Two weeks ago, I started a Bible reading plan right now that takes you through the entire Bible, Genesis to Revelation, in 90 days. It’s ambitious to say the least. Anyway, I was in Numbers and came across a cool thing I wanted to share.
In the story of Balaam, which most people familiar with the story know it because of his talking donkey, there was a really cool verse that I came upon during his blessings over Israel. Numbers 23:21 says:
“No misfortune is seen in Jacob,
no misery observed in Israel.
The LORD their God is with them;
the shout of the King is among them.
The shout of the King is among them. That’s an awesome line to put into a song (dibs!). But it’s also more than that. What is the “shout of the King”? My guess, and feel to correct me if I’m way off base here, is that the shout of the King is the worship of the people. Through songs, feasts, celebrations, and offerings, the people worshiped God, and they worshiped him LOUD. It was the shout of the King, not the whisper, not the hum, but the shout of the King that was among Israel.
When we join together and unite our voices in praise, the shout of the King is among us. When a people are united, their enemies scatter. When the Body of Christ is united in praise, our enemies scatter.
Let hope rise,
And darkness tremble
In Your holy light,
And every eye will see
Jesus, our God,
Great and mighty to be praised. – With Everything, Hillsong
I always feel like I just got hit by a truck the day after a retreat. I’m absolutely exhausted and don’t really want to do anything that involves exerting energy. The retreat itself was awesome. God did some big and cool things in the lives of students who were there, and I was blessed to see that and be used by God in that.
I think that my favorite part of retreats is the willingness we have to take the next step. When we’re out of our everyday lives and able to take a deep breath and refocus ourselves on what matters. When we get away from the 13,542 voices telling us to go this way, do that, look like this, act like that, we’re able to hear the one voice that matters: Christ’s. It’s my prayer that in learning to hear and discern Christ’s voice in times like this, that we will be able to listen for it when the other voices start chiming in again.
“I tell you the truth, the man who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in by some other way, is a thief and a robber. The man who enters by the gate is the shepherd of his sheep. The watchman opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice. But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize a stranger’s voice.” ~ John 10:1-5
There are times when I get hit with revelation of the way God made us as humans. There are characteristics, traits, and tendencies that come out even in the midst of a world that is in rebellion towards God.
At the end of the movie, in the aerial battle above the military base, the character Russell Casse gives his life to crash his plane into the center of the alien ship to blow it up and save everyone. The moment when he decides that that’s what he’s going to do is a powerful moment and one that I cry at.
But, when you take out the action, the dramatic music, and the awesome mid nineties special effects, you’re left with a man laying down his life that others might live.
Do you see Jesus in that? I do.
I think that’s because there’s something deep within us that recognizes the value of someone laying down their life for someone else. It’s something that can’t be taken away. And it’s something that those who don’t know Jesus still recognize. Hollywood even recognizes it.
I love it when God is revealed in secular settings.
Proverbs 4:23 is most likely a verse that we’ve all heard a time or two.
Above all else, guard your heart,
for it is the wellspring of life.
It’s a simple verse.
Easy to remember.
Difficult to apply.
Because most of the time, we don’t even know we’ve left our heart unguarded.
Our pride and arrogance gets the better of us and we think, “I’ve got this under control.”
Then we slip up.
We get drunk. We slander our friend. We look at porn. We judge and look down on the people around us. We have an affair.
We do any number of sins that show, obviously, that we left our heart unguarded.
I really like the way Casting Crowns said it in their song Slow Fade, “People never crumble in a day.” It’s a slow process that leads to us failing in ways like this.
In Genesis 4, God says to Cain, “…if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you…”
Sin waits for us.
Satan is patient, he puts little things in our path to begin the process of opening ourselves up to fail in these ways.
Guard your heart. Always.
Ask God where you are leaving yourself unguarded. Then deal with those reasons.
Above all else, guard your heart,
for it is the wellspring of life.
In a post a few weeks ago, I talked about being a part of what God is doing instead of trying to fit God into what we’re doing. This post falls in line with that, but it takes it to a deeper level and gets a little more specific. I thought it would be good to share some of the ways that our crew here in Eagle River have found work well in planning and preparing worship events and worship sets in general.
***disclaimer*** This is NOT a “5 surefire steps to a blah blah blah…” This isn’t meant to be a cookie-cutter strategy, these are just a few things that we have found work well for us.
Dump the baggage. We want to be in line with God’s plans for the event, and want to remove any distraction or aspect that could distract us from focusing in fully on Christ. So, before we even start brainstorming an order, flow, or other creative elements, pray. Set aside any junk or baggage, confess anything that needs confessing. Basically, get rid of any junk.
Ask and then listen. God knows best, I think we can all agree on that. In prayer, ask God what He wants to do, ask God what He wants us to know. And then, once you ask, listen to how God responds. It’s nice to have something to write with so you can jot down things as they come. It’s also nice to pray as a group, that way you can discern as a group what you feel God is saying to and showing you.
Take it from there. God is creative. We are made in His image. We are designed to be creative. So let’s take what we’ve gotten in prayer and start to build on that. Here is where a lot of songs, scriptures, flow, and an order of events usually come in.
Check back often. Go back often, in prayer, and ask God if you’re on the right track. If something feels off, ask what it is and then work to correct it and continue on.
We’ve found that in doing these things consistently makes things go a lot smoother overall. When we as a group seek God’s will and guidance and discern together where God is leading something, there is less room for egos, there are less disagreements, and there’s less tension between those involved in planning.
Again, this is not a step by step guide to great worship or event planning. It’s just a few things that we’ve found that work and I thought it might be helpful to others.
Make God the center of what you do, and no matter what, the end result will be good.
I was reading in my new Bible that I really dig and I came across a passage that I think many of us know and can recite, but it really hit me in a new way.
A lot of people are able to quote 2 Chronicles 7:14,
if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.
But, as I was reading this accompanied by the text around it, it really struck me.
When Solomon had finished the temple of the LORD and the royal palace, and had succeeded in carrying out all he had in mind to do in the temple of the LORD and in his own palace, the LORD appeared to him at night and said:
“I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for myself as a temple for sacrifices.
“When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command locusts to devour the land or send a plague among my people, if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land. Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayers offered in this place. I have chosen and consecrated this temple so that my Name may be there forever. My eyes and my heart will always be there. – 2 Chronicles 7:11-16
The thing that really struck me about this passage was reading it in regards to our bodies being a temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 3:16, and 1 Corinthians 6:19-20). When God says that his eyes and ears will be attentive to the prayers offered in His temple, He is saying that He will hear and listen to the prayers offered from our bodies, our hearts. He has chosen and consecrated us, His temple, so that His Name may be in us forever. His eyes and his heart will always be a there.
Just a cool little revelation that I thought I’d share.
I was on twitter a couple days ago and saw this tweet posted.
Now, as I mentioned the other day, I’m a huge Francis Chan fan, so I immediately jumped on this offer and went and got myself a copy of the audiobook. One of the things I really about Francis Chan is his willingness to say things that will make you uncomfortable.
In this book, He talks about what it really looks like to be totally in love with Jesus. In regard to that, he also calls out the lukewarm, the ones who say they’re Christians, but do not follow Christ’s teachings. The ones who go to Church, but are not disciples of Christ. Here’s a quote:
Some people claim we can become Christians without necessarily becoming disciples. I wonder then why the last thing Jesus told us was to go into the world making disciples of all nations, teaching them to obey all that He had commanded. You’ll notice that he didn’t add, “But, hey, if that’s too much to ask, tell them just to become Christians. You know, the people that get to go to Heaven without having to commit to anything.”
That’s a super challenging statement he makes there. He basically says that there’s a difference between being a “Christian” and being a disciple of Christ, and that the only true Christians are the ones who are disciples. I’m curious to hear what some of your thoughts on the matter are.
Do you agree? Disagree?
Are you challenged by it?
Or do you think he’s full of it?
Discuss.
As the worship leader for the young people of our church, I get to plan out what music we do every week for the 20-30 minutes of worship time we do before the message for the week. I get to talk about God stuff and talk about our insufficiency and his grace that overcomes that. Sometimes though, I get in a rut of trying to do it all myself. I get in the mindset of, “How can God be a part what we’re doing Sunday night?”. The frame of mind I want to be in is to ask, “How can we be a part of what He is doing?”.
When I ask the first question, I rely on my own strength/creativity/wisdom/whatever, the point it that I rely on myself. When I ask the second question, it forces me to do two things. First, it forces me to slow down and take a deep breath. Second, to answer the question, the only one I can ask is God, because only He knows what is going to happen and how best to work with it. From talking with God and getting a sense of what He wants us to know and how to respond to that, it gives me a much better direction to go with in planning than if I try to come up with everything on my own.
I might be the only one who does this, but I don’t think I am. So let’s make a deal: instead of trying to get God to be a part of our services, let’s try to be a part of God’s service. After all, it’s His Church to begin with.
This is one of the most creative ways I’ve seen the gospel portrayed. If you’ve never seen this before, you might want to grab some tissues before you press play. In fact, even if you have seen this before, you still might want to grab some tissues.
I like country music. (I know some of you are tempted to void the rest of the post based on the previous statement, but stay with me). I was listening to the radio and a Garth Brooks song came on called Unanswered Prayers came on. It’s a song about how he meets his old high sweetheart at a football game and he thinks about his feelings for her back then and how he prayed that he would marry her, but is thankful that he didn’t marry her because he never would have met the woman he did marry. There was a segment in the song that really stuck out to me.
She was the one that I’d wanted for all times
And each night I’d spend prayin’ that God would make her mine
And if he’d only grant me this wish I wished back then
I’d never ask for anything again
I’m sure just about everyone can recall a moment when they essentially prayed, “If I get X (person/job/gift/whatever), I’ll never ask for anything again.” I can remember one very specific moment when I was fifteen when I came to God with a request like this. Now, when I think about requests like this that I’ve made and others have made, I think of how it must sadden God when we say this.
To say that if we get something, we will never bother God for anything again, I think we totally miss it. We totally miss who God is. God loves us so incredibly much and wants us to come to Him for everything.
Paul said to pray continually, and part of praying continually is asking God to do stuff. We ask God to heal, to protect, to provide.
I feel like, so far, this post isn’t written very well and I’m not sure how to rectify that, but I want to emphasize that we as Christians are called to pray continually, and pray with power and with authority. (That was a very long, maybe run on, sentence).
I am actually going to take my own advice and spend some time in prayer with our Father as soon as this post is finished.
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