:: in.a.mirror.dimly ::

Worship: From Slaughtering Lambs to Shirts and Ties

In college I used to dress up for church with a shirt and tie. Every Sunday I pulled out my tie rack and matched a tie with a shirt. I never had to match my pants to anything since eighty percent of my pants were khakis. That’s a long story.

Actually, it isn’t. I didn’t want to match my tie with my shirt AND my pants.

Somewhere in my conservative Christian brain, I knew I needed to dress up for church. However, I became a little wrapped up in my church dress code. I was dressing up to project a certain image of myself.

One time God convicted me to give my favorite tie away. It was a little awkward to explain over breakfast with my friend on Sunday morning as I handed the tie over, but I’ll bet you anything that he’s still wearing that tie to this day.

Dressing up for church is fine, especially if you feel that you’re honoring God in some way by it. As for me, I’ve “graduated” to sandals, cargo shorts, and a polo shirt. As I read the Bible, I’m convinced that worshipping God has a lot more to do with actually loving God at a heart level and the forms we use are interchangeable depending on our cultures.

God is really flexible. No tie? No problem! No ox to slaughter? How about a dove? No dove? Well, he’s just glad you came to offer your love to him.

When God began to shape the Israelites into his chosen people who would act as a light to the nations, he first addressed the particulars of how they should worship their Lord. I’ve been reading Deuteronomy lately, and it’s striking to see God basically starting over again with Israel after the first generation died off in the wilderness.

While Moses is walking the Israelites through the particulars of how to worship God and God alone, he regularly hammers home the same theme, “Love the Lord your God.” The word love comes up over and over again.

If we fast-forward to the prophets, we may recall that they often criticized the Israelites for honoring God with their lips, while their hearts remained far from God. They delighted in the forms of worship, but failed to actually love God.

On one occasion, God said through the prophet Isaiah that their burnt offerings were useless because they failed to love and obey the Lord (see Isaiah 1). He wanted their whole-hearted devotion.

It’s particularly telling that even though God made his requirements for worship known in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, the Psalmist picked up on the central goal of our worship when he wrote in Psalm 40:6-8:

Sacrifice and offering you did not desire—
   but my ears you have opened—
   burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not require.
Then I said, “Here I am, I have come—
   it is written about me in the scroll.
I desire to do your will, my God;
   your law is within my heart.”

It strikes me that God chose animal sacrifices and a temple because they were culturally significant at the time of the Israelites. They were vehicles or tools they could use to show their devotion to him.

They sacrificed animals because they were agrarian people who relied on animals to survive. They worshipped in a temple because that’s how people connected with deities then. God mercifully met them where they were and used familiar forms to teach them the importance of worshipping them with everything they had.

The basics of worshipping God remain the same—love the Lord your God. However, the particulars tend to be more flexible than we would imagine.

Tomorrow’s Post: Is the New Testament the Last Word on Worship?

I hate waiting. Who doesn’t?

Well, I do have one relative who doesn’t mind waiting for some things. He insists on being the last person to open his presents at Christmas. That’s something I’ll never understand on this side of heaven.

Still, a typical American solution to most problems is to work harder, move faster, and cram more in.

In my token counseling course in seminary we had a group counseling session with where we tried to help each other with our issues—which meant we spent a lot of time talking about paying for our courses while making chicken feed at our various churches and reading thick theology books that we had to write papers about.

One guy didn’t really buy into the counseling bit. He half-heartedly shared his problem, which was a very busy schedule, and then casually offered his solution, which basically amounted to working hard and not being a slacker. However, he was working too hard with too many commitments—he wasn’t a slacker, not even close to one.

I gently pointed that out to him, and he paused. It was a long, awkward pause. I wondered if he was going to knock my notebook off my desk and walk out of the room. Instead he said, “Huh.” The light clicked on for him.

In Isaiah 40:31 we read that they who wait on the LORD will renew their strength. Waiting doesn’t feel like a very strong, proactive, or American thing to do.

Don’t wait! Buckle down! Get moving!

Can’t you hear those voices urging you along when you’re overwhelmed, weary, or just out of gas? The hardest thing for me most days is doing nothing, and by that, I mean waiting patiently for God to speak, to lead, and to fill me in order to do the work he has for me.

I want to press on, but sometimes the only way to move forward is by stopping for a time to reconnect with the Lord, to figure out that next step, and to charge into it with all the strength that he can give us.

Standing on top of a mountain looking down on the Northumberland Straight at Cape Breton Nova Scotia did something to me. When you’re a tiny bug of a person on a wild mountain with moose roaming about, clouds shrouding the sun, and waves rippling the vast sea below, you notice something about yourself.

I could do nothing to change the mountain, sea, or sky on my own from the little speck of dirt beneath my feet. I was helpless and at the mercy of my surroundings. Everything was large and powerful except for me.

Walking down the wooden steps to the various lookout points I felt dizzy at times, while other moments I felt the crushing power of my surroundings.

It was the perfect experience for the first few days of our vacation. In a sense, this holy moment on the mountain drove home the insignificance of my own worries, ambitions, and desires. They have their place, but they had been consuming me to the point of idolatry of some sort.

Perhaps this sense of awe and power is why God often met with his prophets up on mountains. The perspective is enlightening in and of itself. Hidden away in a cave or a snug valley, the effect on pondering one’s limitations is quite blunted.

On my way down the mountain I began praying the most important prayer I know that is also the easiest to forget: “Lord, what do you desire?” Throughout my vacation, as I’m sure I shall be for the rest of my life, I moved between this prayer of submission and my petitions.

I need to bring my petitions to God, but nothing quite puts them into perspective like a trip to a mountain top. From that mountain top I can see my plans and worries as mere specs in God’s creation, and once I receive the blow to my own ego, there is a comfort in knowing he can handle these larger matters, and as such, my own concerns are well within his abilities.

The last significant aspect of our vocabulary of the Holy Spirit concerns the ways in which the Holy Spirit speaks to and through us.

Many evangelicals such as myself have a hard time with this one since we’ve historically been rather fixated on the Bible as our source of revelation. Tossing the Holy Spirit into the mix complicates things.

However, even if we just try to read the Bible without acknowledging the role of the Spirit, we’ll keep bumping into verses that give the Spirit a prominent place in our lives.

Teaching Us

Throughout the Gospel of John, Jesus frequently speaks of the Holy Spirit as a guide for his followers, leading them into the truth (John 14:17, 26; 15:26: 16:13, 15). The scripture itself came about originally through the work of the Holy Spirit.

The process of interpreting the scriptures and living with wisdom is just as connected to the Holy Spirit in the book of Acts (1:2, 6:10). Paul frequently alludes to the guidance of the Spirit in discerning a particular belief or application.

Therefore, as we study scripture we can also speak of the Spirit as a guide who teaches us. This isn’t a stretch of scripture, though we can certainly take this notion too far by creating individual bastions of interpretation and defying all who disagree with us. Though, we don’t need the Holy Spirit to do such a thing, we can abuse the leading of the Holy Spirit in heavy-handed ways.

Prophetic Words

We could choose several different ways to speak of prophetic words from the Holy Spirit, but I think it’s quite biblical to speak of the spiritual gift of prophecy as another way the Spirit guides and teaches us. According to 1 Corinthians 14 a prophetic word is a revelation from the Spirit that edifies the church.

Acts, Romans, and 1 Corinthians all speak of prophetic gifts being given to God’s people, and Paul even said that he wished all of the Corinthians would prophesy. Having said that, he also took a great deal of care to explain how to use their gifts in orderly, beneficial ways. Prophecy is intended, above all else, to help other Christians to grow.

We could debate whether Acts 2 makes prophecy a gift for all Christians or whether Paul’s spiritual gift lists make it one gift among many that we may not have. I’m not certain about this, but I do believe we should remain open to the possibility of God giving ourselves or someone else a specific word for our edification.

I mean, God spoke through Balaam’s mule (or ass if you want a laugh), so there’s no reason why his Spirit couldn’t speak through me, right?

Desiring the Lord, Not Just the Gifts of the Lord

The work of the Holy Spirit is an incredible blessing that I sometimes wish I experienced on a more regular basis, but the trouble with such gifts as prophetic words is we can end up craving the gifts rather than the Lord we are called to love above all else.

And so while we should desire these important gifts that will empower us for ministry and help us contribute to the health of the church, our chief desire should be the Lord himself. As we draw near to him and remain open to the work of his Spirit, he is able to direct and empower us as he sees fit.

While I believe that the Holy Spirit should be quite noticeable and active in the lives of Christians today, the role of the Holy Spirit in our salvation is something that we may not notice at first. I know I can’t say why exactly I believed the words of scripture and began to follow Jesus in the first place.

However, in retrospect, I can see that somehow God’s Spirit was at work, guiding me to him. When I look back at the times I took significant steps forward, I can hardly take any credit because the Holy Spirit taught me something or brought a particular healing to my life.

If we are saved by God’s grace, and we are dependent on him to one degree or another (no Calvinist/Arminian debates please), then at rock bottom we can agree that the Holy Spirit must be integrally involved in the process. The Holy Spirit is how God imparts life to us (see John 3:3,6; 6:63).

In addition, when we speak of Jesus as Lord, we can be confident that this is only possible because of the Holy Spirit (see Matthew 22:43). Any devotion we may feel toward God is the work of the Holy Spirit who is given generously to all who repent (see Acts 2:38).

When we speak of being saved, or brought into God’s family by the Holy Spirit, we can trust that the means by which we have entered will continue to be the means by which we continue. If we couldn’t come to God without the work of the Holy Spirit in the first place, what makes us think we can add anything to our relationship with him now?

In continuing to grow as believers, we continue to rely on the Spirit who brought salvation to us and enabled us to become God’s children. Next week we’ll discuss some of the ways we continue to follow the Spirit in our lives as disciples of Jesus.

I hate going to the dentist. It’s never that bad. But as someone with some anxiety issues, reason and past experience need not intervene. While trying to think of something else, I turned to my old friend NPR.

There was this guy on talking about Goldman Sachs, the jerks who crashed the economy on the release date of my book, and how they screwed a lot of people by betting against their own investments. It sounded pretty shady and infuriating.

The reporter explained the basics, and about five minutes into the show I felt like I understood the situation. As I considered it, I realized that I probably wouldn’t profit all that much from listening to the show. I mean, what is a freelance writer and speaker in Eastern Connecticut going to do about a bunch of bankers holed up in Manhattan?

I began to think in terms of what would benefit me most, and what would last. This clearly was not it.

While I enjoy NPR, I even listened to Fresh Air on the way back, at that moment I realized that the most important and lasting thing I could do was to turn off the radio and to worship God. For someone who spends a lot of time thinking about his faith, worship can become a rare commodity.

The default for humanity is self. Even theology can become about ourselves, what we know, and building up our own reputations. Throughout scripture there is a tension between humanity’s focus on self and the place of God as the only one worthy of worship.

Intentionally disconnecting from the noise of life in order to worship God can turn a day from an effort to accomplish what I want to serving God with everything I do and asking him what he’d like me to do. Unless we’re convinced that God is worthy of our worship, we won’t give him his proper place as Lord of our lives.

Sometimes it takes the threat of a dentist to drive that message home.

I recently had a number of conversations about Christianity and the Gospel with some folks who would most likely not self-identify as followers of Jesus. In fact, they may have been a tad suspicious of Christianity and evangelicals such as myself. However, I had a chance to talk about not only my beliefs, but my practices—how I join in God’s Kingdom work on earth.

I can’t recall how the conversation went down exactly, but I mentioned things like protecting the environment, visiting prisoners, and supporting ministries that serve others as well as sharing the Gospel. I talked about the ways that God wants to restore and heal our world.

When sin becomes a problem infecting all of us, rather than just this thing that separates YOU personally from God, there’s a lot of room for conversation. We all feel the effects of sin in this world, both personally and corporately, and so speaking of a God who wants to reconcile us and the rest of the world makes good biblical and common sense.

After chatting for a while about these things, the person I spoke with said, “Well, if that’s what it really means to be an evangelical, then I suppose you could call me an evangelical too.” 

In that moment I realized something:  Living out the Gospel makes Jesus more accessible for others. When they realize they too share something in common with God, they no longer view themselves as alien to these evangelicals trying to “save” them.

Don’t get me wrong here, I certainly made it very clear in the course of the conversation that Jesus must be Lord of our lives and that we must make a commitment to follow. I’m not sure where this person ended up with all of that. However, I was encouraged to see the light go on, to find that God isn’t so distant and foreign, and that the people representing this God may not be so strange after all.

I’m far more interested in entering conversation by fostering commonalities, showing people where they are close to God’s Kingdom. In the process of discussing commonalities differences will no doubt be unearthed and discussed. We can’t afford to gloss over sin and the evils of this world, however we can still engage in discussions about common ground, and then move from there to the places where we are different.

We all know this world is screwed up.

We all have felt the effects of sin.

We all want to do try and do something about it, whether for ourselves alone or possibly for others as well.

We need to talk about solutions and the ways forward.

As an evangelical, I believe the way forward is through the loving rule of God in our lives.