Beauty Supplements

Your daily dose of true beauty advice…

God’s continuing presence is a shield against overwhelming temptation. Any time Satan wants to get to a believer, he has to go through God. First Corinthians 10:13 says, “No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man; and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, so that you will be able endure it.”

God is present personally and individually with every believer to defend him against temptation he can’t handle.

That God is present everywhere ought to motivate us to obey Him more carefully. When we sin, whether it is a sin of thought or a sin of words or a sin of actions, it is done in the presence of God. Psalm 90 is a prayer of Moses, and in verse 8, Moses acknowledges the implications of God’s omnipresence with regard to our sin: “You have placed our iniquities before You, our secret sins in the light of your presence.”

In other words, when we sin, it is as if we ascended beyond the clouds, came into the throne room of God, walked up to the foot of the throne of God and committed the sin right before His face. That is a sobering thought.

~John MacArthur in Worship: The Ultimate Priority

Photo: OBMonkey

Beauty Supplements

Your daily dose of true beauty advice…

The source of most of the problems people have in their Christian lives relates to two things: either they are not worshiping six days a week with their life, or they are not worshiping one day a week with the assembly of the saints. We need both.

If you go to church only when it is convenient, you will never be very fruitful as a Christian. You can’t thrive spiritually on your own; you need to have the spiritual stimulation of fellow believers. We live in such an easy-come, easy-go, casual, flippant society that people don’t make consistent, faithful commitments, and then they wonder why they fail.

The answer is clear. Our spiritual growth and stability cannot flourish without the support and mutual encouragement of other Christians.

~John MacArthur in Worship: The Ultimate Priority

Photo: OBMonkey

Beauty Supplements

Your daily dose of true beauty advice…

I used to think that the doctrine of omniscience was anything but reassuring. When I was young, my parents often said, “We may not know what you do, but God does. He sees everything.” I thought of that as a threat, something that only made me fearful of doing anything wrong. 

To be sure, God’s omniscience is an effective deterrent to sin. God is one teacher who never leaves the room. Second Corinthians 5:10 tells us that someday we will be called to account for all the things that we’ve done in the body. And 1 Corinthians 4:5 says that the Lord will “bring to light the things hidden in darkness and disclose the motives of men’s hearts.” That is a powerful motivation to live righteously.

My parents were right; God knows everything we do. And yet His correction is always with love. Peter denied the Lord three times at His crucifixion. In John 21, the Lord confronted Peter and asked, “Do you love Me?” (v. 16). Peter assured the Lord that he loved Him. The Lord asked again—a total of three times. Finally Peter said, “Lord, You know all things; You know that I love You” (v. 17). Peter appealed to Jesus’ omniscience rather than his own visible behavior to verify his love.

First John 3:19-20 says, “We…will assure our heart before Him, in whatever our heart condemns us; for God is greater than our heart and knows all things.” God’s omnipotence does more for us than merely act as a watchdog; it is a source of our confidence and assurance, for by it He sees beyond our disobedience and failure, to a heart of love for Him.

~John MacArthur in Worship: The Ultimate Priority

Photo: OBMonkey

Beauty Supplements

Your daily dose of true beauty advice…

Worship is to the Christian life what the mainspring is to a watch, what the engine is to a car. It is the very core, the most essential element.

Worship cannot be isolated or relegated to just one place, time, or segment of our lives. We cannot verbally thank and praise God while living lives of selfishness and carnality. That kind of effort at worship is a perversion. Real acts of worship must be the overflow of a perpetually worshiping life.

In Psalm 45:1, David says, “My heart overflows with a good theme.” The Hebrew word for “overflow” means “to boil over,” and in a sense that is what praise actually is. The heart is so warmed by righteousness and love that, figuratively, it reaches the boiling point. Praise is the boiling over of a hot heart. It is reminiscent of what the disciples experienced on the road to Emmaus: “Were not our hearts burning within us?” (Luke 24:32).

As God warms the heart with righteousness and love, the resulting life of praise that bubbles up and overflows is the truest expression of worship.

~John MacArthur in Worship: The Ultimate Priority

Photo: OBMonkey