Celebration

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It’s really easy to associate worship and celebration.  It’s universal.  Not just some Western Christianity sort of phenomenon.  Worship in all cultures has at least a component of celebration at times.   But we celebrate all kinds of things and events in life and if you think about it we are worshipping in every celebration.

 So what can be considered celebration?  

We just traveled across the country to celebrate the life of a dear uncle.  No, it wasn’t a dreary gloomy wailing mournful deal, it was indeed a celebration.  The stories told at the wake, from the pulpit during the service, at the meal afterwards and on into the night in his famous Red Barn were a testimony to his life, a life well lived indeed.  

His example of practical blessing to so many around him was his faith, lived on the outside but never “in your face.”  He showed us how to celebrate every day…  I think he had ahold of something big, celebrate (worship) everyday by living a life of joy, generosity and love, and it will  spread contagiously to those around you.   

Thanks, Uncle Earl.  We miss you and look forward to seeing you again.

Serenity

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I’ve been contemplating serenity as a form of worship lately. This view off our balcony is so serene and peaceful it lead me to look up the word serenity.

1. The state of being serene; calmness; peacefulness.

2. A lack of agitation or disturbance.

3. A title given to a reigning prince or similar dignitary.

 

One of the benefits of worship is peace or serenity.  One of the benefits of salvation is “the peace that passes all understanding”.  Kinda makes you think don’t it ?

So if we are suppose to worship all the time and we have have serenity in us all the time, then aren’t we are there already, we just have to recognize it.  It’s the same way we have to step into our salvation daily and purposefully walk it out.  These attributes of the divine presence in us are always there just waiting for us to cooperate and let them out.  So, we really are enabled to worship all the time in everything we do.

Yeah, OK, life does it’s best to eat away at our peace, to chip away at the serenity we should walk in constantly. What we must focus on is that , in Christ we are already at peace, serene and impervious to the hostility going on in the physical world. The real you and I, the spirit man inside is quite capable of walking in perfect serenity always. Like so many things in this mortal life, it is simply a choice.

Let’s choose to live from the serenity within and walk in worship every minute of every day.

 

Worship mindset

IMG_1618My worship journey has taken me down an interesting path over the last few years since we left the institutional church. The weekly rhythm and duties associated with being part of a of the staff of a “local fellowship” lulled me into thinking that I had sort of “put in my time” because I did all the stuff I was supposed to do according to the system.

I was so caught up in “doing the worship stuff” that I lost site of who was the object of my worship. If I’m brutally honest, the goal became the “acts of worship” in a way. My focus became the mechanics of it all, playing to the expectations of leadership, focusing on the “vision”, mine and theirs, and trying to make sure I was doing the “right thing” by everyone. Sometimes, in all of the busyness of ministry, I got my focus back on Jesus. No wonder things sometimes felt dry in the midst of it all and other times He broke through.
Since we left the system behind, I’ve seen my appreciation of the universal nature of worship expand over and over. It has nothing whatsoever to do with planning a set time or place of “worship” or orchestrating all the players and pieces to flow together to “get into the river”. It’s been about coming to the understanding that we are always praising and worshipping. I’ve been unlearning 30 years of Churchianity, experiencing the freedom to see Papa God everywhere, to find my Big brother Jesus in the creative expressions of everyone around me. To hear the sweet wind of the Spirit blowing in the simple rhythms of life and the complex orchestrations of nature.
Everything we do is worship of one sort or another. Let’s set our sights on Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the only One worthy of worship and live each moment for the Glory of Him.

Even this is Worship !

I overheard the question, in regards to a meeting tomorrow, “Who’s doing worship?”

Brothers and sisters in the streams we’ve flowed in over the years ask this question and it presents an interesting conundrum.   Oh, I understand the context of the question being “who’s going to be up on the platform leading the songs”.
But to me, the important question is more general who, is doing the worship?  Who?
Is it the anointed/appointed people on the platform who are supposed to be leading the congregation into the courts and hopefully to the throne room?
Is it the audio/video folks who are powering the mechanics of the service?
Is it the folks on live Web stream i n their jammies on the couch at home?
Is it the kids coloring in the Jesus coloring books at the back of the sanctuary?
It’s just our normal thing to see this as the worship thing.
“Oh you mean the singing?“, One of my friends said in response to the similar question of “When do we start worship?”
I would like to see my worship encompassing the entirety of life.
How do we do that?
Let’s set our hearts to be enraptured and enthralled at every little glimpse we get of Jesus in all the bits and pieces of life.  He’s there, in every moment, the good, bad, ugly, beautiful, all of it.   Sure we can join in and enjoy the fellowship of brothers and sisters in song and dance too, because, hey, it’s all worship !!!!

Intercession

Valuing His ability to set things right over and above the circumstances of life.  

No better way one can give honor to Him than to seek His face.  Is prayer not just that, Worship most heartfelt, specifically, intercession for others?  Intercession brings us into a place where we are giving Him all the glory as the one and only source of goodness and blessing.  Yahweh, AlephTav, AlphaOmega, the true beginning and end of the answer to their needs.
The act of submitting our will to His, in prayer, seeking His answers to the trials and pains in others lives, is worship most sweet.
Taking care of the widows and orphans through standing in the gap for them through intercession.  How better to honor Him than to listen to HIs voice and give utterance to the words of deliverance He gives us for the situations of life.  Are we not commanded to lift up one another in prayer, to seek His will for our brothers and sisters to stand up for them when they cannot stand on their own.  Like Aaron and Hur who held up Moses arms lest he grow faint in interceding for Israel, let us sustain each other by His strength.
Intercessory prayer is the release of the living waters in us, into the lives and situations of those we intercede for.
Papa says “Pray and cease not, Pray and faint not, it is not pleading with me or begging to seek my will for those I put on your heart.  Co-labor with me, bring breath my desires in the earth”

Worship of Fear?

We Christians generally think of worship in a positive manner, as in ascribing worth to Papa God; our Creator, Sustainer, Father.  However worship is ascribing worth to one thing which therefore by definition debases other things. The new found “glory” of the object of our worship blinds our eyes to everything else.

So, what about this concept of worshipping fear?  When we dwell in the realm of fear, we push aside all faith and therefore all that is positive.  We sink into the “slough of despond” like Pilgrim in Bunyan’s classic.  Worry is the worship of fear.  It contains all the components of worship, we ascribe great importance to the subject of our worry, our thoughts dwell on it or mutter it, chewing it like the cow chews her cud deriving all the evil “nutrition” possible from the worrisome thoughts.
I have been a consummate worry worshipper in my life and it’s end is never good.  This affliction or iniquity is common among those of us who love to engage in worship of the true and living Father of Lights.
Why then do we go off the faith rails into worryville so quickly?  What is it about worry that is so easy?  The answer lies in where we are looking, are we focused on this temporal world with all it’s issues and fears or are we looking intently into the light of Jesus glorious face and His good pleasure to bring us into the full revelation of His Kingdom.
Let us always seek first His Kingdom in every thought, word and deed…   I think I read that somewhere.

Forms, Formality, Forever

Worship can take many forms; Clamorous, glorious, raucous, abandoned, wild, radical, crazed, outrageous, zealous, awestruck, humbled, ruined, bowed, silent, laid down, dumbfounded, intoxicated, captivated, enthralled, silent, somber, joyous, dancing, paralyzed, energized, laughing, crying, reeling, overwhelmed, carried away, enraptured, ecstatic, solemn, contemplative.
At a recent meeting I observed many of these ways of worship. Both during the time when there was music and during the time when the man was speaking. In fact, earlier during the day I witnessed these expressions of worship in various places. People all give praise and worship all day long to many different perceived “sources”.  It’s just what we humans do, we worship constantly and with great abandon.  Most of us just won’t admit to it in our “regular” life.  Seriously when did you last see a football game, or concert?
Oh yeah we “officially worship” at the church, the synagogue, the temple, but all the other times when we ascribe worship to the many “sources” in life during our regular walking around day to day life we are just doing life, we tend to see that part as the secular part of life…… Hey what about doing life in the midst of our worship and keeping our focus on the Father of lights all the time? Now there’s a way to live!

It’s how we will spend eternity……

Context is everything

I, like so many who’ve studied worship, always looked at the form of worship in the midst of the Temple, David’s Tent, etc.  That was the real meat of what worship looked like and how it was to be done.  Stan Firth has looked at what people were doing before they were worshiping, in other words, the context of worship and then what they did to worship.  I had focused on the formal settings in Bible passages so many times for my picture of worship when in fact that was a small portion of the times when people worshiped in the Bible record. For only a portion of Israel had access to the Temple or tent of meeting more than just three times a year. Worship happened in the normal course of life much more than in structured services.

From: Custom and Command by Stan Firth
“So I went through the Bible, looking at every example of people worshipping. To my surprise, I found that biblical references to worship taking place were, usually, quite unconnected with what you might call “religious meetings” or “services”! IT BECAME CLEAR TO ME THAT WORSHIP WAS ALMOST ALWAYS A SPONTANEOUS EXPRESSION OF APPRECIATION TO THE LORD, FROM AMIDST WHATEVER SITUATIONS BELIEVERS FOUND THEMSELVES IN, RATHER THAN SOMETHING WHICH HAPPENED AT FIXED TIMES OR PLACES. ”
“Eventually I concluded that, basically, worship in the Old Testament was a spontaneous response of appreciation, when the good and wise dealings of the Lord were experienced or recalled. Worshippers of the Lord were those who consciously gave Him credit in their on-going situations”

Kinda takes you back to the beginning, the Shema (Deut 6:4-8)
Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.

Life is to be lived in His presence day by day, worship flows from the junction of life and the divine wherever and whenever.

Disconnected?

So, how do you worship when you disconnect from the institutional church system? I’ve struggled with this for two years now, since leaving a lifelong journey through one version or another of that institution.

We are so programmed into the mindset that we must have a band or choir up in front of us and a special place to “enter in”. We somehow need to be in one of those groups either on the platform or out in the congregation to “really” worship. So when we leave that system it can feel odd to worship in other ways. The uncomfortable sense of the familiar being gone and the uncertainty of what Holy Spirit wants us to do can lead to feeling disconnected.

However, if we believe that living life in a Christ honoring way is in itself worship, then coffee with a brother or a volleyball game with friends can certainly be worship. The underlying question for me is “Am I currently giving glory to God with my life?” If the answer is yes, then I’m worshiping indeed. Are our lives meant to be segmented into sacred and secular? Are we not supposed to redeem the time and live mindful of Papa’s presence (in the sacred) all the time?

Now, is there value in gathering with brothers and sisters and singing songs or celebrating Jesus together? Absolutely!!! But if you look at the early Church, they met tougher in homes and public places to fellowship (live life together). It was not about the place they met or the activity they did, but the assembling together in groups of two or more wherever and whenever the Spirit led them. For wherever two are three are gathered in His name, there He is in the midst.

It’s all worship!