[Worship Fruit] JOY

“Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit.”  ~ Psalm 51:12

 

The first question of the Westminster shorter catechism asks, “What is the chief end of man?”  The catechism’s answer is simple, but profound: “To glorify God and enjoy him forever.”  To me, part of this answer is expected.  Of course the purpose of humanity is to bring glory to God!  The second half of the catechism’s answer, however, is surprising and powerful.  “To glorify God and enjoy him forever”?  Enjoying God is part of our “chief end”?  Somehow enjoying God doesn’t seem like it should be as important as glorifying God, but lets think about it a minute.  If I am telling someone about how wonderful my wife is with a flat tone, empty eyes, and a yawn no one is going to believe me.  Even if everything I said about her was 100% true, I wouldn’t be pointing back to her as something worthy of recognition; rather I would be communicating that what I was sharing wasn’t important in the long run.  If I do not enjoy the amazing things about my wife, no one watching me will recognize that she is amazing.  The same goes for our God.  If we do not truly enjoy God we will not be fulfilling our purpose of glorifying him.  So, our chief end is to enjoy God in order to bring glory to Him.

Notice the word contained in “enjoy”?  Joy.  Webster defines “joy” as a feeling of great pleasure and happiness.  When we enjoy something, we are experiencing great pleasure and happiness within ourselves.  We are in-joying.  So the Shorter Catechism is telling us that our highest purpose is to bring glory to God by finding joy in Him forever.  Sounds like a great purpose, but there’s a bit of a hiccup here.  We can’t glorify God or find joy in Him.

You see, humanity fell.  It rebelled against God and was cast away from communion with Him as a consequence of its treason.  What was once a perfect union was broken by humanity’s disobedience.  The eyes that once could recognize the hand of the Creator working in all things are now blind.  The heart that once loved the Father purely and innocently is now corrupted by sin – turned to stone.  The being once fully alive in the presence of God is now dead in its trespasses.  In our sin we are dead to God, completely unable to acknowledge Him for who He is, helpless to worship him.  In our fallen state we could never glorify God, let alone find joy in Him.  But the story does not end there.  God, in His love for us, has made a way for the blinded eyes to see, the stone hearts to beat, and the dead to rise full of life.  Through the atoning work of Christ we are given the ability to see God and respond to Him.

In light of this truth, it follows that joy is an intrinsic part of our salvation.  Joy and salvation cannot be separated.  We have true joy because we have salvation through Christ!  I have written before that our worship must be a response to our salvation and since joy is an essential element of salvation I could rewrite that statement to say our worship must be an overflow of the joy of our salvation.   Our worship should be filled with joy.  This means that our daily life should be infused with joy as well as our worship services.

Now, I know what you’re thinking.  How can our daily life-worship be filled with joy?  The world is broken; life is full of hardships, grief, pain, and sorrow.  It would be impossible to be joyful every day in the mist of the world’s suffering.  But I would encourage you to expand your understanding of what joy is for Christians.  The dictionary says joy is a feeling of great joy and happiness, and Jesus takes that definition and attaches it to one truth that will transcend every circumstance – we have our joy because we have our salvation and our salvation will never leave us though all else may fail.  Our joy is the hope that we have.  Our joy is Jesus.

By saying that, I don’t mean to minimize our hardships, grief, and pain.  Those things are stinging realities that we will not escape in this world.  Our hearts will ache, our souls will be heavy, we will know our brokenness afresh, and in those moments the joy of our salvation will seem like a memory.  But we have been given this hope: though we are faithless, God is faithful.  If we are His, He will not abandon us to our brokenness, he will uphold us with a willing spirit, he will restore the joy of our salvation.  Take heart.  Let us worship with joy!

[Worship Fruit] LOVE

When we think about love and how this first fruit of the Spirit relates to worship we must first remember what we already know about worship, namely the central truth that God is the initiator of our worship.  He is the one who begins the conversation.  It follows then, that whatever we do in authentic worship is a response to what God has already done.  So if we are to love in worship, it must be because God first loved us.

“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever [truly] loves has been born of God and knows God.  Anyone who does not love does not know God because God is love.  In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son in the world, so that we might live through him.  In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.  Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.  No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.”

“By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us his Spirit.  And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world.  Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him and he in God.  So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us.  God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.  By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world.  There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.  For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.  We love because he first loved us.”

~ 1 John 4:7-19

“We love because he first loved us.”  Worshipping God is more than a dry obligation.  Through the work of Christ, the Holy Spirit reveals to us the overwhelming worthiness of God, and we worship in response to that.  But worship is more than a forced reaction.  God is love, the cross is saturated with love, and our personal awakening is an act of the Spirit’s loving kindness.  When we truly see such love given to us, we cannot but love in return.

I have written before that the root of our problem with sin is a worship problem.  Sin perverts our worship instinct so that we turn away from God to worship the created rather than the Creator.  In the same vein of thought, we need to understand that we worship what we love, so if we love something more than we love God it will become the object of our worship and if we truly love God more than anything our love for everything else will flow from our love for God.  Worship and love are not concepts that can be separated.

Having just been married, one thing that sticks in my memory from premarital counseling is that love is more than a feeling.  At its core, love is a commitment to endure through any circumstance.  As we examine ourselves, looking for the spiritual fruit of love in our worship we must not dismay if the feeling is not there all the time.  Instead of looking for the feeling of love, we should search for signs of genuine love-based commitment.  1 Corinthians 13 gives us a great definition of love that can help us as we examine our worship practices: ‘Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude.  It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.  Love bears all things, believes all things, endures all things.  Love never ends.”

All that being said, if we claim Christ as our savior, yet do not ever feel loving towards God as we worship Him, we need to do some serious heart-checking.  If your affections are not ever stirred towards the One who brought you from death to life, you cannot simply make the excuse that love is more than a feeling.  Its true – love is more than a feeling, but it is a feeling.  Never once having your emotions kindled for Christ may mean you don’t truly know him.  If this absence of affection describes your relationship with God please run to Him in prayer.  Beg God to stir your affections for Him, to truly open your eyes to His love so that you can respond with a heart full of affection for Him.

As we come to the end of this discussion, one thing about worship and love remains to be said.  The scripture from 1 John sited above contains the famous phrase “God is love.”  Our culture has made much of this phrase, but for followers of Christ we must remember that the verse says “God is love,” but it does not say that God is our idea of love.  Our concepts of love must not dictate our idea of who God is.  God is love.  God is also just, holy, righteous, etc… love is not God’s principle attribute.  It is not the only attribute that factors into His relationship with humanity.  As we approach God in worship we must be careful not to put God in a box by assigning our human concepts of love to a God that transcends human understanding.  We love Him because he first loved us and that love is a love so deep that it transcends our limited experience.  Let us respond to that love with worshipful, love-filled hearts and lives.

Worship Fruit

“But I say walk by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.  For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other to keep you from the things you want to do.  But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these.  I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.  But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.  And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.  If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.  Let us also walk by the Spirit.  Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.” 

~Galatians 5:16-26

I am a worship leader.  That’s my job.  Every week I plan the flow of the next Sunday’s worship service, meet with the pastor, gather music, coordinate volunteers, lead practices, make media presentations, get to church early on Sunday mornings, welcome the congregation, lead them in song, lead them in prayer, and share my heart for the gospel with them.  I am pretty heavily invested in the gathered worship at my church…  But when Sunday morning comes I am not the worship leader.  Neither my job title, nor all my preparation and time invested into the different service elements qualify me to really be the worship leader.  You see, even as we come together to worship God, He Himself is the true leader in worship.

In the book of Ephesians we read, “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked…. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ” (Eph. 2:1-2 &4-5).  In case you didn’t pick this up, the word “dead” in this passage means dead, not alive, unable to respond to any stimulation, not functioning at all.  Before we knew Christ we were spiritually dead in our sin.  Nothing we could have done could make us undead – dead people don’t raise themselves.  “But God” in his mercy “made us alive.”  God is the outside power that calls us from death to life in Him.  Through the Son’s work on the cross our debt is paid and we are able to see God for who He is and respond in worship.  Moreover, the Holy Spirit comes into us and empowers us to worship because we are weak and frail – unable to worship in our own strength.  So, we worship God the Father, through the atoning work of God the Son, by the power of God the Holy Spirit.   God is the initiator of our worship because He is the one who initiates our salvation.  We can only worship Him when He leads us into worship.

This truth is a daily reality for followers of Christ because of what we know about worship:  it is so much more than a service or a song – it is a way of life.  Romans 12:1 urges us, “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.”  Our lives are to be continual offerings of worship in response to the mercy of God towards us.

With all of that in mind, I find myself consistently asking, “How do you life-worship?”  I mean, corporate worship is easy – it has definable guidelines and a predictable flow.  It’s much easier for me to measure weather or not I truly worshipped in a corporate gathering than it is for me to evaluate how I am doing at offering my life as worship and submitting to the worship leader of my life.

Obviously life-worship has less to do with singing and more to do with submitting our life to Christ.  Right away, that compels me think that life-worship means putting sin to death in my life.  Conquering sin and temptation is a vital discipline in the Christian life, but scripture has lead me to believe that if we only focus on the sin in our lives we will not be following our worship leader very well.  In Galatians 5, Paul writes to the Christians in Galatia instructing them to walk by the power of the Spirit and not gratify the desires of the flesh.  He goes on to outline some of the evil desires of our flesh, but he doesn’t stay there very long.  Instead he moves ahead to talk about what it looks like to walk by the Spirit – writing out the fruit of the Spirit.  This seems to complete the picture for me – focusing not only on our sin, but what we should replace our sin with.  So often Bible studies and prayer groups turn into dramatic sin-confessing sessions in which we ask to be free from sin, but spend little time encouraging each other to strive to be loving, joyful, patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle, or self-controlled.  These are the tools of measurement that God has given us.  “For no good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit” (Luke 6:43).

In my life, this means examining myself to see which fruit I am lacking and spending a lot of time in prayer, asking for God to prune me so that I may produce better fruit.  Often this sin that we struggle with does correlate with the fruit that we lack, but focusing on the fruit allows us to look past merely wallowing in our faults and failures.

So, in order to be better worshippers in all of life, we must follow the leading of the Spirit in our lives and strive for the fruit of that labor.  This thought has made me want to examine each of the fruit of the Spirit more closely to see how each one can be identified and utilized in worship.  Look for more thoughts on the fruit of the Spirit in future blogs!

Holy God

“Jesus paid it all, all to him I owe

Sin had left a crimson stain

He washed me white as snow”

 

“And now, let the weak say I am strong

Let the poor say I am rich

Because of what the Lord has done for us”

 

“He loves us, oh how he loves us, oh how he loves…”

 

“Oh happy day, when Jesus washed my sins away”

Do you notice a pattern in these lyrics?  They aren’t exceedingly similar songs, but they all exemplify one mode in which we worship God – a plane that we worship Him on.  You see, God is the only one worthy to be worshiped on two main levels: because of who He is and because of what He has done.  We can worship God vertically by praising Him for who He is and we can worship him horizontally by praising Him for what He has done for us.  The lyrics above are all examples of us worshipping God horizontally.  Both planes of worship are legitimate and necessary, but if we focus too much on one plane our understanding of worship will be damaged.

From the beginning God has taken the action.  He creates.  He judges.  He redeems.  He protects.  He delivers.  He disciplines.  We have always been weak and he has always been strong.  He is the eternal giver and we are ever the receivers.  Ultimately, God took the paramount action by sending His son to dwell among us as a human, to live a completely sinless life, to be the atoning sacrifice for our sin, and to rise from the dead and ascend to heaven where he sits at the right hand of God the Father.  This is what God has done.  These actions are spectacular, they are captivating, and they draw us in.  In light of these actions it makes perfect sense for us to worship Him.  It is only by God doing a work in us that our eyes can be opened to offer our lives to Him.  In view of His mercies, we would be wretched fools not to worship him.

But…

Think about this.  When you watch a musician perform a mesmerizing piece of music or witness an athlete pull off a stunning feat you can be in awe of what they have done, but do you know who they are?  Do you know how they got to that point?  Do you know what their character is like?  The answer is no.  In the same way we can be completely thankful for what God has done for us, but we should not stop there on that horizontal plane. Instead, we need to continue down that track to worship God purely for being God.  We must know His character and worship Him in light of it.

Scripture reveals to us many names for God.  Some of these names are:  El Shaddia – “God Almighty,” El Elyon – “The Most High God,” El Olam – “The Everlasting God,” Yahweh Jireh – “The God who provides,” Yahweh Nissi – “the Lord is my banner,” Yahweh Shalom – “The Lord is peace,” El Roi – “The God who sees me,” or Adonai – “the Lord, master.”  Scripture also attaches different attributes to God; it shows us that God is loving, just, faithful, merciful, mighty, etc.   With each name or attribute we are able to see a small part of who God is.

These names for God teach us something about Him, but on an individual level they fail to teach us everything about Him.  A person who only praised God for his love would not be able to comprehend a God whose justice calls for punishment of sin.  Likewise, someone who only worshipped God for his might could have a hard time praising Him as the God of peace.  Our names for God are helpful, but we must be careful not to emphasize one characteristic of God over the others.  Holding up one attribute of God as more important than His other attributes will result in a very poor understanding of who God is.  And a poor understanding of God leads to worshipping him in an unacceptable manner.

There is only one attribute of God that we can hold above all the rest – His holiness.

“Holy.”  This is one of the central words in the language of our faith.  We find it throughout the Bible from beginning to end.  This word is not foreign to most people.  Even un-churched people use it.  Often it is used as a synonym for “pure” or “religious,” but when we ascribe holiness to God it means something entirely different.  The chief interpretation of “holy” is separate.  R.C. Sproul writes, “It comes from an ancient word that means ‘to cut’ or ‘to separate.’  To translate this basic meaning into contemporary language would be to use the phrase ‘a cut apart.’  Perhaps even more accurate would be the phrase ‘A cut above something’” (46).  So, when we say God is holy, we are actually saying He is separate, He’s “a cut above the rest.”  But it’s more than that.  In addition to separateness, calling God holy has an implication of transcendence.  God utterly exceeds our limits.  He is above and beyond what we could ever conceive of.  He is completely other than us.  He is more than “a cut above the rest” – He is an infinite cut above everything else in existence.

This is the beauty of calling God “holy” – it calls attention to all of who God is.   Since we understand “holy” to denote the transcendence of God, it follows that naming him as holy calls attention to the attributes that make Him an infinite cut above the rest.  “His love is holy love, His justice is holy justice, His mercy is holy mercy, his knowledge is holy knowledge, His spirit is holy spirit” (Sproul, 48).

One of my favorite passages in scripture is Isaiah 6.  In it the prophet Isaiah is given a vision of the throne room of heaven.  He writes:

Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with                               two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said:

“Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts;the whole earth is full of his glory!”

And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house                                was filled with smoke. And I said: “Woe is me!For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean                                         lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King,                                     the LORD of hosts!”

I appreciate this passage for many reasons, but the thing that teaches me most is Isaiah’s reaction to seeing God.  He encountered God’s holiness and in the presence of His holiness he saw who he truly was – a sinner.  Isaiah was a prophet, a righteous man in the eyes of Israel, but in the presence of God’s holiness he was wretched and filthy.  You see, encountering the holiness of God is not a warm and fuzzy experience.  God’s holiness made Isaiah uncomfortable and afraid.  You know the feeling that comes when you think too hard about something you can’t really understand?  Your mind starts to spin in circles, you begin to feel panicky, and you are unexplainably afraid; you want to escape the thought but you are strangely captivated by it.  I bet that is what Isaiah felt – times infinity.  In the light of God’s glory he saw his own darkness and knew he did not belong.  The beautiful part of this passage of scripture is that after Isaiah despairs in his unworthiness God cleanses him and makes him worthy of being in His presence.

This is what connects the two planes.  Knowledge of God’s holiness (who God is) causes us to see our deep need for cleansing and gives us a profound appreciation for our salvation (what God has done).  This is why we must always be careful to not deemphasize who God is in worship in favor of emphasizing what he has done; because knowing who God is gives us the truest understanding of what God has done.  God’s holiness is the filter by which we see and understand the rest of the gospel!

An example of this is the Lord’s Prayer.  This is the model that Jesus gave for us to approach God in prayer.  It begins with “Our Father who are in heaven, hallowed by thy name.”  “Hallow” is a verb that means, “to honor as holy.”  So Jesus is teaching us in this prayer to honor God as holy.  Then Jesus goes on to teach us to ask for His kingdom come, for His will be done, for Him to provide for our daily need, for Him to forgive us our sins, For him to protect us from temptation and deliver us.  All of these requests come after the prayer establishes God as holy.

Lets think about this.  If we honor God as truly holy it follows that we will see our desperate need for a Savior.  If our eyes are opened to our need for salvation, then we will respond to our redemption with lives of worship.  If we offer our lives as a sacrifice of worship the rest of the prayer will flow from it.  God’s kingdom will come through our worshipful acts of evangelism and justice, His desires will be accomplished in us because worshipping Him will mold our hearts, we will have faith in Him to provide for us, we will have confidence to confess our sins, and we will have a reason to resist temptation.  All of this flows from us first qualifying God as holy in the beginning of the prayer.

If we step back and take a broader look at all of this information, the application becomes obvious.  In order for us to worship God rightly, we must know him rightly.  To worship Him solely for what he has done in our lives is to worship him incompletely.  To worship Him incompletely give us room to worship him wrongly.  To worship him wrongly is dangerous at best and idolatrous at worst.  We must know the character of God.  We must sit in the incomprehensible expanse of who He is.  We must acknowledge God’s holiness and seek Him in the midst of it.  Only when we know who God is will we truly be able to worship him for what he has done.

Declare. Persevere. Remember.

Psalm 62

1For God alonemy soul waits in silence;

   from him comes my salvation.

2He only is my rock and my salvation,

   my fortress; I shall not be greatly shaken.

 

3How long will all of you attack a man
   

to batter him,
   

like a leaning wall, a tottering fence?


4They only plan to thrust him down from hishigh position.
   

They take pleasure in falsehood.


They bless with their mouths,
   

but inwardly they curse. 
                        

 

Selah

5For God alone, Omy soul, wait in silence,
   

for my hope is from him.


6He only is my rock and my salvation,
   

my fortress; I shall not be shaken.


7On God rests my salvation and my glory;
   

my mighty rock,my refuge is God.

 

 8Trust in him at all times, O people;
   

pour out your heart before him;
   

God is a refuge for us. 
                         

 

Selah

 

Over the past week or so I have been memorizing this psalm with my fiancé.  Memorizing scripture is not something that I have made a point to do in the past.  My laziness has always gotten in the way.  When I have tried to commit scripture to memory, I have crammed all the memorization into one sitting so I could quickly regurgitate it, and then forgotten about it.  But memorizing Psalm 62 has been different.  I have been intentional about slowly chewing on this psalm.  Saying it multiple times everyday.  Digesting it.  Absorbing it.

Psalm 62 is twelve verses long, but the first eight verses are the ones that have really stuck out to me as I’ve mulled over it.  David (the writer) begins by making a fervent declaration:

 1For God alonemy soul waits in silence;

   from him comes my salvation.

2He only is my rock and my salvation,

   my fortress; I shall not be greatly shaken.

After these first two verses the mood of changes abruptly.  Its almost as if David hits a wall of uncertainty, questioning his circumstances, wearied by the onslaught of his enemies:

 3How long will all of you attack a man
   

to batter him,
   

like a leaning wall, a tottering fence?


4They only plan to thrust him down from hishigh position.
   

They take pleasure in falsehood.


They bless with their mouths,
   

but inwardly they curse.

Then, out of the gloom of verses three and four, comes another change in mood.  In this part of the psalm David essentially repeats what he declared in the first two verses, but here there is a sense of urgency.  In the beginning these words were declared boldly and confidently; now they are written as a plea to the soul to remember.  This is a reminder, an encouragement, an exhortation to continue to have faith, to find shelter in God.

5For God alone, Omy soul, wait in silence,
   

for my hope is from him.


6He only is my rock and my salvation,
   

my fortress; I shall not be shaken.


7On God rests my salvation and my glory;
   

my mighty rock,my refuge is God.

 8Trust in him at all times, O people;
   

pour out your heart before him;
   

God is a refuge for us. 
       

Within these eight verses David establishes a pattern: declare, persevere, and remember.  “He only is my rock and my salvation… How long will you attack a man to batter him…. For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence.”  When I noticed this pattern the thing that struck me is that it is a pattern continually repeated in the Christian life.  Think about it. Most of us can recall those moments of beautiful clarity, when it is as if we see a part of God we had not known before.  We see plainly the depth of our fall and the heights of God’s love and mercy towards us.  Doubts and uncertainties fall to the wayside in the light of how tangible the gospel is to us.  In those moments we declare our hope in God.  But those moments don’t last forever.  Eventually our brokenness allows our clear vision to become cloudy.  Running the race of faith becomes an act of perseverance.   When we continue to persevere through clouded vision we must remember the good news that we have declared.  Declare.  Persevere.  Remember.  While we are on this earth, our faith will exist in this cycle.

This is why worship is so important.  As Christians, when we worship God we declare and remember who he is and what he has done for us.  Through worship we are renewed to keep on persevering.  This is a pattern that we have set up for the body of Christ as a whole by coming to worship together every Sunday and it is a pattern that must take place on an individual level continually in our every day lives.

Like David, we will only find rest in God, the source of our salvation.  Let us remember together and loudly declare the wonders of who he is and what he has done.  Let us persevere.  Let us worship.

*Note: Speaking of Psalm 62, here’s a song based on the psalm.

 

Worship Preaches

Last summer my fiancé’s mom got me a great birthday present – tickets to see one of my favorite worship bands lead worship!  I have enjoyed listening to this band for years and am very grateful for the songs they have produced to bless God and his Church.  While we waited to get into the auditorium my insides were wriggling with anticipation and when the band finally began to play the music was flawless – it sounded just like the CD.  There were seamless transitions, beautiful harmonies, guitar solos that move your heart, and the people gathered sang loudly with hands raised and eyes closed.  The whole thing was perfectly executed, but when I left the concert I was disappointed.  The band played all of my favorite songs beautifully and the night ended with people cheering for God – but something was missing.

The thing about the worship concert that left me disappointed was that the worship event did not preach the gospel to me.  When we use music to worship God we are doing far more than singing praises.  Every worship service puts forth a message, regardless of whether or not we use a sermon.  At the concert we sang about God’s love, his majesty, our sin, the cross, etc… all the elements of the gospel were there, but they were disjointed and shallow.  The worship leaders did not lead people gathered to the truth of the words, but rather the emotion of the moment.  This problem is not unique to this particular worship band.  It is rampant in worship services throughout the body of Christ.  Traditional or contemporary, mega-church or house church, evangelical or emergent – this misunderstanding of worship runs rampant. .  Rather than using songs to direct our attention to the gospel of Christ, music is chosen based upon what we like, what we already know, or what manipulates our emotions.

This is not the purpose of worship.

When we come together to worship we gather for a specific reason – that, though we were traitors to his cause, God was merciful and sent his Son to bear our punishment for us.  So, through Christ’s substitution we may have peace with God.  This is our hope, our standard, our banner.  The Apostle Peter writes,  “4As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, 5you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” (1 Peter 2:4-5).   Notice the tense of Peter’s words, “as you come to him…[you] are being built up.”  He does not say, “You came to him… you were built up.”  Instead he writes as if coming to Jesus is an ongoing process.  Too often we reduce salvation to a simple prayer inviting Jesus into our hearts.  We fail to recognize that although we have been justified once and for all through Christ, we are continually being sanctified.  This process of being made holy begins at our conversion and does not end until we leave this earth.  We are continually being built up as a spiritual house, to be priests offering up worship (or “spiritual sacrifices”) through Christ.  Since our faith does not consist of a one-time act, it follows that we as believers must continually be reminded of our foundation: the good news of Christ.  The Canons of Dort sum this up well:

“And, just as it has pleased God to begin this work of grace in us by the proclamation of the gospel, so he preserves, continues, and completes his work by the hearing and reading of the gospel, by meditation on it, by its exhortations, threats, and promises, and also by the use of the sacraments.” (Article 14)

This understanding of Christianity has a lot to bear on how we come together to worship.  No gathering should be devoid of an intentional recognition of our insurmountable brokenness and God’s unbelievable grace.  The people of God need this reminder more than anything else.

So, to worship leaders, planners, pastors, and the like:  Please, stop simply picking your favorite songs, stop leaning on emotionally charged music, stop dismissing worship as less important than the sermon.  Every worship service conveys a message.  I am pleading with you to use the opportunity you have been given to preach the gospel to your people through worship.

To those who are just participants in worship:  Do not be ignorant.  Keep your eyes pealed.  Look closely to discern the message in every act of worship.  Seek worship that preaches to you the good news of the Jesus Christ and don’t accept anything less.  Work to guide your leaders to gospel-centered worship and if that fails, find a new place to worship.  Don’t settle.

Thus far this post has spoken primarily of worship in the context of the people gathered, but even worship outside of a “service” must preach the gospel.  While we often use the word “worship” to refer to a church service or a genre of music, these uses tend to limit the word.  In reality the words “worship” and “life” should be used as synonyms.  If we were unable to speak, how would our lives reflect the gospel?  Would people see Christ in us?  What we call “the gospel” is the story of One who gave himself up for many.  We might live to reflect this great sacrifice by daily offering our lives to God in worship.   Brothers and Sisters, in view of what God has done for us offer up your lives as a sacrifice.  This is your spiritual worship (Romans 12:1).

 

Uncomfortable Worshipers

A few months ago I sat down with a friend who was having a rough go of it.  His life seemed to be a string of misfortunes and sorrows.  Right when the weight of one burden began to lift another heavy load would be set on his shoulders.  Several of his friends had expressed concern that much of this burden was being caused by an unhealthy relationship that he was not letting go of.  I felt the same way.  As my friend began to express his sadness from the weight of his trials I challenged him that perhaps he was suffering so much because he was holding on too tightly to the woman that was causing him so much grief.  My friend reacted strongly to my challenge.  “Why does everyone want me to give up on this?” he asked, “Why is everyone so concerned about my suffering?  God called people to suffer in the Bible, why is it so hard for people to think that people today might be called to suffer?”  I don’t think my friend’s thinking was right in this case, yet his words challenged me deeply.  Why do we automatically assume suffering is something we should run from? I thought of Hosea, the Old Testament prophet, who God called to marry a woman he knew would be unfaithful to him, of Stephen who was martyred for the gospel, of Christ himself who suffering brought us redemption.  These people did not fear suffering, they embraced it.

With this flood of new thought threatening to stretch the boundaries I had set up in my heart, I went to scripture to see what it had to teach me about suffering.  What I found expanded my thoughts.  I read in Acts how the disciples rejoiced “that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name” (Acts 5:41).  I read that we are “heirs with God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.” (Romans 8:17).  I looked at 2 Corinthians 1, where Paul teaches that God comforts us in our affliction so that we might comfort others in affliction.  I examined Peter’s exhortation to have the same thinking as Christ since he suffered for us (1 Peter 4:1-2).  These texts and more chipped away at my perception of suffering and began to rebuild a theology of suffering that was radically different than what I had previously held to.  Before my friend’s words challenged me  about suffering, I saw it as a test that Christians should endure if it came, but otherwise avoid at all costs.  I did not hold to the “your best life now” prosperity gospel, but neither did I see suffering as a part of the Christian life.  This new thought flowing from my study of scripture, however, has compelled me to see suffering as a element of the Christian life that should be anticipated and embraced.

We are a part of a culture that does not embrace suffering.  We are taught from a young age that things that are uncomfortable are bad and things that bring us pleasure are good.  And so we run away from the things that make us uncomfortable, stretch us, and cause us to grow and run to the things that make us comfortable where we are, so that we become apathetic and stagnant.  Brothers and sisters, this is not what we are called to.  We are called to be imitators of Christ, who did not consider equality with God something to be held onto, but took on flesh and blood (Ephesians 5:1 and Philippians 2:5-11).  The limitless king bound himself in the constraints of humanity, in the brokenness of creation.   We cannot comprehend the suffering that Christ endured for the sake of the world, beginning not at the cross, but at his birth.

How then shall we live in view of these mercies?  We must offer ourselves as living sacrifices.  This is holy and pleasing to God.  This is our spiritual act of worship. (Romans 12:1)  To be a sacrifice is not a comfortable thing.  As sacrifices we willingly offer ourselves to God to be used as he wills, this means giving up our ambitions, hopes, and plans in order to follow the will of the Father.  Don’t get me wrong; I am not challenging you to become some sort of spiritual masochist.  More importantly, God is not calling you to seek out your own pain, but neither is he calling us to run from it.

It must be said that suffering is different from discomfort.  If we are honest, we in the west don’t have a good definition of suffering.  Our idea of suffering comes from feelings of discomfort and inconvenience.  Discomfort, unlike suffering, is something that Christians are called to.  We are called to go beyond the familiar, to stretch ourselves so that we may grow, to leave behind our earthly comforts so that we may follow Christ.

So, how does this fit in to worship?  How do we apply this understanding of suffering to our worshipping community?

• First, no matter what Christian community we are in, we will face the temptation to present ourselves as perfect rather than perverted, beautiful rather than broken.   We don’t want others to see us in our weakness; it causes us to face it ourselves, to move, and to change and change is hard and uncomfortable.  We must move ourselves into places of discomfort as we gather together, presenting ourselves as broken vessels with an honest and transparent heart.  In this instance we must seek discomfort by answering the “how are you?”’ questions honestly, admitting sin to our close community, expressing ourselves emotionally as we gather to worship, etc.

• Second, we must lay our lives down for one another.  Our attitude should be that of Christ Jesus, who humbled himself to suffer for the sins of the world (Phil. 4).  In theory we all agree with this challenge, but are we really prepared to subject our lives to this much discomfort and inconvenience?  Would we be willing to take a serious cut out of our time, effort, or resources to build up the body so that no one would be in need (Acts 2:42-47).  Are we prepared to make that sacrifice?  We should be.

• Third, when true suffering does afflict us, we must receive it with faith, believing that we receive the sentence of death, in order to make us not rely on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead (2 Cor. 1:9).  Additionally we must acknowledge this suffering within the gathered community, honestly confronting the brokenness of the world, grieving in our affliction, but also rejoicing that we might be counted worthy of suffering for the Name (Acts 5:41).

Before we leave this subject I need to let you know that my friend who I spoke of at the beginning of this piece is still suffering.  He has made changes in his life for the better, he continues to seek God, and he works hard, but he is still afflicted with one hardship after another.  In this life suffering may not end, but we who trust in Christ do not walk this road for the sake of the journey, we press on towards the goal, the day when all brokenness will be healed and all sufferings cease.  But until that day we must seek discomfort so that we may grow, forsake our comfort for the good of others, acknowledge true suffering as it comes, and rejoice that we might be counted worthy to suffer for the Name.

*NOTE – Here is a list of the scriptures that have been most formative for me on this subject:

- Acts 5:41

- Romans 5:3-5

- Romans 8:16 & 17

- 2 Corinthians 1

- Philippians 1:29

- Philippians 2:5-11

- 2 Timothy 1:8

- 1 Peter 3:13&14

- 1 Peter 4:1&2

- 1 Peter 4: 19

- 1 Peter 5:10

Really, Truly, Genuinely, Actually, Bona Fide, Authentic Worship

What does “authentic worship” mean?  In the wake of the “worship wars” over music style people have sought new words to define what they are looking for in worship.  As a result, the word “authentic” has become somewhat of a buzzword.  Many people claim to be searching for authentic worship, but just as many people have different definitions of what authentic worship truly means.  To some, authenticity might mean lifting hands or dancing while singing, others may connect authenticity with traditions or rituals practiced by the early church, still others could be seeking a welcoming community when they look for authenticity.  It’s a “cool” word to use, but the definition is a little ambiguous.   The problem with all of these understandings of “authentic” worship is that from each of these perspectives authenticity is something that people come to the worship service looking for.  In reality, authenticity is not the product of a particular worship practice.  Instead, the worship practice is a product of authenticity.  Therefore, we are able to find authenticity in any form of Christian worship (regardless of style or setting) because it is something that begins in the worshipping heart of a believer and overflows into the worshipping practices of a congregation.  Authenticity is a seed planted by the word of God and nurtured by the fellowship of believers.  The fruit of an authentically lived life manifests itself in worship.  So, in the end, authenticity is not something we can look for.  It is something we must cultivate.

The antithesis of authentic worship is feigned worship.  In order for us to cultivate authenticity in worship we must think about what breeds feigned worship.  At the heart of counterfeit worship lies a desire to cover up who we truly are, to present a false view of ourselves.  We are afraid to show who we really are in worship, so we put on a mask.  When it comes down to it, we must recognize that in order to cultivate authentic worship we must kill the pride in us that causes us to fear showing who we truly are.  Pride is starved as we feast on the Word of God and genuineness is developed as we allow others to see our imperfections as we grow.  All of God’s children are nothing more than wretched sinners saved by a perfect redeemer.  We all have faults that we must let scripture refine.  If we work to apply the Word to our lives it will challenge us to stretch ourselves.  Much of the time scripture challenges us to shed our masks by compelling us to go outside of our comfort zone to lift our hands as we sing, fall on our knees in prayer, or ask a friend how we could pray for them.  When we venture outside of that which is comfortable, we are allowing authentic worship to take root.

So, stop looking for authentic worship and start cultivating it.

 

We Are Not Alone

You are a worship snob.  Hold on, before you become offended, I too am a great snob about what I find important and valuable in expressing worship.  I think far too much of what I like and thus, think far too much of myself.  This thinking has been reinforced by our western ideals. We are a nation that values advancements, invention, entrepreneurs, and individualism.  These ideals may be useful for nation building, but are not always in keeping with scripture.  Our faith originated in a different world, with different patterns of thought.  The ideas and values reflected in the bible often stand in stark contrast to western thought.  In biblical thought the individual is not exalted, but rather the collective group is valued. Christians are called to lose their life to find it in Christ – to become part of his body.  In other words, those who follow Jesus are called to cast off their former identity and put on a new identity rooted in the work of Christ and defined in the community of faith.

In a culture that esteems individualism, it is a very natural progression for people to adopt the view that what their neighbor believes has no impact on what they believe.  For many of us, faith has become almost taboo.  Talking about faith has become akin to giving out information about your personal finances or your sex life – it feels private and not to be shared.  Even when we come to worship as a group our natural inclination, reinforced by our western culture, causes us to think of our own “needs” first – whether or not I like the music, how I like the sermon, how the rambunctious child in the row behind me is distracting me from getting what I need from the service.  While we are responsible for our individual faith we cannot extend that to mean that it is private – we are a part of something more, something greater, it is the community of the body of Christ.  Worship is not an individual activity.  When we are called from death to life by Christ we are raised into the company of a multitude of sons and daughters adopted into God’s family, which is made up of our brothers and sisters past and present.  Since we have been saved into a community we cannot respond to that salvation solely as an individual.  Instead, we join a larger song.

Once when I was singing in congregational worship I saw a vision, of sorts, that I often re-imagine as I sing with God’s people.  It is a vision of a throne room.  It is a throne room full of beauty and light, larger than any stadium ever built and grander than the finest opera house.  I see the room from high above in the “nose bleed section.”  Everyone in the throne room is turned towards the center, where One beyond description sits.  And from the lips of the multitude comes a cacophony of praises.  In flawless unity we sing praises to the One who sits on the throne.  My friends and family stand close to me in this room, but it is not just us – there are more voices.  Every brother or sister in Christ that I have ever met is there, but still those voices are not enough to fill this vast room.  There are people of different nations, tribes, and tongues there.  I hear different languages sung and instruments of many other cultures being weaved into the music.  This diversity of voices does not confuse the music; instead they enhance it.  It is as if every note played is itself alive, giving praise.  And there are still more people.  Into this symphony enters the voices of the saints that came before; those brothers and sisters who were long passed before I existed.  As one we join together to worship the God of our salvation.  In perfect harmony we ascribe all glory, honor, and praise to him.  This vision stirs my heart even now.

Sadly, our worship does not often emulate the picture I imagine of the throne room.  Instead, we tend to worship in concentric “circles”.  The innermost “circle” would be ourselves as individuals.  We focus on this “circle” most, paying attention to our “needs” and desires first.  The next “circle” we acknowledge is our visible community – those people who we regularly interact with; the ones who we see at the grocery store, sit next to in the pew, or study the bible with.  We can easily empathize with these people in worship because we have some sort of tangible relationship with them, however small.  Our awareness of the worshipping community often stops there, but if our awareness ends with this “circle,” we forget a vast portion of the family of God.  The next part of the concentric “circles” is the global worshipping community – those brothers and sisters around the world who do not worship in the same way as us, but share in the same redemption that we have, who have been called to from death to life, just as we have, and thus respond with worship just as we do.  And there are yet more who we tend to forget.  The final “circle” of the worshiping community that we tend not to acknowledge is the community across time – those who have come before and those who will be.

For us to approach worship in these concentric circles is not wrong.  It is inevitable that we will be most aware of ourselves and the people we interact with since we know those “circles” most intimately.  The injustice comes when we choose to acknowledge only our immediate circles and forget the church all over the globe and across time.  To forget these brothers and sisters in our worshipping community and act as if we are the only ones worshipping is a grievous oversight.  You see, in Christian worship, we are not alone.  Our acts of worship mingle with those of the multitude.

In his high priestly prayer in John 17, Jesus prays “that they [the Church] may be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.  The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and love them even as you loved me.” (John 17:21-23)  Would we not be fulfilling this prayer by acknowledging the breadth of the body of Christ in worship?  What a picture of unity for the world to see Christ through.  Regardless of the means we use to remind ourselves of our worshiping community, this truth still stands: we are not alone; we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses spanning across space and time (Hebrews 12), we must remember the rest of the family.

 

Imperfect Worship

Recently I had the privilege of taking a band to lead worship at the winter retreat for the youth group I grew up in.  I love leading worship for retreats.  They give me an opportunity to play music with some of my favorite people, to get away for the weekend, and they are usually powerful worship experiences.  There is something about a retreat that allows a person to connect with God in a deep way.  Being taught in God’s word and worshiping multiple times a day combined with a lack of sleep and the communal feeling of a youth group somehow softens hearts that used to be made of stone and opens ears that had been closed.  In the weeks leading up to the retreat I was very excited.  I had an expectation that God was going to do a mighty work in the hearts and lives of the youth that were going to be there.  I planned music sets with eager anticipation and made power points joyfully, praying with zeal that the words of the songs would take root in the people coming to the winter retreat.  Finally the weekend came.  The band and I got to the retreat center, set up our gear, and prepared to lead the youth in worship.  Aside from a few technical difficulties with our equipment, everything had gone smoothly.  The only thing amiss was my own heart.  I did not want to be there.  The anticipation that I had felt in my heart was gone; replaced by a grey cloud.  We played through the music sets.  I said what I had planned on saying, read the scriptures that I had wanted to read; I even spoke impromptu, letting the Holy Spirit lead me.  But through it all I was covered in a cloud.  For some reason, my spirit was downcast.  I did not want to be there.

It would be easy for me to look back on that weekend and say it was a failure.  After all, my memories of it are recollections tainted by the grey state of my heart.  I was not moved by the worship.  There was no mountaintop of emotional experience.  Yes, it would be easy for me to believe that I did not worship very well while I was at the retreat.  However, if I believed that, I would be demonstrating a poor understanding of how God calls us to worship him.

Christian worship is a response.  Because of sin, we cannot worship God on our own.  Our sin makes us dead to who he is.  In worship we respond to what God has done.  God is the initiator who invites us into worship by calling our names and waking us from the dead.  Once we are called from death to life by Christ, we are free to see God for who he is, but even in our resurrected state we are caught in a tension.  The tension of being raised to life in Christ, but living in a world that is still broken by sin.  We are already redeemed, but we are not yet perfect.

Because of this already-not-yet tension, the things we offer to God in worship are not perfect.  This is a problem, because God is a holy being who cannot accept anything imperfect.  On our own, we cannot offer perfect worship to God.  We need a perfecter of our worship.  Thankfully, we not only have a God who initiates our worship.  We have a God who perfects our worship.

“… let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne or God.”  Hebrews 12:1-2

This passage assures us that Jesus is not only the initiator (“founder”) of our faith -he is also the one who makes our faith perfect.  Christ’s death on the cross is not simply an event that made salvation possible.  The blood of Christ continually washes us clean as we offer our lives as sacrifices to God.

This truth is extremely liberating.  The knowledge that it is not up to us to make worship perfect in our own strength takes the burden off of us.  So, when we come to worship with clouded hearts and disquieted spirits, we need not be dismayed that our worship is deficient.  The blood of Christ perfects our worship, making in worthy to present before the throne of God the Father.  Hallelujah for the blood of Christ, our perfecter!

Epilogue:  Despite the cloud over my heart at the retreat, God was at work in the hearts and minds of the people gathered that weekend.  Many of the students that attended met God in new and powerful ways.  Some made Christ their Lord for the first time.  Looking back, I believe that the cloud over my heart was a spiritual attack, but despite the efforts of my enemies, Christ had the victory!