worship

In a word, life’s purpose is distilled to ONE THING. 

Worship is our wonder-filled response to God’s Essence. 

If wonder is the first step to surrender, surely the second is to drop to our faces. 

Simply put, worship happens when I descend from a higher place to a lower place. Once I have seen the Power and Majesty of God, I cannot help but fall down on my face. Over and over, the Bible says that folks fell down and worshiped. John even says he fell down as a dead man.When we see Him as He really is and we see ourselves, we are undone before Him.

I want to worship God in Spirit and Truth but so often I am bound by the confines of this body. Last week I attended a Christmas concert. The Spirit of God electrified the small venue. My spirit desired to stand with hands toward heaven. But I remained seated obeying social pressures and fear -  polite, conventional, bound. I missed an opportunity to be foolish and undignified before the Lord as my body desired to personify what my spirit felt.

Of course this is a metaphor for my life. I desire to follow Christ but continually choose other gods - little g. 

I believe the path to worshiping in spirit and truth is one of accepting my creature-hood.  Not hiding, dodging or denying it. When I pretend that I don’t have these limits, I puff myself up and God has no dwelling place in my full cup. However, in repentance, my soul is in the proper posture before God. Face down. 

What is His response to this prostration? He reaches out his right hand and lifts me up. 

Even in attempting to name the process, I risk bypassing mystery. Worship is not an empty box on my to-do list that I check off during the day. Often, I find am surprised by worship. Sometimes it’s like invisible fingers wrapping around my heart and opening my eyes to feel the awe and wonder that is God. He is the Great Initiator. His grace fuels even the slightest turn of my soul toward Him.

A few weeks ago, Bill set up two chairs here - the Supposed-To-chair and the Get-To-chair. He explained that we sit in one or the other as we relate to God. I saw the truth about my heart. The shame dissolved in worship as I agreed with God about my sin. In that process, I recognized a spark of desire growing. I want to love the Lord more. I want to worship Him in Spirit and Truth. I want to want to read the Word and treasure it. From that spark, a Living Fire grew in me. I felt God multiply my desire to a great flame. And so goes the cycle... An unraveling and a waiting, a welcoming and a wonder at the re-forming.

To worship God is to ascribe to Him His worth - His place in the world. My life is an offering to Him. He doesn’t need me to worship Him. But I get to.

When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. But he laid his right hand on me, saying, "Fear not, I am the first and the last, and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades. Revelation 1:17-18

wonder

To know wonder is to tangle with terror. I lived just such a moment when we we hiked behind Pulapanzak, a waterfall in Honduras. Understand that safety and often good sense do not abound in public parks in a third world country. No fences, boundaries or safety walls exist. A random “guide” ambled up to us on this day and asked if we wanted to hike behind the waterfall. Ignorantly, we followed the stranger toward a cliff. 

My friend Val nearly fell to her death as we navigated the path down to the bottom of the Fall. In a motion undetectable to the human eye, the guide grabbed her placing her back on the narrow path. As we blindly moved toward this fixed hurricane, I lost grip on my son Matthew’s hand. The guide held onto me. I was unable to talk and insist that he help Matthew who was 11 instead of me.  At one point, I could not breath. It was like having a fire hose stuck down your throat on full throttle. My Teva’s found one slick rock after another as we bouldered toward the monsoon. I lost sight of Matthew and only prayed that he was not being blasted down stream. The guide held an iron grip on my arm. I mustered up the courage to break free to turn back and at that exact moment the wall of water disappeared into a small cave. My lungs clamored for oxygen. My right eye was blurry and for a split second I thought I had lost my eye-ball. The deluge had blown one contact out of my eye. With my good eye, I focussed in on Matthew safe and smiling. Words cannot contain the elation I felt at the confines of that small cave. 

A different person emerged from that waterfall. On the way out, we hiked downstream and jumped off some giant rocks into turbulent water. My soul opened to something bigger than me. I mean, I still struggle with control, but my vision is changing. I am beginning to see that my demand to “understand” is an impediment to embracing the mystery of Christ.

To wonder is to encounter majesty and terror in the same moment and to never get over it. Unless I acknowledge a God whose power blows away my elementary understanding, I will have no need to adhere to his commands.  In the face of Sovereign Power, my puny facade of control evaporates like little droplets of water. Unraveled, we are pushed to admit that a larger story holds us. When our hearts are full of wonder and awe, all that we can do is lift our hands in surrender. And so begins the journey into the arms of our Loving Father. 

welcome

To welcome is to give space to someone. As I wait, I welcome Jesus to my life, to my reality, to the chaos, to this moment.

The King of the Universe, the One Who spoke stars and planets into existence entered our world as an infant - a dependent and vulnerable baby. Is there any greater paradox? If so, I don’t know it. This King doesn’t need my welcome, mind you. But in another paradox, He waits for me to welcome Him. 

Given my pace of life and the intensity, one could assume that the point of Christmas is lost on me. The lists, the menu, the coupons, the sales; all add up to the notion that if I don’t to it, Christmas won’t happen. 

I may welcome Christ into the first 20 minutes of my day. Often, sadly, I have the attitude: Use this 20 minutes, Lord, because I am busy later. 

But do I welcome Him when I realize that I have put 3 tablespoons of baking powder in the rolls instead of 3 teaspoons? What is the posture of my heart when I am negotiating with my brother-in-law who will spend Christmas where? 

Usually I quickly calculate how I will get it done. What will be required? How long will it take? How many other people will I have to involve? Rarely do I stop and say, “I am the Lord’s handmaiden. May it be as you have said.”

This Christmas, as I shop, as I bake, as I love my family well; I want most of all to welcome Christ into my space - to be a womb for the Son of God to dwell. 

Mary’s response to the angel changed her life to be sure. Her “yes” grew from a microscopic zygote to a man who won forever the war on sin and evil. His life, death and resurrection changed the world. May I have the courage, May you have the courage to say “YES” and create a space for God to come and dwell. Our hearts are enlarged in the waiting, in the welcoming.

 But if God himself has taken up residence in your life, you can hardly be thinking more of yourself than of him. Anyone, of course, who has not welcomed this invisible but clearly present God, the Spirit of Christ, won't know what we're talking about. But for you who welcome him, in whom he dwells - even though you still experience all the limitations of sin - you yourself experience life on God's terms. It stands to reason, doesn't it, that if the alive-and-present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, he'll do the same thing in you that he did in Jesus, bringing you alive to himself? When God lives and breathes in you (and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life. With his Spirit living in you, your body will be as alive as Christ's!

Romans 8:9-11

Wait

Wait is a four letter word. Our culture has taught us to abhor waiting. My flesh wants what it wants NOW!

This morning I drove to work in a van that smells like vomit. It smells like vomit because two weeks ago my son puked in it. Then my husband “cleaned” it up. So it still smells like vomit. I am WAITING for the smell to go away. As I wait, I am reminded of the stench of sin. Ever since the fall, the stench of sin has flooded the earth and tainted our experience as humans. Every day, every moment, we deal with the consequences of our choices to look to other gods and NOT the True God. 

We deal with Adam and Eve’s choices. We deal with our father’s, our mother’s choices. We deal with a virus that causes a child to vomit and then produces the vile odor that leads to a woman being very angry at a man for not cleaning a van well enough. We deal with the stench of sin.

Since the beginning of time, humans have waited on God. We either choose to wait on God or we make our own way. I am faced with the choice every moment to wait on God to save me or to make my own life work apart from Him. 

Today as I suffered in the stench of puke, I used a tiny dropper and spread a little fragrant peppercorn oil over the air vents. For a few moments, the van smelled of Christmas. Eventually, the puke overwhelmed the peppercorns and I sat again in the funk. 

I cannot sweeten the stench of sin.

To wait requires that I remain in the present - open and empty handed. To wait demands that I trust, that I hope in the only One who can save. But in fear; I numb, escape, deodorize and deaden parts of my soul to make waiting more palatable. These fixes are but temporary. 

Sometimes in the waiting, God unravels us. He unstacks the layers of bricks we have deposited to cope with life by hiding. The purpose of unraveling is always freedom. He desires to unbind us from these idols, addictions and so-called coping mechanisms.

The Hebrew word for “to wait” - qavah -  literally means to bind together like a cord. It implies twisting strings and weaving them together to form a rope - the more strands, the greater the strength. As I am unbound from my idols, He weaves me back together when I wait on Him.

In many languages and in Hebrew, the verb “to wait” is the same as “to hope.” The way to hope is to simplify: to believe that actually only ONE thing will save me and that is my HOPE in Jesus Christ. When I live for ONE man, my noisy heart and nervous spirit settle. Jesus paid a one-time sacrifice. He set me right before God for all eternity. I still wait on Him to come again and set things right on earth and in Heaven. Until then, I sit in the stench and wait. I struggle with sin and hope.

I wait for the LORD, my soul does wait, 

And in His word do I hope.
My soul waits for the Lord
More than the watchmen for the morning ;
Indeed, more than the watchmen for the morning.
O Israel, hope in the LORD ;
For with the LORD there is lovingkindness,
And with Him is abundant redemption.

Psalm 130:5-7

Three Things I Know

The other day at church Lloyd, my pastor, asked us to make a list of the things we know “for sure.” Enlightened, I recalled our return from Honduras when I had understood that I knew so little for sure. In those early weeks we were grieving the loss of our home, our identity, our sons, our livelihood. I sometimes repeated this refrain in the recesses of my heart: I know so little for sure, like 3 things. 

1. Jesus is the Son of God.
2. He died on a cross for my sins and arose from the grave.
3. He’s coming back one day for me, His bride.

I looked at this as the glass half empty. I only know three things for sure. 

As Lloyd preached, the fruit of the last four years caught my eye. Knowing three things for sure is more like a glass half full. I KNOW THESE THREE FOR SURE. As we traversed the next few years of grief, these three things lay on the ground before me like living stone steps. Put your foot here. Avoid that mud. Walk in this place. Balance. Yes. Forward. Now, the other foot. OK. You can take another step.

The truth on the ground before me, solid and unmoving, outlined a path forward out of the ruins. 

Gratitude wells up in my soul. Lord, Thank you for giving me 3 things to wrap my decimated life around. I look back on that time now with hope and trust. At the time, though, I had very little hope and I had almost no trust. I had ONLY the three stones beckoning me forward. 

Whenever I have this word - ONLY - in combination with Jesus, I have an abundance.