How to Fulfill Your Call to Worship: Praise and Worship, #1

By Kim Safonov

Description:
Experience a new breakthrough in your life and ministry!  "How to Fulfill Your Call to Worship" brings an understanding of God's purpose for creating musical praise and worship, as well as gives practical keys for living in His presence every day, thus fulfilling your highest calling to be a worshiper in spirit and in truth. This book is the first book in the series entitled, "Praise and Worship."
After reading this book, you will understand:
-     God's eternal purpose for all of His creation
-     the power of music and its role in biblical history
-     how to live in God's presence every day
-     what happens when you praise God
-     practical tips for leading worship publicly
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kim Safonov
• Release date: Aug 2, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393579571

Kim Safonov

Kim Safonov has been leading worship both in America and in Ukraine for close to 20 years. She was a teacher on the subject of Praise and Worship in the Ministry Training Center of Kyiv, under the direction of missionaries, Rick and Bette Strombeck, while also travelling and ministering throughout Ukraine. She and her husband Zhenya have ministered together in Siberia, Poland, India, China, Israel and America. Kim has also been an elementary school teacher and an English teacher. Her passion is seeing God's power and presence change people's lives and bringing God's love to orphans and rescued animals.

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Are you hungry for more of God? Are you longing to experience God’s presence more deeply?

Do you want to fulfill the calling that you were born for? This book was written not only for those called and gifted to be in the music ministry, but also for those who want to understand the role of Praise and Worship in a congregation, and the power God infused into music as a means to connect with Him and to destroy darkness. I encourage you to read this book and apply the principles written in it, and watch how your life and relationship with God grows and how your faith becomes stronger! You will see how the Holy Spirit starts to move through a deeper understanding and revelation of His greatness. You can also use this book as a study manual for your worship team or small group.

I pray that you will so get to know God’s awesome presence that nothing else on this earth will satisfy that God-shaped void in your heart. In worshiping Him, we discover our highest call!

Introduction

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When I was 8 years old, I came to know Jesus as my Savior. I remember well the feeling I felt when God called me for His purpose. A music group came to our church. They sang a song with the words, Get all excited, go tell everybody that Jesus Christ is King! I felt my heart racing and I said to myself, That’s what I want to do! At 9 years old, I sang my first solo in church and as a teenager I traveled with a singing group called Impact, across America. Later I became a worship team member and then a leader and participated in evangelistic outreaches in Mexico and Ukraine. But my favorite time of all and where I have experienced God’s awesome presence the strongest, is when I am in worship with an audience of One in a place the Bible refers to as the secret place (Psalm 91).

This is why I have written this book. I pray that every person who reads it will gain a deeper revelation of

God’s heart in calling us to Himself first, before our calling to any other ministry, and to understand the  surpassing greatness of His power at work as we minister to Him. How to Fulfill Your Call to Worship starts with a brief history of music and its role during the creation of all things, and then moves deeper into the role of music in our personal relationship with God, and its power, as it is released in praise and worship through a body of believers.

God bless you as you seek to learn how to better fulfill your highest calling!

1

GOD’S ETERNAL PURPOSE

Our hearts are made for You, O Lord, and are restless until they rest in You.

-Augustine

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Who am I? Where did I come from? Why am I here? These are questions that every person on the face of the earth must come to grips with. But far too often, lives spent in search of happiness and fulfillment end in failure, hopelessness, or a sense of despair. And even when outward success is achieved financially, academically or socially, a gnawing sense of an inner void still plagues the heart. Why? Could it be that there is a deeper reality; an eternal purpose in this temporal period of time that we call life? The good news is that yes, there is an answer, but it’s not found in a new philosophy or a self-driven society. It’s discovered in an ageless and timeless book that has proven to be true by the countless testimonials of changed lives and the number of fulfilled promises and prophecies throughout the centuries.  It is only by going back to the source of all life that we can find meaning and purpose.

Imagine the earth as we know it just suddenly appearing out of a big bang, and with no purpose. What a hopeless thought! Thank God that is not the way it was! But like a golden thread woven through a garment, we can see the heart of a Creator for His creation, interwoven throughout the scriptures from the very beginning of time.

When God created the sun, moon, stars, the waters, day and night, all of the plants and trees, hail, rain, snow, mountains, hills and fields, He saw that it was all good. Even the birds, creeping things and all living creatures with the breath of life did not just happen upon the planet by accident, but all were created with an eternal purpose. What is that purpose? We can see it in the very last verse of the biggest book of the Bible. Yes, in the Psalms. Psalm 150:6 reads:

Let everything that has breath and every breath of life praise the Lord!                         

This Psalm commands ALL created things with the breath of life given by God to praise the name of the Lord, for He commanded and they were created (Ps. 148:5). The definition of praise is to thank, to speak well of, to proclaim the goodness and attributes of someone or something, to sing and even to shout for joy! We see that from the beginning of time, the creation had already begun to fulfill that for which it was created:

Who determined the measures of the earth, if you know? Or who stretched the measuring line upon it? Upon what were the foundations of it fastened, or who laid its cornerstone, when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?     - Job 38:5-7

At even the very first main event in the history of the creation of the earth, there was singing and shouting of praise! The morning stars sang together. Who were the others shouting? The only created beings at this time were the created hosts of heaven, called the angels. These were the servants of God, ministering to and for the Lord.

There was one main angel present at this time with a very interesting role to play, named Lucifer, meaning Light- Bearer. Let’s take a step back before the history of the earth, and take a look at Lucifer’s function:

You were in Eden, the garden of God; Every precious stone was your covering:  the sardius, topaz and diamond, beryl, onyx and jasper, sapphire, turquoise and emerald with gold. The workmanship of your timbrels and pipes was prepared for you on the day that you were created. You were the anointed cherub who covers. I established you. You were on the holy mountain of God. You walked back and forth in the midst of the fiery stones. You were perfect in your ways from the day you were created. Till iniquity was found in you.   -Ezekiel 28:13-15  (NKJV)

And in Isaiah 14:11

Your pomp is brought down to Sheol, and the  sound of your stringed instruments. The maggot is spread under you and worms cover you. (NKJV)

In both places, scholars agree that reference is made to Lucifer, the most beautiful of all the angels, with every precious stone in his body, walking upon the mountain of God, in His presence. It is written that within his body were timbrels, pipes and stringed instruments, corresponding with the 3 parts of an orchestra:  percussion, woodwinds and strings. Thus we see that Lucifer carried in his body all that was necessary to produce outrageously beautiful, heavenly, musical concerts of praise as he walked, moved and breathed upon the mountain of God!

He was the anointed cherub to cover the glory of God in heaven with continual, anointed, heavenly, musical praise. And he led many thousands of other angels with him in giving praise and glory to the Originator of all. How do we know there were others with him in this service? Because when iniquity and pride were found in him (read on in Ezekiel 28 and Isaiah 14), he fell from his high position with God and it is written that one third of the angels that followed him also fell from heaven, leaving this position of heaven’s chief worship leader an empty void. And thus, the origin of all evil on the earth is explained.

Couldn’t God have created another angel to take Lucifer’s place? Of course he could have. He is God. But all along He had other plans. For although the angels were created to serve Him and the creation was created to praise Him, there was still no one with whom He could fellowship. And therefore, He created man! From the first man- Adam, and down through the ages, every human being on the face of the earth was created for one highest priority:  the eternal purpose of having a friendship with God, the Creator!

We know that Adam, being formed in God’s image, communed with God. He was familiar with God’s voice, as is shown in Genesis 3: 8-10 after he and Eve disobeyed:

And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord called to Adam and said to him, Where are you? He said, I heard the sound of you walking in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and hid myself.

When Lucifer fell, he lost everything; his beauty, his revelation of God, his anointing, his position and authority in heaven, and his anointed music that covered God’s glory. Instead, all became perverted. His beauty became attractive unto evil, his revelation of God turned instead to lies and perversion, and his anointing and authority used for evil. His musical purpose became perverted and attractive for worship unto himself. When he saw God’s newly-designed plan of authority in the earth in Adam, and that God walked and talked with Adam as friend to friend and had given him dominion, his jealousy of Adam’s position drove him into a furious rage of very sly and cunning plans to cause Adam’s downfall.

With his disobedience, Adam lost something more important than Lucifer had, and that is friendship with the one and only God of all heaven and earth. He became tainted with sin. Unholy man could no longer freely live and fellowship with a holy God in His presence.

But deep in the heart of every person created is a God-shaped void, an eternal longing and desperate desire to worship God because we were created for this very purpose! Anthropologists have proven the biblical principle that every person has an inborn need to worship. Primitive societies engage in ritual sacrifice and those in modern society worship their gods of materialism, pleasure, power and self. If Satan can’t get the attention of the worshiper directly onto himself, he will try to direct his or her attention to all of these other things. If that doesn’t work, he’ll magnify the unfulfilled desire for worship; for purpose and meaning in life so greatly within the person and