Holy Uncreated One
Your beauty fills the skies
But the glory of Your majesty
Is the mercy in Your eyes
Worthy Uncreated One
From heaven to earth come down
You laid aside Your royalty
To wear the sinner's crown
O Great God, be glorified
Our lives laid down
Yours magnified
O Great God, be lifted high
There is none like You
Jesus, Savior, God's own son
Risen, reigning Lord
Sustainer of the Universe
By the power of Your word
And when we see Your matchless face
In speechless awe we'll stand
And there we'll bow with grateful hearts
Unto the Great I am
O Great God, be glorified
Our lives laid down
Yours magnified
O Great God, be lifted high
There is none like You
~Chris Tomlin
Great song! Just thought I'd share it with you.
Thursday, January 03, 2008
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
The End is Near... maybe?
Almost my whole life I have laughed off people who made the claim, "The end is near!" And rightly so. Many have claimed to know the exact date that the Lord would return and mark the end of the world as we know it. That is just ridiculous and anyone trying to research and study to find out when Jesus will return is completely wasting their time. Scripture tells us that not even the Son of Man knows the hour, only the Father. But recently I have heard more and more talk about this being the generation that will bring about a great revival, reformation, restoration and possibly even "the end."
Why all of this talk now? What is so different about this generation from any other? What evidence is there of this generation bringing about this "great revival?"
I'm currently reading "The Blueprint: A Revolutionary Plan to Plant Missional Communities on Campus" by Jaeson Ma. In his preface he said something I had never heard and it really caused me to think... He said, since Roe v. Wade legalized abortion in 1973 there have been well over 47 million abortions in the United States alone! That is the equivalent of taking the population of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Phoenix, Philadelphia, San Antonio, Dallas, San Diego, and San Jose (the top 10 biggest cities in the country) doubling their population, and executing every person! This is a genocide that is unmatched in the history of the world. And you didn't even know it! did you? Because I had no idea the numbers where this huge!
Satan is on the attack! But why this generation? Why is Satan so worried about the people of this generation that he is willing to kill all of them before he has a chance to corrupt them?
If we look at the Bible we see only 2 examples of this degree of genocide on a generation. These occurred during the time of Moses, and Jesus. Jaeson Ma says, "Satan attacked both of those generations, attempting to kill off every baby boy in the land. Why did those generations face satanic opposition? It is because the enemy understood the destiny each [person] possessed in bringing revival according to God's timetable."
"Right now," according to Ma, "the third revival generation is taking place. Two thousand years after the birth of Jesus, another generation has been destined for a great historic revival. The enemy knows that these individuals have the power to finish history. As a result, he is using every possible means, including abortion, to attempt to kill them off."
Ma believes that just as God protected Moses and Jesus that He will protect those of us He has called. But this time God hasn't just raised up a single deliverer (i.e. Moses or Jesus). He has raised up a whole generation of deliverers!
You have been chosen by God to be a deliverer! Will you stand up to the call? Will you Go? Are you living your life like it is your own or have you died to your flesh?
The Apostle Paul says in Galatians 2:20, "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me."
So now I leave you with what may be the toughest question anyone will ever ask you, because it will demand that you not only give an answer, but that you mold your entire life around that answer.
What are you living for?
Friday, December 14, 2007
Worship Come to Its Senses: Part Five
Journal,
"What sense of hope does Christian worship offer?" asks Saliers, to begin his final chapter in Worship Come to Its Senses. He suggests that sometimes we confuse hope with optimism. Being nice and happy are not signs of hope. This is not only a problem with fellowship with people but can be mistaken for hope in preaching and praying as well. If all we do in worship is comfort and console and never awaken a desire for the promises of God, then we only present half of the Gospel. Likewise, if we only present a self-help Gospel on how to improve our lives now, and don't address our dependance on Grace then the Gospel is being undermined.
Remembering the hope by praising, thanking, confessing, and interceding is at the hear of Christian life and Christian worship. The present hope is that we are crossing over from bondage to freedom, and from death to life! The laments that we talked about earlier, both done communally and individually assume that human hope is ultimately rooted in God alone. The act of crying out to someone in lament points to the fact that we hope to be heard.
Saliers says, "Christian hope is acquired as a gift in the process of living and worshiping in a community shaped over time by the whole story of God and the world, of nature and history, of heaven and earth together."
There are two kinds of hope for Christians. There is hope beyond this world, and hope for this world. If we only focus on hope beyond this world, we will lose sight of the hope we have now and we will miss the grace of God at the hear of the Church's mission. And if we focus solely on the hope for this world and never on the hope of sitting in the Throne with Jesus that is promised to us in Revelation 3-5, then we will be barren and unfruitful.
Henri Nouwen once said, "Hope is trusting that something will be fulfilled, but fulfilled according to the promises and not just according to our wishes." Waiting for hope is not passive, it is active! Saliers tells the story of a woman who skeptically went to a healing service with a friend. They took the Eucharist and then went to specific places where they were anointed for healing of the body, memory, relationships, and inner turmoil. She described it as a profound act of hope. She now says of the Lord's supper that, "[it] has taken on the meaning of healing to me now, I never knew that before." We have somewhere to take pain and hope. Jesus Christ.
Worship then, is the continual rehearsal of God's hope for us.
Jordan
"What sense of hope does Christian worship offer?" asks Saliers, to begin his final chapter in Worship Come to Its Senses. He suggests that sometimes we confuse hope with optimism. Being nice and happy are not signs of hope. This is not only a problem with fellowship with people but can be mistaken for hope in preaching and praying as well. If all we do in worship is comfort and console and never awaken a desire for the promises of God, then we only present half of the Gospel. Likewise, if we only present a self-help Gospel on how to improve our lives now, and don't address our dependance on Grace then the Gospel is being undermined.
Remembering the hope by praising, thanking, confessing, and interceding is at the hear of Christian life and Christian worship. The present hope is that we are crossing over from bondage to freedom, and from death to life! The laments that we talked about earlier, both done communally and individually assume that human hope is ultimately rooted in God alone. The act of crying out to someone in lament points to the fact that we hope to be heard.
Saliers says, "Christian hope is acquired as a gift in the process of living and worshiping in a community shaped over time by the whole story of God and the world, of nature and history, of heaven and earth together."
There are two kinds of hope for Christians. There is hope beyond this world, and hope for this world. If we only focus on hope beyond this world, we will lose sight of the hope we have now and we will miss the grace of God at the hear of the Church's mission. And if we focus solely on the hope for this world and never on the hope of sitting in the Throne with Jesus that is promised to us in Revelation 3-5, then we will be barren and unfruitful.
Henri Nouwen once said, "Hope is trusting that something will be fulfilled, but fulfilled according to the promises and not just according to our wishes." Waiting for hope is not passive, it is active! Saliers tells the story of a woman who skeptically went to a healing service with a friend. They took the Eucharist and then went to specific places where they were anointed for healing of the body, memory, relationships, and inner turmoil. She described it as a profound act of hope. She now says of the Lord's supper that, "[it] has taken on the meaning of healing to me now, I never knew that before." We have somewhere to take pain and hope. Jesus Christ.
Worship then, is the continual rehearsal of God's hope for us.
Jordan
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Worship Come to Its Senses: Part Four
Journal,
"Sooner or later, all praise and thanksgiving, all that we preach, sing and pray must come to the court of truth." Saliers. Today we must ask ourselves, why do our services of worship not ring true to some people, even ones who regularly attend church. It would be easy for us to blow this off by saying something I have heard all too often, "we can't please everybody all the time." I think this is just a weak copout. We are commanded to "worship in spirit and in TRUTH." There are two kinds of truth in worship. Truth about God, and truth about ourselves. In the tradition I am a part of, we usually do really well on the first, and fall quite short on the latter.
"Christian liturgy" Saliers says, "is first and last praising, adoring, and thanking God in, with, and through Jesus Christ in the power of the Spirit." Sometimes however, we hide behind our praise and thanks rather than being radically honest to God with our lives. "Acknowledging God involves encountering the truth about the human story." This means that we must admit to our humanness in order to come before God truthfully in worship. This is vital for worship ministers and liturgists, "We come to the truth when [and only when] liturgy comes to its senses.
As in all of the Christian life, we must use Jesus as our model of truth telling. He spoke the truth boldly, but out of love, and sometimes showed his righteous anger. Dishonesty will distort our prayers and our praise. Jesus spoke to his Father in complete truth. When He was in the garden He told His Father, "let this cup pass from me." He was crying out to God out of truth saying, I don't want to do this! but if it is your will, then I will."
There are three practical ways we can come to truth in our worship services: lamentation, confession, and testimony.
There are very few occasions I ever remember lamentation in worship services, but I remember often feeling deep pain and sorrow, and us singing nothing but praise songs. Needless to say my heart was not in it. There are very few songs that express lament. One of the few I can think of is a newer one by Matt and Beth Redman, "Blessed Be Your Name." Saliers says, "our avoidance of lament has a strange result, it opens a great gulf between our liturgies and our lives." As I said before, this has been true so often with me.
Confession has also been mostly avoided in many traditions. Redemptive confession is not wallowing in guilt, moaning about how terrible you are. Confession can be extremely liberating when expressed by telling God and the Church what holds you bondage.
Testimony then, is when a person shares their story about the bondage that once held them captive but how they have received the Grace of God and how it set them free from the chains of sin and death.
"Unless we overcome our reluctance to share our faith experiences honestly in lament, confession, and testimony our Sunday gatherings will remain routine," and lack truth. "So we must be about stretching ourselves to bring the ancient and contemporary forms to life, and to bring all our life's experience to the God of truth." Then we will be able to worship God in both Truth.
Jordan
"Sooner or later, all praise and thanksgiving, all that we preach, sing and pray must come to the court of truth." Saliers. Today we must ask ourselves, why do our services of worship not ring true to some people, even ones who regularly attend church. It would be easy for us to blow this off by saying something I have heard all too often, "we can't please everybody all the time." I think this is just a weak copout. We are commanded to "worship in spirit and in TRUTH." There are two kinds of truth in worship. Truth about God, and truth about ourselves. In the tradition I am a part of, we usually do really well on the first, and fall quite short on the latter.
"Christian liturgy" Saliers says, "is first and last praising, adoring, and thanking God in, with, and through Jesus Christ in the power of the Spirit." Sometimes however, we hide behind our praise and thanks rather than being radically honest to God with our lives. "Acknowledging God involves encountering the truth about the human story." This means that we must admit to our humanness in order to come before God truthfully in worship. This is vital for worship ministers and liturgists, "We come to the truth when [and only when] liturgy comes to its senses.
As in all of the Christian life, we must use Jesus as our model of truth telling. He spoke the truth boldly, but out of love, and sometimes showed his righteous anger. Dishonesty will distort our prayers and our praise. Jesus spoke to his Father in complete truth. When He was in the garden He told His Father, "let this cup pass from me." He was crying out to God out of truth saying, I don't want to do this! but if it is your will, then I will."
There are three practical ways we can come to truth in our worship services: lamentation, confession, and testimony.
There are very few occasions I ever remember lamentation in worship services, but I remember often feeling deep pain and sorrow, and us singing nothing but praise songs. Needless to say my heart was not in it. There are very few songs that express lament. One of the few I can think of is a newer one by Matt and Beth Redman, "Blessed Be Your Name." Saliers says, "our avoidance of lament has a strange result, it opens a great gulf between our liturgies and our lives." As I said before, this has been true so often with me.
Confession has also been mostly avoided in many traditions. Redemptive confession is not wallowing in guilt, moaning about how terrible you are. Confession can be extremely liberating when expressed by telling God and the Church what holds you bondage.
Testimony then, is when a person shares their story about the bondage that once held them captive but how they have received the Grace of God and how it set them free from the chains of sin and death.
"Unless we overcome our reluctance to share our faith experiences honestly in lament, confession, and testimony our Sunday gatherings will remain routine," and lack truth. "So we must be about stretching ourselves to bring the ancient and contemporary forms to life, and to bring all our life's experience to the God of truth." Then we will be able to worship God in both Truth.
Jordan
Worship Come to Its Senses: Part Three
Journal,
As was the last reflection on "awe" in worship this may be quite site (church) specific. Some worship services I have been a part of where filled with delight and joy, others seemed almost dead. However, most of the worship services I have been a part of had a kind of strange mix of emotions, varying from person to person. Of course my judgment on this is based on what I see and hear physically from people, which can only measure so much, but is typically a pretty good measuring tool.
Maybe all to often we feel an obligation to worship. We must "go to worship" because our friends or family will give us a hard time if we don't. Or we must go because "thats what the Bible says." Or I have even heard, we must go because "God needs our worship." (YA RIGHT! like the Creator of the Universe really needs our approval) When we start to ask these questions have we lost a sense of sheer delight in God?
The Israelites had a kind of marriage to God. I'll save you all the love-obligation metaphors, because I'm sure you've heard them all but this is at the heart of biblical worship. Saliers says, "We are to praise and bless God even when we don't feel like it, only to discover, in doing so, that God is our first love and the wellspring of all enjoyment... What we adore and revere we praise and delight in."
Saliers suggests that the chief end of man, or the purpose for which we were created is "to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever." If we don't have this in our worship services, where else will we find it? We must remember that our very existence is a gift freely given.
Don't get me wrong, you can't always be happy. Over half of the Psalms were written in lament. Saliers says, "no one can sustain delight-taking all the time, at lease in the sense of being on a natural high. To live attentively and intensely is also to suffer." I have had many seasons in my life where I was very much a "winter Christian" as Dr. Beck a Psychology professor at ACU says. These were seasons of darkness in not understanding God and why life and ministry can be so difficult, but it is in these times that I grew immensely. Saliers talks about short lived pleasures like a child winning a prize at a fair, and the brief "joy" that the child feels. "Part of growing up is learning to tell the difference between the childish delights of good luck and the deeper, longer lasting enjoyments of something well done or of a love cultivated over time." This is the kind of love we have for our Father, and should be the delight that we express in worship in both the seasons of "winter" and "summer." This is why the Apostle Paul writes, Rejoice always... give thanks in all circumstances" (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18) because he had "learned the secret to being content in all circumstances." God is not asking us to thank Him for pain, but asking us to give thanks for the Love of God in all circumstances.
Jordan
As was the last reflection on "awe" in worship this may be quite site (church) specific. Some worship services I have been a part of where filled with delight and joy, others seemed almost dead. However, most of the worship services I have been a part of had a kind of strange mix of emotions, varying from person to person. Of course my judgment on this is based on what I see and hear physically from people, which can only measure so much, but is typically a pretty good measuring tool.
Maybe all to often we feel an obligation to worship. We must "go to worship" because our friends or family will give us a hard time if we don't. Or we must go because "thats what the Bible says." Or I have even heard, we must go because "God needs our worship." (YA RIGHT! like the Creator of the Universe really needs our approval) When we start to ask these questions have we lost a sense of sheer delight in God?
The Israelites had a kind of marriage to God. I'll save you all the love-obligation metaphors, because I'm sure you've heard them all but this is at the heart of biblical worship. Saliers says, "We are to praise and bless God even when we don't feel like it, only to discover, in doing so, that God is our first love and the wellspring of all enjoyment... What we adore and revere we praise and delight in."
Saliers suggests that the chief end of man, or the purpose for which we were created is "to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever." If we don't have this in our worship services, where else will we find it? We must remember that our very existence is a gift freely given.
Don't get me wrong, you can't always be happy. Over half of the Psalms were written in lament. Saliers says, "no one can sustain delight-taking all the time, at lease in the sense of being on a natural high. To live attentively and intensely is also to suffer." I have had many seasons in my life where I was very much a "winter Christian" as Dr. Beck a Psychology professor at ACU says. These were seasons of darkness in not understanding God and why life and ministry can be so difficult, but it is in these times that I grew immensely. Saliers talks about short lived pleasures like a child winning a prize at a fair, and the brief "joy" that the child feels. "Part of growing up is learning to tell the difference between the childish delights of good luck and the deeper, longer lasting enjoyments of something well done or of a love cultivated over time." This is the kind of love we have for our Father, and should be the delight that we express in worship in both the seasons of "winter" and "summer." This is why the Apostle Paul writes, Rejoice always... give thanks in all circumstances" (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18) because he had "learned the secret to being content in all circumstances." God is not asking us to thank Him for pain, but asking us to give thanks for the Love of God in all circumstances.
Jordan
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