Christians often talk about serving the Lord. And while it’s true that the Bible calls his people to serve him with all their hearts, it’s a mistake to think that what this means is that God needs us to meet his needs. So, in what sense is it appropriate to talk about us serving God?

First, since God is God and we are not, he is in charge and we’re not. As such, he is our master and we are his servants. But he doesn’t call us to serve him because he needs us or because there is something missing in him which only his human creatures can fulfill. Instead, the Bible frequently describes God as serving us.

Unlike the rest of the gods in the world, our God does not demand our sacrifice for his sake, but instead he sacrifices himself for us. In other words, he is the kind of Master who serves, subverting what our culture thinks about power and authority and identifying it with self-sacrifice, the heart of which is the self-sacrifice of the God-man Jesus Christ on the cross for the lives of his people.

Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert

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Music has a power which logic and rationality do not - the power to tap into the human emotional experience. This experience is no less spiritual than understanding and reflecting on the truth of the gospel intellectually, merely different. Music evokes memories that mere words cannot, connecting us to our experience of God in worship from the past. Music taps into our creativity, allowing us not merely to participate in worship but become authors and creators of Christian worship ourselves. And music fires our imagination, allowing us by faith to experience the universal church on heaven and earth as we sing and aids us in longing for the eternal worship of new creation. Chuck and Aaron call the Christian church back to its heritage of strong and heartfelt congregational singing.

Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert

Subscribe to the show at https://cacg.saintjamesglencarbon.org.

To comment on this episode, visit https://saintjamesglencarbon.org/cacg-ep94.

What makes the books of the Bible sacred scripture is that they were written by prophets (Old Testament) or apostles (New Testament). The books of the New Testament bear witness to the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth, either as a first-hand account of his life, death, and resurrection (we call these the four Gospels) or by reflecting on and applying this Gospel to the life of the Christian communities of the first century (these are the epistles written by Paul, Peter, and others).

These books were not “decided upon” by anyone; instead, the earliest Jesus followers recognized that they were about the historical Jesus and carried his continuing power in the reading of them. Only later, in the fourth century, did the church feel the need to put down on paper an official list of the books they had already recognized as scripture.

Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert

Subscribe to the show at https://cacg.saintjamesglencarbon.org.

To comment on this episode, visit https://saintjamesglencarbon.org/cacg-ep93.