Reaching Upward

The ministry staff at our congregation has come up with a theme for 2009 which is titled, "Reaching Upward, Inward and Outward." This theme is based on Isaiah 6:1-8, and we are currently in the midst of a series of sermons based upon the same theme. As the worship minister at our congregation, I preached on January 18 on the theme, "Reaching Upward." The exact title was, "The Five Whoppers of Worship."

O.k., a little explanation on the audio. First of all, there are two links instead of one. I don't usually include the special music with my messages when I post them, but Joni sang this song and it goes really well with the message itself. So, the first link is Joni singing the special music. Second, this message is from the 8:15 service. That's pretty early for most people, so a lot of the humorous things (or at least things I thought were funny) didn't get much of a response. Plus, this crowd is smaller than our 10:30 service and generally a lot more "reserved." But the recording made of the later service left out the special music and the first part of the message, so I posted this one. Finally, my intention here was not to chastise or confront people unnecessarily. But some of this material is confrontational by nature, because we ALL have times when we try to elevate ourselves to God's throne. If you find yourself struggling with some of the things I said, do what I did when I was preparing the message: examine WHY you are uncomfortable. It just might be that you have believed one of the lies.

To listen, you can try and click on the link below (it should open the file in your media player), or you can download the file to your computer and listen to it. To do this, right-click on the link and select "save target as" and save the file to your computer desktop or somewhere you can find it. Then open the file from your media player (i.e. Windows Media Player, iTunes, etc.).


Special Music: Joni Clifton (1-18-2009)

Message: "Whoppers of Worship" Rob Clifton (1-18-2009)