Some Encouragements for Those Who Are Distracted in the Worship of God.

Encouragements for those who are distracted
Some of these gleanings are from the puritans
Geoffrey R. Kirkland
Christ Fellowship Bible Church

Remember to Repent
When we find ourselves distracted in the worship of the Lord, let us be diligent to repent of the sin and bewail the fact that we take our eyes off of Christ, His Word, and His beauties and succumb to distractions on lesser things for the moment. Confess your sin specifically to the Lord.

Remember to Refocus
When distractions come and Satan’s temptations assault, remember to cast your eyes upward again on Christ. Do not neglect to refocus on Christ. It’s one thing to notice a distraction and repent of it, but continue to persevere in the mortifying of this sin and the vivifying of holiness by refocusing yet again on Christ’s person and glory.

Remember to Meditate on the glory of Christ
Distractions cast our eyes off of Christ and on to something else. Our hearts falls from the gaze of Christ onto lesser things. The highest object of our affections and the greatest consideration of our hearts is nothing less than the person and glory of Jesus Christ. Set your heart upon the ravishing delights and steadfast glory of Christ. Consider his patience and enduring mercy toward you. Think of His satisfactions and pleasantness in all that He does. Cast your heart continually upon the highest object of the human heart, the surpassing sweetness and majestic glory of this awesome God.

Remember the intercessory work of Christ
Even when you find yourself distracted and your heart has been drawn away from Christ in worship, set it upon your heart that you have an intercessor in heaven in your behalf. When you are distracted below, He remains interceding above. When you have succumbed to distraction and temptations on earth, He remains prayerful, constant, full of love, and pleading His merit continually for you before God’s bar in heaven. O rejoice in this! Even when you sin, He remains your high priest!

Remember the patience of God
In times of sin and when you fall into patterns of distraction and discouragement, remember that you serve a God who is perfect in patience and lavish in love. Your God is one whose heart is full compassion and tenderness toward His creatures, especially His elect. So when you are distracted and are guilt laden in conscience, set it upon your heart that your God is patient toward you, not treating you as your sins deserve, but eager to forgive, ready to forgive, and able to aid you and strengthen you so you can persevere in diligent and focused worship.

Remember the nearness of undistracted worship in heaven
A day will soon come for every believer to worship God without distraction or hesitation or hindrance in eternal glory. Here you long to worship God without distraction. There in glory you will most assuredly worship God without distraction. This is a foretaste here of the fullness of worship of the one, true God in His majestic presence. Here we worship him truly but imperfectly whereas there in glory we shall worship him truly, perfectly, everlastingly, without hindrance.

Remember the efforts of our imperfect worship are sanctified in Christ
As the redeemed of Christ, bought by His precious blood and unbreakably united to Him in saving faith, remember that even your imperfect efforts in this life are still sanctified by the grace of God and are wholly acceptable before God. By virtue of your union with Christ by faith, your good works are sanctified so that God is well-pleased with your obedience, your fruits, your actions, and your worship — even though it remains imperfect in this life. Bless God that He receives you in His Son, the Beloved, and that he delights in the prayers of His saints and in the worship of His sons.

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Commitments of CFBC Restated & Reaffirmed.

The Commitments of CFBC Restated & Reaffirmed.
Geoffrey R. Kirkland
Christ Fellowship Bible Church

Expository Preaching
The highest form of worship that mortal man could reach is the hearing from God as He speaks through the reading and preaching of his Word. The grand and majestic interaction between God and His people in the preaching of the Word cannot be overstated. God comes down to communicate through His chosen mouthpiece to His people to encourage their hearts, inform their minds, direct their wills, and form them more into the image of Christ. For these reasons, we are unswervingly committed to the faithful, biblical, sequential, expository preaching of the inerrant, sufficient, and authoritative Word of God. Thus, when we gather together corporately, the preaching of God’s Word takes center place so that He can speak and address us as His people so we can grow in holiness and in the knowledge of our blessed Savior.

Committed Prayer
We depend wholly and fully on the power of God to make the ministry effectual and God-pleasing. We cannot worship in our own effort, energy, and strength. So we come to God in desperate prayer both privately and publically, both in our closets and in the corporate prayer meetings. We as a body of believers remain steadfastly resolute to seek God’s face in prayer as we adore him, praise Him, reflect on and meditate on His attributes and being, thank Him for all that he does, affirm His absolute sovereignty and glorious providence, confess and repent of our sins, pray and intercede for one another and for the lost who need to come to faith, and for the glory of God to be made great on the earth. We are a church of prayer and will remain such for God’s glory.

Developing Leaders
Our Lord modeled the life and mindset of a leader to develop and train other leaders to do the work of ministry.  He taught them by example, by instruction, by spending much time together. Our conviction at CFBC is to take the Word of God and entrust these faithful truths to other godly men who can then teach others also. Our goal is to reduplicate leaders so that we can have as many godly shepherds in the flock as possible. We meet with the men, encourage the men, disciple the men, pray for the men, and long for God to raise up an army of exceedingly humble and sacrificially diligent to teach sound doctrine and to guard Christ’s flock from error.

Vigilant Shepherding
The highest work a man could ever be called to in this life is to shepherd the sheep that God bought with His own blood. To shepherd requires feeding the flock, caring for the flock, numbering the flock, carrying the wounded, warding off all invaders and predators, keeping watch diligently, bandaging up the bloody, and leading them to green pastures. In the same way, we at CFBC are conscientious to imitate our Lord who is our Chief Shepherd as we vigilantly shepherd His people that He has called us to serve. We must vigilantly guard from false teaching and teachers, we must verbally admonish those veering into dangerous theological perspectives, and we must teach the truth relentlessly. We have as our goal to shepherd the flock of God among us — every single sheep.

Urgent Soul-winning
God has allotted each Christian a certain amount of time in this world to glorify Him and live for His glory. Every faithful Christian longs for more souls to be snatched from the eternal fire and brought into the kingdom of Christ. Thus, we are zealously committed to and urgently focused upon the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ to the lost. Our commission that Christ gave to us is to go out to all the world. Thus, we are to go to sinners. We are to initiate conversations with friends, family members, and strangers. We understand the nearness of eternity and the Imminency of death. And so with this conviction of the externality of everlasting punishment under God’s wrath, we have as our ambition to be urgent in calling sinners to repent of sin and trust in Christ Jesus alone who loved us and gave Himself up for us by taking the wrath of God in our stead.

Worldwide Missions
We are committed to missions because missions is the very heartbeat of God. God is the God of the nations and He longs for the nations to worship Him. Indeed, He declares that all nations will worship and praise Him! So we start where we are in our Jerusalem and we branch out to our Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth with the gospel. We primarily focus our efforts and resources in global ministries that are likeminded theologically that seek to teach pastors how to preach the Word of God. We long to see indigenous pastors equipped, trained, compelled to go back to their countries and villages to powerfully and precisely proclaim the gospel to the lost and to edify the redeemed. We are faithfully and generously committed to worldwide missions.

Biblical Theology
Our understanding of God and our conviction about truth must derive from the Word of God alone. We make it our fervent ambition to teach and preach theology that is biblical, precise, clear, and helpful for the people of God. Nothing is so paramountly important than for men and women to think rightly about God, about mankind, about sin, abound coming judgment, and about Christ and His gospel. We also seek to have a biblical ecclesiology and eschatology as we derive our convictions from the Scriptures. From the youngest of children in our catechism class, we teach them theology even to the sermons and teachings we have, we endeavor to constantly teach theology and model how to derive theological perspectives that are accurate and governed by the Word of God.

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