Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble co
me
and the years approach when you will say, “I find no pleasure in them”…
(Ecclesiastes 12:1 (NIV))
I was born in January of 1962 in the city of Klaipeda in Lithuania. My mother was Lithuanian and my father was Latvian. My country was under annexation by the Soviet Union. There was lot of Russian speaking people around the Baltic states which is why I speak Russian, in addition to my home languages.
My mother always did pray for all of our family and I knew who the Lord God was, independently of the communistic ideology around me.
But I lived my life carelessly and I felt happy enough without the Lord. Sometimes I remembered Him, usually, when I had some problems. When I had toothache, for example or other big troubles.
But once I had read Ecclesiastes 12:1, I lost peace in my heart and thoughts about that followed me. I remembered all the times when the Lord saved me even from death, when I stayed with my youngest brother near the bonfire and I didn’t know the bomb from WW2 was placed in there by the children of our neighbours. I just felt some voice in me “Just go away from here! Now!” Just a couple of minutes after we left that place, the bomb exploded! The burning shrapnel did fly over us…
I thought again and again how merciful is the Lord to me and one day when I imagined how bad I would feel if I had spent all my life for my self and in old age, when I was weak , I would then say to the Lord – now You can use me….
That day I said to the Lord God “I surrender to You now. You can use me now”. I was around 35.
Soon I found and joined a messianic Jewish congregation in Riga, Latvia. After a few months I was asked to lead the worship team which became my all time favourite occupation. I am one part of the whole worship service. I am sure the Lord uses me in service to His family. He did use me in Latvia for more than five years, He then used me in Ukraine for about a further four years and now I’m happy to worship Him together with my wife Oksana as part of the talented and dedicated Beit Ezra messianic congregation worship team in Plymouth, UK.
Praise the Lord!
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We are not professional musicians or singers, but we try to do our best with deep honesty and respect to our Heavenly Father in spirit and truth, like Yeshuah said in John 4:23-24, ”But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.
When we worship God, we do so because He is worthy (Psalm 145:3) and we do so in response to who He is (Psalm 52:9). Our attitudes and actions reflect that we believe the character and conduct of God to be worthy of praise and adoration. At times our worship is expressed through common singing, teaching, and tithing. It is also expressed in our daily lives through prayer, Scripture reading, acts of kindness, gratitude, pure thoughts, and more.
Our spirit is the essence of who we are. It is the entirety of our volition and our emotions. We also know that God is a spiritual being. To worship in spirit, then, is to do something that is beyond the physical. We do not worship by simply bowing down on the knees, but we worship through a heart condition (Psalm 51:17, Psalm 150). And we strive to bring our worship in line with the worship going on in heaven (Psalm 148:1-2 Revelation 4:8).
To worship God in spirit and in truth, then, is to declare that God is worthy of our reverence. We do this both through our emotional state and in light of reality life. We worship God based on the truth of who He is and what He does, and the truth of what is going on in our world. We do it with a heart inclined toward God and in submission to Him. We worship God when our attitudes, actions, and words declare that He is worthy of our praise.
Not just we, but all the worship team are not stars but just bondservants there to give help to everyone of God’s children who have come searching for God , open his heart for everyone who needs healing through pray and worship.
The worship team are bondservants, who do the own job day in and day out, independently of weather, mood or our own needs.
Worship is the best thing that can happen in our lives.
Praise the Lord!
“Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honour and glory and blessing!” (Revelation 5:12).