“Revere”, A Closer Look by Leon Reed

On Sunday, April 10, 2011, a man and his family came from the Kansas City area to visit Fairfax, MO. To be specific this man came to Fairfax Baptist Church in view of a call as Pastor.  We could not imagine a man, his wife, daughter, and son born and raised in the KC area, wanting to come to a small town to shepherd us.

But God –

This man’s name was Andy Braams.

In his message that day, Andy asked the question, “What is our call?” The Scripture he used was John 14.21: “Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.”

Andy asked another question: “Do we have His commands? And if we do, are we obeying them?”
Then he shared a math formula. Have + Obey = Love.

If we have His commands and obey them we are showing God that we love Him. It is a simple formula but very broad. Andy went on to share three thoughts that will show our love to God: Exalt the Savior, Equip the Saint, Evangelize the Sinner. He had borrowed them from a book he had read; also the Missouri Baptist Convention uses these ideas.

With these three ideas in his mind, as he was preparing his message, Andy happened to look at the Fairfax Baptist Church constitution. When he did, he was “blown away.” In the objectives of Article II were these three ideas (not in these exact words, but they were there).

Now, 6 years later, our vision is “To be a large church in a small town.” Not in numbers, but in influence. To be a large church in a small town, our mission is: Exalt the Savior, Equip the Saint, Evangelize the Sinner

Our strategy is where our JOURNEY begins. We are on a journey to be more like Jesus. This acrostic helps us identify the necessary components of living a Kingdom-focused life. Today we look at the middle element: Revere – worshiping God in all aspects of our lives.

Revere:

• to feel in awe of
• to regard with respect and affection mingled with awe
• to regard as worthy of great honor

The English word “worship” comes from two Old English words: weorth, which means “worth,” and scipe which means something like “shape” or “quality.” We can see the Old English word scipe in modern words like friendship and sportsmanship – that’s the quality of being a friend, or the quality of being a good sport. So worth-ship is the quality of having worth or of being worthy.

When we worship, we are saying that God has worth, that He is worthy. Worship means to declare worth, to attribute worth. We speak or sing about how good and powerful God is. We praise God.
“Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.” – Revelation 4.11

When we come here on Sunday morning, do we come to worship Him or do we come “to church”? We all know the answer to that one. We should come here on Sunday morning to worship our Lord because He is worthy of our Praise.
“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” – 1 Peter 2.9

We are not worthy of it but because of His love and setting us apart, we have been called to proclaim and declare God’s worthiness.

We, the Church, come to this building on Sundays to worship God. Does the Church worship God on Thursday? How about Saturday? We should worship God every day, all day, in all aspects of our life.
“In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his REVEREnce.” – Hebrews 5.7

We must ask ourselves, with the reverence I have for God, does he hear my prayers?