Fix Your Eyes: How Our Study of God Shapes Our Worship of Him

By Amy Gannett

We live in a polarized time. Christians are quick to conceive of themselves either as theologically-minded or worship-minded; either thinking Christians or feeling Christians. The results are damaging: theology without worship is muted, stifled, and cold, and worship without theology is ungrounded, unrooted, and uninformed.
 
This is not the way it was meant to be.
 
Theology (our study and knowledge of God) should always lead to doxology (our worship of Him). Worship should always be rooted in theology. When we study the nature and character of God as revealed in his Word, we are invited to respond in the affectionate, obedient discipleship of worship. How can we keep our theology from being mere head knowledge? How do we give our worship roots that will last? By fixing our eyes on God Himself—the object of our study and the object of our worship.
 
Fix Your Eyes is an invitation to understand core doctrines of the Christian faith and apply them in our daily worship of God. It walks believers through key theological concepts and shows how each can be lived out in daily life.
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: BH Publishing Group
• Release date: Oct 5, 2021
• ISBN: 9781087730554

Book preview

background

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Theology Proper: Worshiping the God Who Is

Worship is pure or base as the worshiper entertains high or low thoughts of God.³

A. W. Tozer

In high school, I was a self-professed Jesus freak. I fit every stereotype of an impassioned youth grouper at a Baptist church. I wore my tough faith on my sleeve, stood up for creationism in biology class, and invited everyone in my math pod to youth group. I even made my own T-shirt that said Got Jesus from iron-ons I found at the local craft store. My whole life of faith, if you would have asked me then, was wrapped up in one name: Jesus.

I blush a little bit as I recount this. My sixteen-year-old self was bold and brazen about faith. I pulled no punches in sharing with others the hope I found in Christ. On the one hand, the recollection makes me sheepish; how I wish I could remind my younger self to extend more grace to others, season her words with gentleness, and invest in the long view of evangelistic relationships. On the other hand, as I think on my high school days, a deep humility settles into my gut; God used that wild faith to share the gospel with coworkers who worked the late shift at the local hotel where I manned the front desk, and I can’t help but recall the lanky redhead from math class who took that invitation to youth group, came to know Jesus personally, and, as I write this, has just completed his PhD in theology. God is bigger than our failures or triumphs in faith—and that is a gift.

I look back on that time in my life and see a plethora of areas in which I needed to grow (have I mentioned that I wore actual pajama pants to school sometimes?), one area is glaringly obvious to me: my faith, and the gospel message I proclaimed, was exclusively about Jesus. I named Jesus as my Savior, prayed to Jesus, prayed in the name of Jesus, and shared the good news about Jesus with others. To a certain extent, this is theologically true—Jesus is the center of the gospel, the proclamation of the Word of God and the Savior of the world! And yet, it also reveals a theological immaturity; if someone were to call me a God freak rather than a Jesus freak, I can only imagine I would have been offended. I was not a follower of God—I was a follower of Jesus.

Who Is God?

I’m not alone in my Jesus-exclusive language about the Christian faith. Maybe you would have joined me in thinking of God as a generic term for the divine, and you would largely prefer the specific name of Jesus be associated with your pursuit of faith. The term God looms large with mystery—do we mean any deity? Who or what exactly are we talking about when we speak of God if we don’t speak of him precisely in terms of Jesus Christ?

Let me say this clearly: we can never over-emphasize Jesus. He is the cornerstone, the Savior, God made flesh. I in no way desire to communicate that we should give the person of Christ less attention, glory, or honor in our theology (as Michael Bird exclaims, May it never be!⁴). But there is a risk we run in our theological circles when we come to speak of God only in terms of Jesus. We threaten trading our proper Christo-centric theology (Christ-centered theology) for Christo-monic theology (Christ-only theology); and in doing so, we lose the very God-nature that makes Jesus such a glorious revelation of God

Reviews for Fix Your Eyes

[tobi3olasubulumi · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Wooooow!
This book is everything gooosh!
How did I even wait this long to finish it.
It’s almost like a Biblical study, thank you so much Amy. I would forever be grateful for this book. I can’t wait to talk about it and use it as a resource and reference for many teaching moments!
Can we get a study tool or guide for this book pleaseee God!
Bless Amy more and more with your wisdom pure and fully expressive of your very nature. Help her constantly articulate your heart and your desire for your body and grant her grace that she might be a first partaker of all that you share to others through her!