When you’re going through trouble, there’s one thing you need to know.  In God’s economy, nothing is ever wasted.

 That’s the phrase my wife shouted out to me today as I was on the phone trying to encourage a friend going through tough times.

Ever since I came to the Lord in the early 1970s, Christians have been fighting wars over how worship should be conducted.  Lately I have begun thinking again about the question: What is true worship?

I stood in front of a very conservative congregation talking about how God calls us to carry on Jesus’ ministry of healing, and giving some examples of healings I had witnessed.  At the end of the service, a lady approached me with great anger on her face. 

“This is how I’m serving the church right now.”

 The comment came from my son-in-law Josh.  Our daughter Katie is on the worship team of a very large, multi-site church on the east side of Toronto.  Most Sundays she has to be at church long before service begins, as early as 6 am in some cases.  Then they attend service in the afternoon as a family at their own site.  But when Katie is leading there, Josh has to find something to do before service for a couple of hours with their two young boys, and in the winter the only places to go are Home Depot and Walmart.  And there he serves.

I How many times have you felt like just giving up?

 A great preacher called Bob Mumford once addressed a leadership conference with these words: “We’ve all thought of giving up.  The difference is some of us haven’t.”

 We look at what we’ve done, and often the results we expected just didn’t come.  Money, jobs, relationships, family, church - the list of disappointments goes on.