Relationship Restored

The song “Restore to me,” from the Glory Revealed project, is taken almost verbatim from Psalm 51. This Psalm was written David after he had committed adultery with Bathsheba. Psalm 51:11-12. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation. David was afraid that God would remove the Holy Spirit’s anointing from him, as was the case with Saul (I Samuel 16:7). This was a distinct possibility in the Old Testament. An even bigger concern for David was that he had permanently damaged his relationship with God.

I am thankful that God makes restoration with Him possible. And what a blessing it is to never have to worry about God removing His Holy Spirit from me. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession (Ephesians 1:13-14). The “Joy of Your Salvation,” that David mentioned in Psalm 51 is the assurance that The Holy Spirit is a guarantee of the inheritance of the believer. Jesus is the one and only source of genuine and lasting joy. Pass it on

Memorable Praise

Mark Zuckerberg, is a 23 year old Harvard dropout said to have a personal net-worth of $3 Billion. He is the creator of Facebook, an Internet phenomenon. Can you imagine inventing something that would be used by 200 million people within the first 4 or 5 years of its existence? For most of us, this type of instant and far reaching success is unfathomable.

Well, can you imagine having one of your own expressions of worship to God being told of throughout the world for ages to come? All four gospels tell of an occasion where Jesus was having dinner at the home of Simon-the-leper. This may have been a culinary hot-spot that time. Catchy name. Simon-the-Lepers Place. Reservations suggested.

During the course of dinner, a woman enters and begins pouring expensive perfume onto Jesus. John is the only gospel writer to mention her name, Mary. The gospel of Luke tells us that the pharisees began saying that Jesus could not be a prophet, because if Jesus were actually a prophet he would know what a sinner this woman was and he would not allow her to touch him. Others who were present said “Why this waste, this perfume could have been sold and the proceeds used to help the pour? The perfume was estimated to have a value of one years wage. Some who were present focused on how unrighteous the woman was, others focused on how wasteful and extravagant the act of worship was. Jesus saw thing differently.

“ I tell you the truth, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her. “(Mark 14:9)

Jesus saw this act of worship as beautiful and not wasteful, he saw the woman as someone who worshiped him freely and sincerely out of a forgiven and thankful heart. Her act of worship was not one to be ridiculed at an emergency business meeting, but one that Jesus Christ accepted and held up as a model for true worship.

The story of Mary’s lavish and extravagant worship is still being told around the world today, wherever the gospel is being told. Jesus must have been on to something. No expression of worship is too good for our King. The most lavish of praise is still a profound understatement of the praise that he is due.

Love is Loud Part Three

The Triumphal Entry of Christ into Jerusalem is recorded in each of the Gospels, here is a portion of Luke’s account

 When he came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen: Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!”
      ”Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples!” “I tell you,” he replied, “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.” (Luke 19:37-40)

After hearing the teaching of Jesus and seeing many miraculous events, the disciples found themselves convinced the Jesus was the Messiah. They could not help but shouting praises to the “King who comes in the name of the Lord.”  

The Pharisees were very concerned with appearances. They wanted to appear wise and religious. What the disciples were doing was very undignified and made the Pharisees very uncomfortable.  What if the type of unashamed praise happened in your church today. Sadly there is likely someone in your church who would respond just as the Pharisees did, “How can they act like that, right in the presence of Jesus and everything, it is just not right. Something should be done about this.” Yet, Jesus defended his disciples and their expression of praise.

How could the Pharisees and the disciples both be in the bodily presence of the Messiah, and have such different responses to this event. The disciples understood who Jesus was. As a result, they could not help but praise. They felt that Jesus deserved it, and they didn’t care who knew their feelings. Praising Him made perfect sense. The Pharisees did not understand that Jesus was the Christ. To them praising him was silly, unnecessary, and way to loud and “nonreligious.”

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Worship can still bring about these same two divergent reactions. The reason for the radical difference in the reactions is the same as it was at the triumphal entry. Some people value sincerely praising God and some people value looking proper and religious. By the way, it is safe to assume that the Pharisees believed what they were doing was the right thing to do. I am sure they spoke of the disciples shameful and loud display to anyone who would listen for years come. Ultimately, what the Pharisees valued and what Jesus valued were not the same thing. Don’t let the stones speak for you.

Love is Loud Part Two

I recently toured a church with a most impressive pipe organ. The literature said that this pipe organ weighed 173,000 pounds. My best guess is, that one would have no problem hearing this behemoth when it was in operation. In fact one of the awe-inspiring aspects of hearing the pipe organ in worship is that you can feel the bass notes reverberating in your chest cavity. A large pipe organ can put out 125-140 decibels of sound. Yet, I have never heard anyone complain about the volume of the pipe organ in worship. On the contrary, most people express an awesome feeling of being blanketed with a warm wall of pipe-organ sound. Many people will testify that this awesome wall of sound makes them feel in God’s presence. This has not always been the case, as the following excerpt from an article will suggest:

Written by Don Brooks

The journey toward too loud began with the introduction of the pipe organ in the worship service centuries ago. This instrument was designed to duplicate, as closely as technology of the day would allow, the sound produced by a full orchestra. When combined with the human voice it produced an extraordinary experience of true worship. However, there was a problem. The pipe organ could produce a tremendous amount of sound and at times its volume would

produce complaints of it being…too loud.

One of my favorite chapters of the Bible is Isaiah chapter six. In this passage of scripture, Isaiah has the privilege of seeing an amazing heavenly worship service. It is no surprise that this passage has been the subject of many praise and worship songs.

Isaiah 6:1 In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. 2 Above him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. 3 And they were calling to one another:
“Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty;
the whole earth is full of his glory.” 4 At the sound of their voices the door posts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.

5 “Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty.”

My study Bible makes no mention of Isaiah rushing back to the sound-man when the doors-posts and thresholds shook in verse 4, to implore him to turn the volume down. What we find is Isaiah being so full of awe in the presence of God, that he felt ruined. I think that Isaiah was focusing on the right things. Most likely when Isaiah, or anyone for that matter, is focusing on worshiping God, details like volume don’t really matter that much. It would be almost inconceivable if Isaiah said in a later verse, “That was an amazing and awesome experience, I just wish that it would have been a teensy bit quieter.”

Love is Loud Part One

Volume seems to be a subject that often comes up in regard to Worship. It is kind of a complicated subject to discuss. For instance, I went to the symphony today with two of my children. We found seats on the very front row. Over the course of the next 1.5 hours, I noticed that when an 80 member symphony orchestra is building to a crescendo, it is very loud. In researching this theory, I found that a symphony orchestra playing loudly (as they intermittently do)can reach 110 decibels, roughly the equivalent of being on the front row of a rock concert. I looked around and saw people ranging from ages 4 to maybe 74. I saw no one wince or hold their ears. Indeed these musical moment were exhilarating and inspiring, and not shocking.

I wondered how long it would take in most churches to form a lynch mob if one were to play this loud with a Fender Telecaster in a worship service. In most cases their would be widespread gossip-fests taking places for several days.  Clearly, the discussion may have as much to do with prejudices in instrumentation in regard to corporate worship as they do with volume. Most people do not even consider volume when they are at the symphony. Classical music, even when played loudly, does not make anyone nervous. Guitars and drums do. But I digress. So I went back to a study I recently began. The premise is that I wanted to find all of the occurrences in the Bible that described a corporate worship service and a description of volume. If volume was not mentioned in the description of the worship service, I moved on. Unveiling the findings will take several posts. The first passage of scriptures was, the following:

Jehoshaphat bowed down with his face toward the ground. All of the people of Judah and Jerusalem also bowed down. They worshiped the Lord.

Then some Levites from the families of Kohath and Korah stood up. They praised the Lord, the God of Israel. They praised him with very loud voices.(2 Chronicles 20:17-19)

Not only was the volume described, but it was described as “very loud.” Not simply loud. When I read this biblical account of a worship service, I do not think that “very loud” was used in a critical or negative way. I think the biblical writer conveys the message in a way that we should take the phrase “very loud,” to have a positive connotation.  Much like the majesty of an orchestra building and building up to a point where the audience sp0ntaniously springs to their feet to applaud at the conclusion.

Every moment is Worship time

One of the promises of personal computers, and technology in general, is that they would somehow give most of us more leisure time. The rationale being that as computers, robotics, and telecommunications advance, much less will be required of our time individually. How is this working for you? For most people, the answer is”not very well.” In fact, for most people, there are more hours in a work week and fewer vactations than ever. To compound the problem, the technologies that were promised to give us more leisure time, actually enable us to work anytime and anywhere. It is increasingly becoming harder and harder to “leave it at the office.” Many people even work via laptops and cell phones while on vacation. The line between work-time and ‘leisure-time’ is almost non-existent.

I read an article recently that said that people are increasingly becoming more willing to accept cash in exchange for their vacation time. Some workers even said that they felt anxious and disoriented when they were away from their work. These people needed to be near their email, cell phones, and workload to feel safe and complete. My point is not to tell how sad this trend makes me. But I want to use the blurring of on-duty and off-duty, in regard to work as an analogy for how worship should be in our lives. In some ways, we may be placing work in the place where worship was meant to be.

Psalm 27:4 One thing I ask of the LORD,
       this is what I seek:
       that I may dwell in the house of the LORD
       all the days of my life,
       to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD
       and to seek him in his temple.

In this Psalm, David is not lamenting the fact that his local church did not schedule daily worship services. David is expressing the fact that he desired to worship God everyday. This should be our desire also.

Max Lucado once said, “We are always in the presence of God. We never leave church. There is never a nonsacred moment. “

In Matthew 22:37 Jesus gives us a thorough description of worship, Jesus replied: ” ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is a difficult thing to accomplish in an hour or two on Sunday morning.

Next vacation, leave the laptop and cell phone at home, and pack a Bible, devotional readings, and worship music instead. We were not made to work always but to worship always. Remember, no one ever said on their deathbed that they wished they would have found more time to work. But every knee will bow and every tongue will worship God one day. Avoid the rush and take some time off. From work I mean, not from worship.