When Worship Won't Cut It...

I began reading the book of Isaiah today, so I'll be writing about Isaiah for a while.  I love that book.  It is not usually a book out of the Bible that people point to as one of their favorites.  It's a book written by a prophet trying desperately to warn the people of God to turn, or be destroyed.  That is NOT why I love it.  It's often dark, and painful.  That's NOT why I love it.  It has some very graphic warnings of what God is going to do to the people who hate Him.  That's NOT why I love it.


I love it because the whole theme of the book is "a remnant will return."  At it's heart, it's a book about grace and forgiveness for anyone who wants it.  THAT'S why I love the book.


It all begins in chapter one with the warnings.  God, through Isaiah, is telling the people that He is tired of their junk.  He's tired of them coming to church and singing and saying one thing, while living a whole other life the other days of the week.  He tells them to quit singing songs to Him, to quit offering sacrifices to Him, to quit coming into the church and messing it up.  He doesn't want anymore praise and worship services from them.  Instead, He tells them:


Seek justice,
encourage the oppressed.
Defend the cause of the fatherless,
plead the case of the widow.  (Isaiah 1:17)


That always catches me.  God is tired of the hypocrisy and fake faith of his people.  But He doesn't give them lectures on how to run a better worship service, or how to confess their sins corporately on sticky notes and make a clean break.  How are they to show their faith is alive?  Take care of "the other".  The poor, the oppressed, the fatherless, those without family, the lonely, the needy.  Help them, then I'll know you are legit.


Hmmmm.....


So honestly, where are we with this.  God says an actual faith will live itself out in our daily lives, and it will involve how we treat "the other".  Who is your other?  A neighbor who is alone and needy?  Someone at work who is broken?  A family member who is alone and alienated?  That kid in the hall at school who is poor?  Who is the other in your life?  How are you treating them?


According to God, that seems to be more important than what goes down on Sunday morning.  


How are we doing?  

Buy One God, Get One iPad for Free! Today Only! Hurry! (new blog post)

What if God was for sale?  Like an iPad, a car, or a new pair of shoes, you could go out and buy God off?  What if, instead of a God who knows what is best, and gives you plans for how to live the best way possible, He instead was something you could buy and bring home and create your own comfy little religion?  Would you do it?  Would it work for you?

In Judges 18, that is exactly what happens.  This guys ends up with a little silver god statue.  He makes some other religious stuff, and sets up his own church.  He even decides that his kid is going to be the priest.  That is, until a better offer comes along.  This Levite priest comes into town looking for a place to stay.  Micah, the dude with the self-made church, offers to hire him, and provide food and clothing for him.  The priest agrees, and they set up a little religion in his home.

If it sounds weird, it's supposed to.  At this point in Judges, everything in Israel has fallen apart, and is getting worse by the day.  It's a complete mess.  So, what does the First Church of Micah-ology have to do with us?

We do the same thing.

Really, we do.

We try to blend our want for control, power, influence, and stuff with our belief in God.  We will pick and choose which parts of Jesus we want, and pitch out the rest.  Okay, we may not worship a little silver idol, but we worship idols with an apple printed on them.  What would happen if you knew that God was telling you to give up your cell phone for a year because it was messing up your relationship with Him?  Would you give away your car if God clearly told you to?  What about getting off of Facebook for a while?

If you think "No way!" to any of these, then there is your idol.  We all have them.  They are slowly killing all of us.  We have set up our own little religions, and God often sits off to the side of it. 

What are the things you allow to get in your way?  What are the things you would really, really struggle with getting rid of if God asked you to give them away to someone else, and not replace them?  Why?  Why are they so important?  What does that tell us about ourselves?  Do they REALLY matter that much?  Or are they just some dumb little silver god in our house?

Over and over the book of Judges says "There was no king in Israel" and that is why everything went to pot.  Which begs maybe the ultimate question:

Who, or what, is your king?

A Little Gold on Your Hat, A Couple of Rocks on Your Chest, and Throw in a Goat for Good Measure.

I'm in the dark part of the deepest valley of the one year reading plan: Leviticus.  If you've never read it, it is a long litany of guidelines and rules for the people's worship. I read chapters 7-9 today.  God describes how to sacrifice a goat, which parts to burn, which to eat, what to do with the intestines, etc.  He describes how much gold should be on the priest's hat, and what types of rocks to attach to the priest's chest.  Honestly, it's super tough to read and feel inspired by it.

So I've been asking God why He put all of this stuff in there?  Why have us read all of this stuff?  I think one of the big reasons is for us to understand what He wanted the Hebrews to understand; worshiping Him isn't something to be taken lightly.  God is altogether different from us.  He is the Creator with a capital C, we are the created with a little c.  When we worship Him, we need to be careful, or it will just be another thing to do on our to do list. 

But it can't.  Because He is not just another person in our lives.  He is God.  Savior, King, Creator, Wonderful, Prince of Peace, Ruler of All, Amazing One, and Lord.  Worship needs to be purposeful and thoughtful.  It needs to cost us something of value.  If we aren't giving Him our best, we really are missing the point of worship. 

That's why He gave all the rules.  To help His people remember.  The rules are there so that in the process of going through them all, each person will have time to think about why they are doing what they are doing.  It will remind them of Who they serve, and why they serve Him.  It will remind us of Who He is, how amazing He is, how much He has proven His love for us, and will prompt us to want to serve Him.  When we walk through a tough road to get to Him, we appreciate Him so much more.

So, what does our worship look like?  If we had to go through the rules in Leviticus to worship God, would we?  Or would we give up and decide it's not worth it? 

His Face and His Hands

Psalm 27 is a song of courage, that God will protect us and deliver us when things are going south in a hurry.  In it, David says that all He wants is to be with God, and to see His face.  I love it in verse 8 when he says "My heart says of You "Seek His face!  Your face, Lord, I will seek."

See, here's some of what's going on.  Often we want to talk to God and ask for things.  He tells us to do it.  He expects us to ask for His help, and He tells us we should come to Him with our needs.  But other times, we need to just be with Him.  Often times it's discussed as "seeking God's face instead of His hands", meaning we talk to God and spend time with God just to be with Him, as opposed to needing something from Him.

What I love is David's simple determination.  In his heart he knows he needs to spend time with God.  So, He does it.  No debate, no excuses, no "I'm not sure how to do that".  He just does it.  He is confident God will receive him, and that he will see God's goodness here, in this life.

When was the last time you felt a push to spend time with God, and ignored it or put it off?  Today, stop and listen to your heart.  Seek God's face right now.  I am sure He will be thrilled to spend the time with you.  I'm headed that way right now.

Worship Soon and Worship Often

Lately, I've been wrestling with what worship looks like, especially in student ministry. Our church has the standard youth worship team comprised of students who give time, prayer, and practice towards leading the group musically. Honestly, they are excellent. They even lead our adult services on a somewhat regular basis. We do a monthly worship night with our senior high students where we set aside two hours for times of contemplation, prayer, art, rest, listening, writing, confession, and scripture reading. They have historically been powerful times of us giving our attention and time to God as a gift. But what more is there?

In thinking about this, and praying through it, God's really pushing on me with this whole idea. I thought I'd share where I'm at, lay out in a couple of pieces what's going on and what I see coming, and then I'd love to get your feedback. Honestly, I really need your feedback to see how God is working in everyone else on this issue.

Ok, so here it is. I'll start with the Biblical side and encourage you to add to or challenge what I've found. As I have been looking through the Bible at worship, it seems to be centered around the idea of responding to the good things God has done and who He is. But more than just responding. Immediate response seems to be a high value as well. You have Adam and Eve simply spending time with God, talking to Him, loving Him. But then after the fall, it continues. Moses worships at the burning bush, Jacob stops in his flight from men who want to kill him to build an alter and worship. Job worships every day, praying for his kids. David mourns until his child dies, then immediately cleans himself up and worships. Isaiah falls down at the sight of God and worships. Jesus worships His Father many, many times in the gospels. The disciples stop what they are doing to give thanks to the God who saves them. The angels fall in Revelation every time God speaks. There seems to be an immediacy, an urgency to worship. It isn't always a planned event, but often is a response to God's showing Himself. The timing is irregular, and spread all throughout the day. And, by the way, singing is a minority act.

Obviously there are many, many more examples from Scripture. But as we find them, we see in them a responsive quality. There are the days set aside for celebration in the community. The Jewish temple feasts were regular days on the calendar. But even those are in response to God moving in large, redemptive ways.

It seems to me that we have, or at least I have, shifted to more of a model that says we will show up and worship on our schedule, and we will worship in the ways we want to, focusing on what we wish. My faith community doesn't seem to do much in direct response to what God is doing or revealing Himself to be.

I recently spoke with some students at a Christian college that I teach at. I asked them when they worshipped. "Chapel" was the unanimous answer. "What is done that is worship in chapel?" "We sing", they replied. If you ask my youth group, they would say we sing. If you prod them, they will pull up the other pieces of communion, prayer, listening, meditation, scripture, etc. But singing dominates the landscape of our worship. Many of us have developed a stage based program where the shiny happy pretty people are on stage using their musical abilities, while the rest of us who aren't as brave or talented face them and join in. Now, before anyone gets upset, I'm not saying we pitch student worship teams, or that we abandon singing. I am asking have we gotten lopsided in our approach, and what values are we communicating about people and worship through our approaches?

I look at how we put together a worship service. Typically it is comprised of songs we like to sing, because of the tune or the lyrics. They typically move in a direction in their styles. Either fast to slow, or fast to slow to fast again, etc. We arrange them, and sing them because they are true. As long as we are singing songs that are theologically true, then we are doing worship. I'm not convinced. Now obviously, we would include that the singer needs to be aware of the lyrics, and "mean" them "from their heart". But even with that clarification, does that guarantee worship? I'm not sure.

So, we are looking at making a shift in our understanding. We are going to begin working on making worship more of a rhythm in our times together. We want to see our students respond to God on a daily basis in smaller, less programmed ways. Therefore, we're going to work on giving them a time to respond to God at our weekly meetings. We're just on the beginning side of this, and haven't gotten far into it yet. But we want to have students wrestle with what God is doing in their lives, and then give them creative ways to respond to Him. We will probably still use some of the same tools we have (journaling, prayer, creative art, poetry, communion, etc.) But instead of keeping it to one night a month, we are going to work smaller pieces into each week. And then they will be very focused on what God is revealing to us right then.

The other piece is that our leaders, starting with me, are going to need to begin practicing this daily form of worship as an immediate response. If we don't live it, then it won't be passed on. It's like teaching about the need to regularly fast, and then only fasting during the 30 Hour Famine. It rings hollow. (Not that I've ever done that!) I'm working on building into my daily rhythm small times to stop and worship God. Nothing big, but actually stopping what I'm doing to worship. It's coming really slowly, unfortunately. I simply forget. And I think that's the idea behind it. So we won't forget.

My hope is that my life will be one of worship, and that student's will catch a picture of what their lives could be like as they worship whenever and wherever they need to.

This is where I'm really need your ideas. What are you working on? Do you agree with the theological ideas, or are they off base? How is God challenging you, and what steps are you taking? Any help you can give will definitely be appreciated on my end.