If we must “feel” God’s presence before we believe he is with us, we again reduce God to our ability to grasp him, making him an idol instead of acknowledging him as God.
– Craig S. Keener
Tag: worship
All the Way
All the way to heaven is heaven, because Jesus said, “I am the way.”
– St. Catherine of Sienna
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Presence
In the past few years I have heard many worship songs about longing to be in God’s presence. Some of them have become favourites. Early this morning, as I was in that half-in half-out state of sleep, it dawned on me that so much of what God has gone to great effort to communicate is that he longs to be in our presence, with us fully alive and focused on who he is.
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Because You Are Good
The older kids had already run out the door to catch the school bus. She was in her jammies, her hair matted in a wad of fine blonde fuzz at the back of her head and a greying blankie hanging like a loose toga over her shoulder. Her voice, crackling with the residue of sleep was hard to hear.
“What would you like, honey?” her Mommy asked, as she added raisins to my little granddaughter’s oatmeal.
“Can you put on worship?” she asked again, a little louder this time.
“Sure. I can do that. Which one?”
“Kids worship, please.”
Mommy started a video on the computer on the kitchen desk.
“She asks for music every morning,” she told me. “This is the way she likes to start her day.”
The song played and my little three-year old granddaughter grinned at me.
Your goodness never stops
Your mercy follows me
Your kindness fills my life
Your love amazes me
I sing because You are good
And I dance because You are good
And I shout because You are good
You are good to me!*
Yes, my beautiful young one. You continue to teach me. This is how to start the day.
*From Bethel Music Kids/ Come Alive
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To Worship is to Change
In worship an increased power steals its way into the heart sanctuary, an increased compassion grows in the soul. To worship is to change.
– Richard J. Foster
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Never Alone
If we must “feel” God’s presence before we believe he is with us, we again reduce God to our ability to grasp him, making him an idol instead of acknowledging him as God.
– Craig S. Keener
“Never will I leave you;
never will I forsake you.”
(Hebrews 13:5)
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Until Spirit touches spirit
“Forms and rituals do not produce worship, nor does the disuse of forms and rituals.
We can use all the right techniques and methods, we can have the best possible liturgy, but we have not worshiped the Lord until Spirit touches spirit.”
-Richard J. Foster
It’s the light that gives stained glass it’s beauty. Caught a bit of it shining through the old St. Eugene’s church on the mission.
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In the Light of Your Deeds
How good it is to give thanks to the Eternal
and to praise Your name with song, O Most High;
To speak of Your unfailing love in the morning
and rehearse Your faithfulness as night begins to fall.
How good it is to praise to the sound of strings—lute and harp—
the stirring melodies of the lyre.
Because You, O Eternal One, thrill me with the things You have done,
I will sing with joy in light of Your deeds.
(Psalm 92:1-4)
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Tune My Heart
For there’s nothing we can do to oppose the truth; all we can do is align ourselves with it. (2 Corinthians 13:8)
Lately I’ve run into a number of articles on sympathetic vibration in music. The other word that keeps grabbing my attention is alignment.
Sympathetic vibration can be demonstrated when a pitch fork is held near a string tuned to the same pitch. Without being touched the strings seem to come alive and respond with vibrations that play the same note.
I’ve heard it said that true worship begins in heaven and the heart that is still will pick it up. One of my favourite passages of scripture is found in the second chapter of Hosea. The Lord uses the metaphor of alluring his formerly wayward love to a desert place where there is no voice but His. He says that in that place, she will respond to Him. The New American Standard version uses the word sing.
“Therefore, behold, I will allure her,
Bring her into the wilderness
And speak kindly to her.
“Then I will give her her vineyards from there,
And the valley of Achor [trouble] as a door of hope.
And she will sing there as in the days of her youth…”
I’m beginning to see this as sympathetic vibration. When she hears The Voice singing the same pitch which she was designed to sing, the beloved comes alive. Her heart vibrates in sync with the sound that is at the heart of creation. Her heart resonates with Truth.
When we are in tune with the Father’s heart we are in alignment with His truth. When we are all in tune with Him we are also all in tune with each other.
A.W. Tozer wrote: “Has it ever occurred to you that one hundred pianos all tuned to the same fork are automatically tuned to each other? They are of one accord by being tuned, not to each other, but to another standard to which each one must individually bow. So one hundred worshipers met together, each one looking away to Christ, are in heart nearer to each other than they could possibly be, were they to become ‘unity’ conscious and turn their eyes away from God to strive for closer fellowship.”
Instruments in a symphony do not all sound the same. A violin is not a bassoon. Seldom does the composer ask an orchestra to play in unison. He asks them to play in harmony, but all the notes are based on one pure pitch and all play the same song. Worship begins in the Father’s heart. It is a gift He gives us so that we have something to give back to Him.
At the moment the divine orchestra – the Church – most often sounds a bit like everyone is concentrating on individual warm-up exercises and are all practising their own songs at the same time. Some have recently come in from the cold and their instruments are not yet in tune, but I have hope for the day when all look to the Conductor, tune to His perfect pitch, and unite to play the greatest song ever.
Soon.
Their sound will go out into all lands, even to the ends of the earth, when all creation joins to sing God’s praise.
In the meantime this is my prayer: Come play the strings of my heart, Lord. Tune my heart to sing Your praise.
Edited to add:
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Majesty, Worship His Majesty
I’ve been watching brightly coloured leaves from the trees in my garden rain down in front of my window. As the breeze catches them and sends them sailing through the air it reminds me of pictures of the ticker tape parades in the streets of New York after a great victory. The flash of gold and orange and red leaves in the air suddenly reminded me of a dream I had.
In this dream a man who taught me how to be aware of the many ways God communicates joined me. He stood behind me, put his hands on my back by my waist, and started propelling me forward. I felt like I was a few inches above the ground traveling quite quickly. He pushed me toward a run-down drinking establishment on a downtown street. I assumed we were going there to minister to the people inside. That was fine with me. But we just popped in for a minute. He said hi and the people all waved and shouted back to him like he was a favourite in this place.
He kept pushing me. We left the bar and moved up a hill toward a large cathedral. This surprised me because I thought he was the sort of person who would reject religious trappings to do the kind of things Jesus did with the poor and marginalized.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“I want to show you something,” he said.
We went into the cathedral through a side door. Light streamed down into the building from high clerestory windows. The scene amazed me. The air was full of glitter and gold streamers and sparkling jewels and even balloons. The people wore all sorts of clothing from every Christian expression from brocade robes to English white choirboy ruffles to modest plain clothing with head covering to jeans and t-shirts. I saw many shiny instruments: trumpets, a pipe organ, guitars, harps, tambourines…
They were all focused on praising God. There was a sense of overwhelming joy and they worshiped with everything they had. Some danced, some waved flags, some gazed upwards and quietly prayed, some marched in a procession, some waved incense, some knelt, some lay prostrate, but all were lost in wonder and praise. There was no self-consciousness. But they all sang one song.
My companion was very happy. He raised his hands and gave glory to the Father. Then I realized he was no longer just my friend. He was the Lord Jesus himself – and this was a temple of praise. Then the people there recognized him too and the cheers grew even louder. The very atoms in the atmosphere seemed more alive!
I woke up.
This week I read two great blogs. One by Sarah Bessey talked about regaining the freedom to worship in the style she had grown up with (Go ahead, wave your flag), and the other, by Adrian Warnock, was an older blog (I Don’t Want Balance; I Want It All) about not wanting to reject expressions and understandings in order to gain “balance,” but wanting it all. As I remembered this dream that’s the sense I had too. No single mode of worship is adequate, no single denomination’s doctrine can contain every facet of the immensity of God. No single institution is without human error as long as humans are trying to run it. All are in need of purification – some more than others, but we need not reject everything after we find something that misses the mark. We especially need to honour the the truths others before us have discovered, and especially the things others do better than ourselves.
I’ve been struggling with understanding what church is, what unity is. Division in the body of Christ breaks my heart. My problem is not so much settling on which local church to join as it is deciding which ones I will reject if I cling to only a single form of expression. Each “church,” even a home-based church, seems to be isolated from others by self-protective berms of forms or constitutions or habits. I’ve been pretty discouraged by how far the institutional church has strayed from the simple, beautiful words of Christ. I think the greatest mission field in North America is amongst those who have experienced manipulative spiritual abuse at the hands of personal power-seekers in “Christian” churches. “A brother offended is harder to be won than a strong tower.” I’ve been ready for God to toss the whole thing out and start entirely new. This dream shocked me and confronted my judgmental attitude.
I think this is what the dream was telling me: It’s not about doing church “right” or even doing the works we were created to do right. It’s not about how, or where, or when. It’s not about even about what. It’s about WHO.
Unity of the spirit is about losing ourselves in the wonder of Majesty. The Holy Spirit propels us to center our focus on Christ, and Christ ushers us into the presence of Father God. When the strings of our heart respond to the same frequency by singing the same song heaven is singing we come into alignment with his heart. We drop every thought of competition, every need to work to prove we are worthy of God’s approval – that Dad likes us best. We can each express our love and adoration in different ways. His Majesty charges the atoms that give us life.
When we lose ourselves in Him we are one in the Spirit.
We are one in the Lord.
Charis: Subject to Change 