Category Archives: Worship

Life, Ramblings, Worship

Dry Worship, now what?

2 Comments

I arrived early for my small group lesson last Sunday.  We had a substitute leader and the portion of scripture is well known and everything that can be said had been said a thousand times before.  I read the scripture when asked, bring in historical references when appropriate.  But something seems to be missing.  10:30 and we pray move to the sanctuary for worship.

It is well done: the song service is meant to set an environment of worship. But I am not feeling it.  Where is the awe of God? Where is the beauty of worship?  I am just not getting it today.  I look around and there are some that are raising their hands and praising God.  But for me, nothing.

So what should I do from here? Should you go through the motions anyway?  Do I just bear the lack of personal oneness with God and wait for next week?

What is true worship? Jesus said true worship must involve both spirit and truth (John 4:24).  OK, let’s look at truth.  The Bible is truth.  The lesson was truthful, the Pastors message was truthful, the songs were truthful. Worship in truth is a revelation of Jesus.  I have the truth part covered, it must be the other requirement.  Worship in Spirit.

What’s worship in spirit?  What does that mean?  Back to study.  I have to find the truth about the spirit.  What does the Bible say about spirit?  Normally when book refers to the Holy Spirit, it is predicated by the word “THE”.  Digging a little deeper, John was using the word spirit to refer to feelings and emotions.  So worship in spirit is to do so with feelings and emotions.  Now don’t get me wrong, I am not proposing rolling in the isles and handling snakes, but it is more than a stoic resignation to boredom.

So how to get to the feeling part.  Especially for a person not known for his outgoing enthusiasm.  I would think that worship in spirit includes joyful praise, awestruck wonder, sorrow for sin, longing for God, and maybe a chill or two.  But what if I am just not feeling it.  What can I do? Is there a pious position which I can put my head?  Where are the holy feelings? I guess I could just go through the motions.  Stand when everyone else stands.  Sit when I am asked.  Try and sing songs that I really don’t think have much good theology.  But that just sets me up for what Jesus calls hypocrisy in Matthew 15:7-8

You hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, when he said: “‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me…”

So what can I do?

In my studies today I found an interesting passage in Psalms 40 and was the theme of a great old hymn He Brought Me Out

My heart was distressed ’neath Jehovah’s dread frown,
And low in the pit where my sins dragged me down;
I cried to the Lord from the deep miry clay,
Who tenderly brought me out to golden day.

He brought me out of the miry clay,
He set my feet on the Rock to stay;
He puts a song in my soul today,
A song of praise, hallelujah!

At the beginning of Psalm 40 David was not feeling the worship. He felt as I did, in a pit of destruction and stuck in miry clay.  But it changed, God put a song of praise in his mouth. What is the difference?  What is the change that brought the song of praise?

David states plainly. “I waited patiently for the Lord.”  He did not go through the motions.  He did not stand when everyone else were standing.  He did not mouth the words.  He did not hold his head at a pious angle.  He simply waited for the Lord. He did not give up on worship; it was still the goal, but he simply waited for God to help him worship.  And here is how to do it.  I borrowed this quite a few years ago and I don’t know where but here it is:

  1. With expectation point yourself to the divine.  No use looking inwardly if it is just more emptiness.  Don’t focus on your lifeless heart — trust Christ to meet you, help you, change you.
  2. Pray and ask Him to help you worship.  Admit you want to worship and you are not doing so well. Cast your burdens upon Him — and ask Him to strengthen your faith.  Ask for more of the Spirit’s work in your heart to enable you to feel joyful praise, awestruck wonder, and heartfelt longing for Him.
  3. Open the Bible again and find the truth of God that points to praise. If worship is fire, then truth is the fuel that causes the fire to burn.  The more fuel — the hotter the fire.  Focus on the truth in the songs, the prayers, the Scriptures.
  4. Do point one through three again and again patiently.  It’s called waiting for a reason.  God might change your heart instantly — or not.  But His timing is perfect love for you.  So humbly continue waiting for Him.

It may take a long time or just an instant but it will come.  My God is not one to disappoint.

But — if we will wait on the Lord — it’s just a matter of time before we feel the wind of the Spirit start to blow — that fog starts to break up — we see the beauty of God revealed in Jesus Christ —

And we will worship.

Bible, Bible Study, Worship

Glorious Unique

3 Comments

There are two epistles in the Bible that are most misunderstood: Romans and Hebrews.  I am doing a methodical study of Romans but I took a detour and opened my Bible to Hebrews this morning.  Hebrews 3:1.  “Therefore, holy brothers and sisters, who share in the heavenly calling, fix your thoughts on Jesus, who we acknowledge as our apostle and high priest.”  (NIV).

Fix your thoughts, consider, gaze upon, study view upon view, intensely stare until it becomes the only thing you see.  To open your eyes wide and do not squint at the blazing true Son.  Do not fear the burning of your eyes.  Be blind to all else.  Jesus is the perfect last sight.  Do not be afraid of being lost in the vision.

As Isaiah stood in the temple he was struck by a vision of God.  All else became blurred and shadow.  So we are to stop what we are doing focus only on the apparition of Jesus. Stare, focus until nothing else is as important.  Remember he is not just an historical figure.  He is the infinite Jehovah.  He was not just one person’s concept that bloomed into a religion.  Jesus our teacher and our priest.

It is only in a focus on Jesus do we really see our own predicament. Our vision, our fixation on Jesus reveals our place.  It is not a “What would Jesus do?” moment.  It is not a walk as he walked time.  It is not a comparative religion time.  Doing it the Jesus way is not the goal of our vision our fixation.  Our reason for gawking is a step to the Spirit of Christ.  Works are easy.  Doing things like Jesus is not as easy but doable. The problem is that we can do it all and not catch the vision of Jesus.  “If any man has not the Spirit of Christ – he is none of His”.  The motive, the reason for the fixation is to find not what to do but what to be.

Oh that we were more like that perfect vision.  Oh that because of that enraptured gaze we become more like the perfect character of Jesus.  If we could only grasp the heavenly demeanor, the sweet anger against sin, the heart that grasped a child, the mind that conceived a path for the sinner to find something more than self.

Today we look through a glass that is sometimes smoked over.  But for a glimpse of the divine knowing full well there is a day coming, when the full vision will be ours to behold.  We will behold the perfect. We will see more than an image in our minds but the Glorious Unique. No longer will we need to be exhorted to fix our minds.  It will be our minds.

Life, Theology, Worship

Lent

4 Comments

Lent is a season in which the Church proclaims life is more than just getting by day to day. Lent is about renewal.  It is observed by self-denial. It is saying I can do without something that may well be set in concrete in our lives.  For some it is giving up sweets, for others it is giving up certain meals, for others it is not eating meat of any kind two or three days a week. Lent is a kind of short term “New Year’s Resolution.”

The word Lent means “Spring;” we use it now when we speak of the spring fast–the forty days before Easter Day–I mean forty days not including Sundays, for Sundays are never fast days.

Does the word “fast” frighten you? Does it mean something hard, something very distasteful, or perhaps something that does not concern you at all? If so, it is because you have not yet learnt for yourself (as I hope you will this Lent) its true meaning and happiness.

This is the invitation which our LORD sends to each one of us this Lent–listen to His Voice.  It is as if Jesus is speaking to us “Come ye yourselves (here mention your own name) apart into a desert place, and rest awhile.”

Lent is about realizing I’m on a journey I don’t really get, led by a God I can’t really grasp.  And the end of it all is God.

Church, Denominations, Music, Ramblings, Worship

Rightly Dividing

9 Comments

I am human.  I have likes and dislikes.  I have preferences and predilections. I like historical understandings over hypothetical surmise. I would rather see real people in real situations over contrived and grandiose stories of dubious relevance.  I want the real over perception.

I have been accused to stirring up a little dust once and awhile.  But sometimes I become dissatisfied with all the plans and programs that live in the dusty edges of the church.  They become the more important.  The process of church growth seems to leave out the offer of God’s grace. The vital understanding of God is not in the forefront any more.  I thirst after the teachings and personal encounters with God and not another emotional pulling at my heart strings by one more repetition of five or six words.

The problem is that everyone of us want to “feel good.”  Bless the hearts of preachers and leaders of the church today.  They have a weighty calling and ever increasing pressure to “increase the flock.” At issue is the easiest way to get people to come the doors of a church and keep that attendance is cater to the “feel good” motive.  Ministers would rather empower with strength than to point out the foibles of a congregation.  No one wants their pet sin to be pointed out.  Much like the story of the Pastor in a rural farming town as he was shaking every hand as the congregation was going out the back door.  One unkempt farmer came up to the Pastor and said, “That was a great message Pastor, it was short and about someone else.”

It is all about programs and studies.  If we make the right graph in the monthly board meetings it will be enough to steer the church to success.  If we can categorize, pigeon hole, and delegate enough to keep the doors open, then that is good enough.  We don’t need spirit filled bible warriors.  We don’t need to study to rightly divide the Word of Truth.  We just need another subjective well-presented current psychobabble in three points with fill in papers in the bulletin.  Don’t ask me to think, just do what is expected and that should be good enough.

Youth and children’s programs are stressed because if kids can be kept happy and entertained, mom and pop are much more likely to stay put. Serious in depth deep dive bible study and sermons about bible doctrine are avoided! Let’s cut down on all that prayer time.  The Hymnal is just not relevant anymore. Crank up the canned and amplified music; made up of repeated lyrics set to the world’s latest music. Get toes to tapping and watch visitors come pouring in each Sunday. Then be sure to accentuate the emotional. Touch every psychological button possible with “feel good” sermons and viola! pretty soon a building program will be necessary. If declaring the whole counsel of God while at the same time trying to avoid the flesh is not enough to fill the pews, then let them remain empty! A few grains of wheat should be treasured above a ton of tares!

Preaching, Sermon Illustration, Theology, Worship

Home Plate and God

Kids today are introduced to sports at earlier and earlier in their lives. Sports teach valuable lessons on teamwork, creates opportunities to get exercise, and gets them out of the house.  When I was young, and that was a very long time ago, my first organized sport was baseball. In our little town, there were two levels of Little League: National League and American League.  All the good kids, the ones that actually had talent were all in the National League and the not so talented were in the lower American League.  The year I started I was in the not so good group.  For some unknown reason the coach decided that I was going to be the catcher.

I played in the American League for two years and finally moved up to the big league.  I never moved out of the role of catcher.  I learned the game from the side of the plate most don’t see.  All the other players had positions inside of the playing field.  Only the catcher has a position outside of the foul lines.

Since that time, I have played both baseball and softball.  Most of the time I always was outside of the lines.  Once in a while I pitched, but most of the time you could find me squatting down behind the batter with a mask, a breast protector, knee pads and waiting on someone else to do something.

The game has changed much from a little kid with a wood bat to modern aluminum double walled nitrogen filled force multiplying bats of vengeance.  But one thing has not changed.  The home shaped base where everything started and ended never changed.  It was always seventeen inches wide.  In the first year of the American League to now that seventeen-inch-wide white home plate has always been the same. Uniforms would change, bats would change, even the ball changed, but the plate stayed the exact width of seventeen inches.

If a pitcher would miss the edge of the plate it was not up to the umpire to make the strike zone a little wider because the pitcher was outside by only an inch.  The strike zone was defined by the width of the plate and the plate was always seventeen inches.  The strike zone was not fungible because the plate did not change.  It was a constant.  No matter what park you went to, no matter what game you saw on the television it was unalterable.

During all of those games and practices, I noticed something.

The plate was one of the most holy things in baseball.  It was holy because it was unchangeable.  It was always an absolute part of every game, the size and position of the plate was immutable.  It was holy because it was set apart from opinion; it was not dependent upon public opinion.  It was holy because majority rule did not dictate the width.  A pitchers preference has no bearing on it.  No one can change it.  It is sacrosanct from the smallest Little Leaguer, to the big show of the major leagues.

So what does this mean to theology?  What can we learn? If a man made game can consider something as small as the width of a piece of rubber being holy, what does God consider as Holy?  What does God set as his seventeen-inch home plate?  What does God consider Holy?  For that matter is raises the question of “Why is it Holy to God?”  And one more step in our rise to understanding, “Are God’s concept of Holy the same as my concept of Holy?”

Quickly here is a list that I believe is on the God’s Home Plate list.

You are holy.

If you are a follower of Christ, you have been bought with a price.  You are united with Christ and you are now holy because God’s holiness is your holiness.  You because of your acceptance of a free gift from God you are “set apart for a purpose.”

Human life is holy.

God’s plan was to create life that would be his.  Every beating heart matters to God.   It does not matter if that heart is in the chest of a prisoner, in the chest of an elderly senior in a convalescent home, in the chest of a great theologian, in the chest of a child in the womb of a mother.  All are holy to God

Marriage is holy.

When the officiant speaks of holy matrimony, it is not by mistake. Marriage is a set apart relationship.  That is true for good marriages or not so good.  It is not stretched to a different dimension just because the pitcher would like to be a little wider.  I believe that marriage even if there has been betrayal, or other circumstances that have broken trust, marriage is still holy.

The Sabbath is holy.

It is God’s dimension of our lives to take a day off.  Six days are enough.  And now that I am older I am thinking one and a half may suit me better.  But at last one day for God as the only focus of my life is what is designed.

Our tithe is holy.

“A tithe of everything from the land, whether grain from the soil or fruit from the trees, belongs to the LORD; it is holy to the LORD.” (Leviticus 27:30 NIV) The first ten per cent of everything you earn is, in God’s eyes, holy money. We never give it to God, we return what is already his. The tithe is holy.

The name of God is holy.

God’s name is holy.  It is not to be used in a slur or in a time of frustration.  The use of God’s name in profanity is simply making something holy to extend into the unholy.  It dilutes the holy name of God; it rubs the shine of His Glory of the beauty of God.  The world would like the children of God to be so common that God’s holy name becomes common.

The Holy things of God are few and many.  But they must be the same as they were in the old times and the modern.  As the width of the home plate will always stay at seventeen inches, so God will be the same and with that unchangeability comes the Holy things of God.

Our world around would have us change the definition of life not to include the unborn.  Sex outside of marriage is seen as the normal.  We work every day with the expectation to rest latter and we are rewarded for it by a bigger paycheck.  We want make it a free will offering and not a tithe. People become disposable.  Life becomes more of an existence instead of something to please God.  Everything of the world would have us say “that home plate is old school.”  “We need to make is broader so everyone can get a better shot at winning.”

The width of home plate is not up for discussion, neither is God’s call to holiness.

Church, Worship

Preparation for Worship

Sunday Mornings we have a five minute countdown displayed on the media screen to remind the congregation how much time they have before the worship service.  I build them trying to make them as interesting as possible.  Sometimes they are trivia tests others are thought provoking scriptures. They are highly animated and should provide a prompt to the congregation to gather and prepare themselves for worship.  This Sunday I went out to the foyer of the church and discovered about a quarter of the congregation was not moving into the sanctuary.  When the counter reached double zero and Pastor started to speak, these languishing sheep paid little attention to the timeliness of the Pastor.

Brash and loud as I am, I said in a very loud voice, “Time for Church.”  And they reluctantly moved into the place of worship.  I think next time I will use a cattle prod.

Part of our preparation for worship ought to be reminding ourselves of who God is—the holy, sovereign Lord. In Exodus 19, we read in verse 16:

Then it came to pass on the third day, in the morning, that there were thunderings and lightnings, and a thick cloud on the mountain; and the sound of the trumpet was very loud, so that all the people who were in the camp trembled.

When the trumpet sounded and the moment arrived for the people of Israel to draw near to God, every person in the camp trembled. Unfortunately, few people respond to God in worship like that anymore. Many have forgotten how to tremble before Him, for they do not regard Him as holy. How different their response would be if they could see Him as He revealed Himself to the Israelites:

“And Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet with God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain. Now, Mount Sinai was completely in smoke, because the LORD descended upon it in fire. Its smoke ascended like the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mountain quaked greatly. Exodus 19:17-18

Over and over again God invited the people, “Come near to Me.” But that invitation was balanced by what God said following the deaths of Nadab and Abihu: “By those who come near Me I must be regarded as holy.” We are commanded by God to come into His presence—to come near to HIM. Not only that, we may come into His presence, as Hebrews 4:16 makes clear. But there is a difference between coming boldly into the presence of God and coming arrogantly. When we come boldly into His presence and draw near to Him, we must always remember that we are to regard Him as holy.

We also must remember that we have no right to come into God’s presence on our own. No amount of preparation that we can do is enough to make us fit.

I really think we need a smoke generator to move the people into an attitude of worship. At least that is what God thought was appropriate.