Midweek Worship Connection (April 19, 2017)

Midweek Worship Connection | Episode 8

In a special “If We edition” of the Midweek Worship Connection, I was joined in the studio by Rocky Favia, Jr. We have been spending the week working on the second If We album, but took a quick break for the Midweek Worship Connection.

We started with a song from the upcoming If We album, called “Good Shepherd”, which is a bit of a modern musical version of Psalm 23.

Following the opening song, we continued in our study of Daniel, by turning to the third chapter and asking the question: “Why do we remember Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego?”

Daniel’s three friends and fellow countryman, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, were put in quite the difficult situation here in the third chapter of the book of Daniel. King Nebuchadnezzar has set up an enormous statue of himself and has declared that everyone in the kingdom shall bow down and worship him when they hear music playing. Being men of sincere integrity and conviction, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are not willing to offer worship to a false king. They serve only the One True King!

When King Nebuchadnezzar hears about their refusal to bow down and worship before his statue, he is furious. He has them brought to him, and proceeds to question them regarding their “insubordination”,

Sure of who they are, and more importantly, sure of Whose they are, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego simply refuse to answer the king as to why they will not bow down and worship him. They know full well that a fiery furnace awaits anyone who refuses to worship the king of Babylon.

So be it.

They would rather honor the One True God, at the risk of their very lives, than to “save” their lives by worshiping a false god. They know full well of God’s ability to save them from this mess if He chooses to do so, but by their own admission they will not serve false gods even if they are not saved from the fate of the furnace.

Does this story encourage you today? Does the faith of these three Hebrew prisoners-turned-dignitaries inspire you to be unwavering in your faith of God?

This story gets me fired up! (Bad joke…)

Seriously, though, I am amazed by the faith of these men and want to live every day with a similar faith. Every day we are faced with questions about who we are going to worship.

Will it be money? Power? Popularity? Peace?

Or will we choose, like these three faithful men, to worship only the One True God? After all, He is able to deliver us from any terrible situation

Even if He chooses not to deliver us from our circumstance, as is often the case, let us hold fast to our faith knowing that we will be with Christ in eternity.

In the middle of the episode, we sang a song written from Daniel 3 called “Burn Us Up”, and ended with one of our personal favorite If We songs, “Not To Us (Psalm 115)”.