“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress” (James 1:27a).“The Lord watches over the alien and sustains the fatherless and the widows” (Ps. 146:9a).
When we come together to worship, we often have a deep level of communication with our Father. Many times it seems we can feel His very breath on us as we focus our hearts and minds on Him. The only part missing is to see and touch Him, and that is the cry of some of our songs.
 Because of my global travels, I am often asked what God is doing worldwide to draw His church into greater intimacy with Him. I've concluded that the next step in modern worship is for us to physically look into His eyes and wrap our arms around Him. How? By touching the poor and needy. Jesus clearly states that when we care for the needs of the destitute that we are touching Him.
For my wife Kathy and I, this call to intimacy means visiting the fatherless and widows. Since 1996, we have given ourselves to supporting a number of widows and orphans around the world. Last year, we felt it was time to expand this as a public ministry called Alabaster Ministries. Our first step of faith in this was to travel to Albania and Kosovo in June. What a delight to be encouragers to these lovely people! You can get a small glimpse of what this was like in the video clip on this page.
 The story in the Bible of the woman with the alabaster box who anointed Jesus (Matt 26: 7-13, Mark 14: 3-9, Luke 7:36-50) speaks of her extravagant worship born out of deep gratitude to God. Some of the people with Jesus were indignant that such an expensive gift would be so "wasted" in this lavish act. Jesus' response was that 'The poor you will always have with you', but she had chosen the better thing to do. Of course, Jesus wasn't suggesting we neglect the poor and the needy, but was simply establishing priorities.
Worship must come first! Otherwise, our service could be reduced to merely humanitarian aid. When we worship God, we get to know Him. We learn to know His voice. We come to feel his heart and understand that the very essence of God is His love that is abundantly poured out for the world. In our sacrifice of worship comes the desire to take action...to give of the abundance we have received. Our desire to lovingly take care of the poor, the needy, the fatherless and the widow becomes an extravagant act of worship.
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