in its actual, rugged form. In only six common words, the apostle Paul penned one of the greatest Christian truths ever told: “I have been crucified with Christ.”