It’s been a while since I last posted mainly because I started leading worship full time at The Well.

On January 4th, 2013, The Well hosted its first monthly worship night. We are gathering at 7pm on the first Friday of every month for an extended time of worship with a bit of teaching. The service is called REST because we want our community to experience and express worship from a place of resting rather than striving.

Striving in worship appears in different forms, but the root comes from an incomplete revelation of the grace of God. God’s grace is His unmerited (undeserved, unearned) favor toward us. This favor is a guarantee of right relationship with God because of Jesus’ finished work on the cross. Grace is a gift which can only ever be freely given and freely received.

Worship, by song or prayer, that disregards, ignores or misunderstands this grace begs God to do something for the believer which He has already done. For instance, asking God’s presence to visit us completely ignores Jesus’ statement that He would never leave nor forsake us, and that in His physical absence, He would send the Comforter, His Holy Spirit, to be with us.

Conversely, worship from rest declares and reminds us of God’s nearness and that nothing can separate us from the love of Christ. We rest in the finished work of Jesus and cease our striving to be acceptable to God in worship through our own efforts. He has made us accepted in Christ. God has made us righteous in Christ. Jesus is our all in all. This worship takes our eyes off of ourselves and looks to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.

In this place of worship, we can freely experience God and come to know Him more. We are already cleansed and can fellowship with God as Adam and Eve did in the garden. Interestingly enough, God’s day of rest is the Sabbath which begins at sundown on friday night. God ordained the Sabbath as a day not just for resting, but also for worship. God’s original design of worship is found in rest and only fully realized in Christ Jesus.

So join us and bring a friend! We plan on lingering long in the wonderful revelation of Jesus and the work he has finished.

Have a story about striving or resting in worship? I’d love to hear…