Trust no more in your own weak efforts, and trust the efforts of the Savior. And when you trust Him, He will save you. His death on the cross is more than sufficient for all your sin. As Richard Sibbes has said, “There is more mercy in Him, than sin in us.” 

I’m just trying to get right with God.
Working in the hospital, I heard this phrase so many times. Many had come face to face with their own mortality, and the thought of coming before God brought new introspection. So I’d ask the same question that Job asked: “How can a man be in the right before God” (Job 9:2)? And the answer I was given was almost always simple, predictable, and wrong.
“You know, I’m just trying to get back in the church, start reading my Bible, start tithing, get baptized, and start doing better.” And I’ll imagine that if you’ve spoken to anyone on the street you’ve probably heard something similar, as if the problem was that they just needed to do a little better and then they would be on God’s good side. But how terrifying to imagine standing before the Judge of all creation, and all you can say is, “I’m not quite as bad as I used to be. I’m doing better!”
Here’s the problem: You cannot be good enough. You cannot be “better” enough. Your good works will never outweigh your bad. James says, “For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it” (James 2:10). Every sin committed is equal to breaking God’s entire law. How many sins have you committed? How large is your negative balance? This is regarding your sin, but what about your righteous deeds? “We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment” (Isaiah 64:6). Even your best deeds are filthy before God. In our sin, we are unclean. Imagine standing before God in the judgement, and all we have to offer Him is a pile of unclean, filthy garments. You see, we don’t need to be better, because we can’t be better.
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Without the Holy Spirit there is no church, no church service, no pastor, no sermon, no ministry, and no life. All you then have is just humanistic mush. But we now want to replace even God in our lives, and some churches are happy to go along with this. Sorry, no true Christian ever will. God words without God are nothing. ‘Church services’ without God are nothing. Religious rituals and ceremonies without God are nothing.

Many of the folks pushing things like transhumanism, AI, posthumanism and so on have often made clear the religious nature of their endeavours. They see all this as a new religion offering full and final salvation – but of a radically different sort than traditional religion does.
While many atheists and secularists are enthralled by the bright promises of a new technological future, others with a religious bent are also a part of all this, and are quite happy to tell us how old religions are being transcended and replaced in this world of AI and techno-futurism.
A critic of all this, James Herrick, has written extensively about these matters. In one 2017 collection of essays he offered this summary statement: “Transhumanists speak confidently of achieving goals such as technological immortality, creating computer deities, and radically altering the human race through technological enhancements including genetic and nanotechnological interventions.”
And in another 2017 book he puts it this way:
Religious categories such as miracle, resurrection, eternal life, and God are now contested territory, with old-style spiritual religionists pitted against new-style technological ones. It is no longer a question of science vs. religion, but of new scientific religions vs. old traditional ones.
 A number of observers have suggested that we are currently witnessing the emergence of a powerful new technological religion. Some embrace the possibility while others detect in it serious dangers. As narratives that mingle an aggressive technological agenda with spiritual aspiration, technofuturist myths address the longing expressed by artificial intelligence specialist Hugo de Garis to “invent something” that would satisfy spiritual longing “and satisfy the criteria from your intellect, from your knowledge, from your science.” For de Garis this dream of wedding spiritual longing to technological realities constitutes “a kind of scientifically-based belief system that energizes, that creates a vision, that excites.” De Garis labels this hope, “the idea of god building.” Neuroscientist Sebastian Seung, a critic of Transhumanism, secures the point in writing, “The Bible said that God made man in his own image. The German philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach said that man made God in his own image. The transhumanists say that humanity will make itself into God.” Yet, the ethical details of this new technological religion are conspicuously absent from the discussion. De Garis, Seung, and many others raise the question: How should we think about the religious aspirations present in the Transhumanist vision?
Two recent items making headlines around the world illustrate the sort of brave new techno-religious worlds we are heading to. And these matters should concern not just Christians but all of us who care about the road we are now travelling on.
The first comes from something Yuval Noah Harari recently has said. You remember him: the atheist, homosexual historian who is often associated with Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum and the Great Reset mob. He routinely says stuff that is all rather shocking, and his latest offering was no different. As one report states:
Harari — who has written Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century — spoke last month about the future of AI and said it may soon greatly influence spirituality:
 “It’s the first technology ever that can create new ideas. You know, the printing press, radio, television, they broadcast, they spread the ideas created by the human brain, by the human mind. They cannot create a new idea.
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What does gathered worship do?  It declares that this world is a lie.  More than that, it centres us around the throne of God – for God is on the throne whatever we may be facing down here.  It gathers God’s people around his throne – for God is worthy of every note of praise that can be uttered by any part of his creation.

What does gathered worship do?  Sometimes it can make our souls soar.  Other times not so much.  It is easy to understand why non-believers scratch their heads at Christian worship.  If I saw a small group of people awkwardly singing, listening to someone talk about an old book, and sharing a tiny amount of bread and wine, I’d scratch my head too.
As I anticipate returning to Poland for the European Leadership Forum, I am reminded of the sacrifices made by so many during the Communist era.  Russian Baptist pastor, Yuri Sipko, remembers Christians who were sent to prison camps or lost their jobs or their children. “Without being willing to suffer, even die for Christ, it’s just hypocrisy.  It’s just a search for comfort.”  Challenging words, but ponder this thought: “You need to confess him and worship him in such a way that people can see this world is a lie.”
What does gathered worship do?  It declares that this world is a lie.
At the end of Revelation 3, we find that famous verse about Jesus standing at the door and knocking.  He was knocking on the door of the church at Laodicea, but would they open the door and let him in?  They thought they had everything they needed, but actually, they desperately needed Jesus.  As we turn to chapter 4 and John’s great vision from Jesus continues, we find the heavenly door is open for John to come up and participate in the ultimate worship gathering.
In Revelation chapters 4-5, we get to glimpse the ultimate worship gathering, and it reminds us what gathered worship does.  Here are five things that gathered worship does:
1. Worship centres us around God’s throne (Revelation 4:1-2).
In worship, we are invited, by Jesus, to gather at the throne of God.  In Eugene Peterson’s Reversed Thunder, he points out how we live in a world that feels like a storm-tossed sea.  We are thrown all over the place by every wind, every wave, every advert, every news story, every problem, and every threat.  But as Christians, we have an anchor that holds us firm, gives us a circumference, and centres us.  God is on the throne, so there can be a constant source of stability in my heart and life. Gathering with God’s people to sing his praise is an anchor point in the frenetic chaos of life.
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