The Direction of Worship

"One of the greatest discoveries of my Christian pilgrimage has come with the realization that the primary importance in worship is not what I do but what God is doing. In worship, God is present, speaking to me, and acting upon me. It is in worship that God feeds, nourishes, and cares for me. And it is in worship that he gives me his grace, surrounds me with his love, lifts me up into his arms, affirms me as a member of his community, and sends me forth into the world with a fresh vision of his work and a new concern to live for him."

Robert Webber, Worship Is a Verb: Celebrating God's Mighty Deeds of Salvation

(Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishing, 1992), 66.

This quote is awesome for a number of reasons!  I love it because it puts the primacy of worship on God, not me.  It puts the focus of worship on God, not me.  It puts the flow of worship in the proper perspective, and it demonstrates that eternal truth - that it starts with God, it's all for God, and it will end with God.  And it shows that "worship" is not an end in itself - it is for the glorification of God in the moment, and, for the furthering of His worship in the nations of the world. Do I have a part in it?  Yes, of course I have a part to play - I was born to worship!  But lest I forget that somehow it is all about me, the style I like, the instrument I use, the visual or visceral response of the congregation that I can "see" or "get" - the immediate results - Jesus is the High Priest, not me, and it is He Who initiates, sustains, and completes worship - not me! But this line of thinking leads me in to an area of a bit of controversy when played out in real life!  In regard to God being the real worship leader, I have noticed an interesting fact.  For the most part (and there are exceptions to this), in cultures where the Church (body of Christ) has put an "end time" on their "worship services", the church is stagnant - it is not growing in a big way overall.  In cultures where the Church has not put an "end time" on their "worship services", the church is exploding, or has just exploded.  Hmm.  Should we decide when it is over, or should God? Of course I am very familiar with the age old tension between "Does the Holy Spirit work in the planning, or does He work in the spontaneity of the moment?"  The answer is obviously "BOTH", and therefore the previous question sets up a false dichotomy.  The better question might be, "If God is the true worship leader, does He have the 'room', or the 'freedom' to act in congregational worship outside the man-made boundaries that we maybe impose on Him?  And does He have the 'room', or the 'freedom' to act in my personal life of worship in a way that might take me right out of my comfort zone, and transplant me into a place where He sovereignty decides that if I go there, He will get even more glory?"  I am thinking that it is in this sense that worship has a real Director, and His worship has a true relevant direction.

The Journey Into Death

When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die.

-Dietrich Bonhoeffer

I have always been extremely impressed with the way Jesus Christ turned everything we thought we knew on it's head.  To be exalted, you need to be humbled.  To be great, you need to be a servant.  And in order to live, you need to first die.

I wonder if this was on Abraham's mind as he took Isaac up Mt. Moriah for what he knew would be none less than a human sacrifice.  And I wonder if Isaiah knew that he would be sawn in half when he said those infamous words, "Here am I, send me." 

Friends, I am becoming more and more keenly aware that we have all been invited, pulled inextricably into that crux moment in history where true love and pure wrath met, where unrestricted grace touched unbridled judgment, where beauty and horror embraced, where the vertical and horizontal were nailed together, and salvation and damnation were clearly hung out for the entire world to see.  And we are asked to make a choice:  Who lives?  Who dies? 

"As I contemplated the spiritual journey of Holy Week . . . I knew this was not a week for shopping, vacation, parties, or hilarity. I sensed this was the week that above all weeks was to be set aside for the journey into death. I knew the worship of the church would take me by the hand and lead me step-by-step into the experience of death and rebirth, if I would allow it to do so. I resolved then and there to walk in the way of the cross. I purposed to make this the week God intended it to be for me, a week of intense spiritual struggle--and reward!"

Robert Webber, Ancient-Future Time: Forming Spirituality through the Year 

(Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2004), 118-119.

I remember being blown away by the Sunday School wall in a persecuted church in Antioch, Turkey.  There they had hung portions of scripture that were to be summarily memorized by their children.  Of course there were the usual verses that we in the west might expect, like "Yet to all who received Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become Children of God", and "Let the little children come unto me…"  

What I wasn't prepared for was this one:  "For if we live, we live for the Lord, or if we die, we die for the Lord; therefore whether we live or die, we are the Lord's."  Not the normal Sunday School verse for little children, unless you realize that training up a child in the way he should go, as followers of Christ, is to experientially understand that unless one is dead to self, one cannot really live.

My friends, Christians do not celebrate Easter.  They celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, and should be unembarrassed to say and do so, for it is only here that we can find and have true life.  Neither do we embrace pagan fertility rites (even if we are sometimes, like in our own lives, found ignominiously scrambling around for painted eggs and marshmallow chickies).  Rather, like Jesus Christ, we were born for the life of the cross, the tomb, and of course the power and reality of the Resurrection.  Let us therefore be unashamedly "baptized" into this, for it is in this that we truly "live, and move, and have our being". 

Have an awesome Holy Week, and Resurrection Sunday!

A Dream

Given all the current unrest and heartache in North Africa, I was so blessed to receive this testimony.  I have checked the veracity of this story, and it was confirmed from two different sources, both directly connected to the event.  Praise God for what He is doing in the midst of such struggle.  My encouragement to us all is to try to look beyond geo-political agendas, and media coverage when it comes to the inevitable spin that gets put on such events.  The reason is, that God's ways are not our ways.  He is doing far beyond what we could ask or think, and even in the middle of destruction, He bring beauty from the ashes.  Bless you as you read this blessing . . .

N.Africa:  "A young man was very dedicated to Islam.  His parents were very proud of him.  However this young man became very sick psychologically.  It happened very suddenly.  His desperate parents looked everywhere for help to heal him, even trying witchcraft. Nothing worked. One night the father dreamed that his son was in a pit full of snakes, all biting him.  In the dream he tried to pull his son out of the pit.  All in vain.  Suddenly, a man appeared, of tremendous beauty and glory wearing a white robe.  The man reached down into the pit and took his son by the hand to lift him out.  But the son was holding on to something in his other hand.  The shining man told him to release it.  It was a copy of the Qu'ran.  As soon as he released it, he was lifted out of the pit and the snake bites disappeared.  The father was so happy to see his son rescued and healed.  He woke up, fascinated by the dream and began to search for its meaning.  Some who follow Jesus heard about it and visited him, telling him who the man in white was.  On hearing this, the father gave his life to Christ.  They then prayed for the son, and he was healed.  The entire family now has begun to walk the path!"

A Provocative Perspective

"For the Apostle Paul, you do not live in the world and go to church. You live in the Church and go to the world. Take off your head, shake it and put it back on; because that was not the way any of us were trained to think. Church, for Paul, is not something you attend. Church is something you organically are—or not! It is more a living organism than a formal organization. You don't join it as much as you breathe it. He is announcing an existing mystery more than establishing a new institution."

-- Richard Rohr

If this is truly the case, then my understanding of what I am really a part of needs to change.  Church is not a destination any more than Worship is only a noun. 

And while I may align myself with this or that denominational or non-denominational structure, I am "connected" to brothers and sisters around the world by a "spiritual ethnicity" that binds me closer to them than just about any other relationship I have - Jesus took that "spiritual ethnicity" so seriously, He said some very difficult things every time He was confronted by a challenge to prefer blood or even family ethnicity (see Luke 14). 

It is very true that in many cases, I have more in common with my persecuted brothers and sisters in Palestine or China than I do my own extended generational family.  And it is in this that I find the "real" definition of Koinonia - a community/communion/family/united expression of the Body of Christ that extends a loving invitation to all, to come to the table of celebration that God has prepared through the sacrifice and resurrection of His Son.

Worship Is Breath In Another Form

Worship is another one of those critical threshold moments where Heaven and Earth intersect, and engage in the same holy activity in time and space, and in eternal presence.  Man I wish I could "live" as if that is true all the time, rather than grind through hours and days "killing" time vs. radically investing it. 

Worship is not a commodity.  Nor is it a style, or a program.  Worship is breath in another form. 

It is life-giving, and life sustaining.  It should be constant, and it is totally necessary.  It is found in obedience, and intimacy.  It can seem so hard to maintain, even though many times it comes in waves and we drown in it. 

We receive worship in the sense that without Jesus' worship, His sacrifice, and even His constant vigilance as our High Priest, we don't stand a chance.  We draw in His grace like a breath of sweet air and as a result, we live. 

We give worship in the sense that in whatever we do, wherever we go, whatever we say, and whatever we think, we demonstrate our allegiance, our hope, our love, and our faith, as being given to the Deity or some devil or some idol in between. 

I don't know if we will "breathe" in heaven, but I do know we will worship.  It's one of the few activities here on earth that we are guaranteed to continue there.  Let us worship therefore as we breathe, for in this is the oxygen for our souls.

A Christmas Wish for Beirut

Have you thought about how you can bring the Gospel to a few thousand young people in the Middle East this Christmas?

Through music, the Word of God, storytelling, and other art forms, the Gospel will be brought to Lebanon this December. The Bill Drake Band, a ministry of OM Arts International will have the opportunity to minister to thousands of young people in Beirut.

Working with local churches, the Gospel will be presented in schools and concert venues around the city. This is an unprecedented opportunity!

$12,000 needs to be raised to cover airfare, food, lodging and transportation for the team of 8.

Will you pray and partner with us to help illuminate the truth of Christmas for people who so desperately need to hear this message?

For residents of the USA, give securely online by clicking here.

Or give a support gift through your local OM office with the notation: OMUSA-9071BDBL10   Click here for your local OM office.

The Arts and the Incarnation

As we move closer to the Christmas Season, I always find myself meditating on the mystery and the glory of the Incarnation.  God becomes flesh.  And not just that - He goes so far through His Holy Spirit to dwell in us!  On the one hand this seems metaphysically outrageous, religious nonsense.  On the other hand, it is actually our only hope - "Christ in us, the hope of glory" (see the entire argument in Colossians 1:13-27). 

This makes the Incarnation a missional move by God, Who employs the incarnation to rescue and ransom His beloved.  The implications of this, when married with Christ's mandate to "seek first the Kingdom of God", are that incarnational and missional living is what we were born for, what we were created to do, and as such, are never more God-like ourselves than when we emulate Him by living accordingly. 

I have often wondered (I guess because my mind works this way!), who "proclaimed" the better sermons - Billy Graham, or Mother Theresa.  This may seem a non-sequitur, but the question begs a deeper truth.  Proclamation is not only a matter of verbal message - Christ is the Word and the Image of the Invisible God, and we are to follow in His steps, not only intellectual collections of correct doctrine, but also living and breathing imitations of Jesus who care, cry, bleed, pray, worship, live, and die.

"The historic argument for the use of the arts in worship is grounded in the Incarnation. The claim is that God, by becoming a person, sanctified physical and material reality as a vehicle for spiritual presence. He comes to us through flesh and blood. Why, then, shouldn't we accept appropriate art forms as visible means through which we offer our praise?"

Robert Webber, Worship Is a Verb: Celebrating God's Mighty Deeds of Salvation (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishing, 1992), 12-13.