Captivation of the Heart

A good word from Paul Tripp:

This week I want to write to you about a word I think is poorly used and misunderstood in modern Christianity. It’s the word worship.

When we talk about worship, here’s what typically comes to mind – a Sunday morning gathering where we dress up, sing songs, give money, and take notes during a sermon.

There’s much to gain from that type of setting; I refer to it as ‘corporate worship’ and think it’s very necessary for the Christian life to be filled with gatherings, songs, and teaching. But, the Bible would define worship in a deeper way, one that happens more than just weekly in an organized environment.

Worship, according to Scripture, is an ongoing captivation of the heart that overflows into your life to produce desire, word, and deed. Everybody worships all the time. The question is: who, or what, is your heart captivated by that results in specific desire, word, and deed?Now, listen to what David says in Psalm 4:5 - "Offer right sacrifices, and put your trust in the Lord." David's heart is clearly captivated by God. We don't know specifically what sacrifices David will make or how he will practically put his trust in the Lord, but we know where his heart is - captivated by his heavenly Father.

Context is key in this Psalm. Remember, David isn't experiencing blessing and prosperity; David is facing terrible hardship and suffering. Yet, in the midst of his situation, his heart is still captivated by the things of God.

How often is that untrue of us? I'll be honest - my heart is quickly captivated by other things when trial comes my way. Conversely, my heart feels more captivated by God when I experience his blessing. It's what I call 'conditional worship' - as long as God is good to me, I'll be captivated by him. What a mess!

David shows us that we can experience trial and still be deeply captivated by God. In fact, I think worship is rarely sweeter and more heartfelt than in times of trial, because when suffering enters your door, God is often in the process of removing physical treasures that compete with himself for the captivation of your heart.

Could it be that the trial you're experiencing is meant by God to produce a deeper worship in you than ever before? There's nothing in this world that can satisfy your soul like Jesus, so the most loving thing your Savior could do is take away those things that provide false hope.

Worship in the Wild

Distracted during worship services? Read Worship Where the Wild Things Are from Desiring God:

One of the unavoidable realities of corporate worship in this world is distraction. Our minds are already prone to wander completely apart from anything happening around us in that room. But anyone who’s been in church for more than a few minutes knows there are always more things going on than we can ignore. Unruly children, unresolved conflict, uninhibited personalities, untalented singers, unsilenced technology, and an unending list of other disturbances.

If you’re like me, those moments can be a real challenge. After all, I’ve come here to meet God, to hear from him and offer my worship to him. The movement, tensions, and noises are keeping me from him, right? They’re stealing my attention in some of the most precious minutes of the week. Distractions in church can quickly give rise to impatience, irritation,exasperation, and even anger.

Five Ways to Worship in the Wild

But I wonder if we’ve missed the point of the wildness in corporate worship. Yes, God mainly wants to speak to us through his word, but what if he has other things to say in less grammatical, less authoritative ways? What if God wants these unwanted distractions to show us more of himself and more about what it means to love his children than we could see alone at home with our Bibles?

Here are five ways God might just bless and inspire your worship in the wild, where you're really not sure what might happen next.

1. Screaming Babies or Unruly Infants

Any church with young families knows well the cries of new life. The little ones that are so adorable and beautiful before and after a service can temporarily become annoying or inconvenient when they speak up during the announcements or a sermon. But this is new life. If we realize what’s happening — a new human being added to our church family, a future man or woman, potentially a husband and father or a wife and mother — we would have every reason to be blown away by our creating God, rejoice in the gift of this baby girl or boy, and bear patiently with this screaming image-in-process.

2. Bad Singing

Some of you are this person, and you know it. Some of you are married to this person. Some of you sit a couple pews away from this person week after week. You’ve thought about a move, but that’s too big of a statement in a small church. Some people simply can’t sing very well. Despite the beautifully good heart, the ensuing sound would make more sense in the local zoo than the church's choir.

We’ve all been commanded to sing (Psalm 47:6–7), but we’ve not been equally gifted for it. The miracle, though, is that any of us, who once dead in our sin, would sing to our God at all. Each of us was made to image and worship God, but we all turned away from him, offended him, and earned his wrath. But God overwhelmed our rebellion to win our worship through Jesus.

Our hearts will always and only find their greatest satisfaction in God. That’s what worshipis. Our hymns and songs give voice to that happiness. God is not listening for pitch, but for heart in worship. Anyone singing to any tune, in any octave, with whatever rhythm to God is a stunning, miraculous, wonderful thing. We should be developing an attitude that rejoices in all the voices that are lifted to make much of him.

Worship Out

Worshiping Our Way Out of Sin by Zac Hicks (Worship leader at Tullian Tchividjian's church, Coral Ridge Presbyterian):

For much of my Christian life, I thought sin was primarily fought on the flesh-level, where battleships fire their guns and jets launch their missiles. Recently, I’ve come to realize that the true action is where submarines do warfare. I used to think that, to defeat sin in my members, I must engage things like spiritual disciplines to in a sense “suffocate” the sin out of my flesh. Lust problem? Fast a bunch to teach yourself how to deny cravings. Mouth problem? Practice silence to bridle your tongue with some self-control. And while those things aren’t without merit, I began to realize that sin goes much deeper; that it is the “fruit” of the deeper “root” of idolatry and unbelief. Our sin problem is, primarily and essentially, a heart problem. Therefore, it makes sense that the most tactical and strategic warfare against sin shouldn’t take place on the level of the flesh but on the level of what Jonathan Edwards called “the affections.”... 

...Growth is the work of God, and it happens by our beholding Jesus’ glory. If we desire the growth of our brothers and sisters; if we long for the unshackling of our addictions and unburdening of our sin in increasing measure, the best thing we can do for the people of God is plan worship services that climax at the moment of beholding the Lord Jesus in His incarnate, crucified, resurrected, ascended, and seated splendor. We ask questions like, “How can I shape the music and liturgy to climax, theologically and emotionally, at the moment where the good news of Jesus Christ is sung, remembered, preached, and proclaimed? How do I shape contexts for beholding Jesus in worship?” These are the questions a worship pastor asks.

Three concluding tips to help the people of God worship their way out of sin by beholding Jesus:

• The gospel shines brightest when it is set against the dark backdrop of our sin, so find places in your worship services to sing, speak, or pray your confession. And give the people words to help expand their vocabulary of confession beyond the superficial (the Book of Common Prayer’s most common confession prayer is a wonderful guiding tool).

• One step before that: Our sinfulness is amplified when God’s glory and holiness is made much of. So begin your worship services, more often than not, with Calls to Worship and songs that highlight God’s glorious attributes. In this way, we open up the people of God to hear God’s important “first word”—the Law. And when the Law is heralded, it crushes, kills, and prepares the soil for the most honest confession.

• See how you can assist in making the sacraments of the Lord’s Supper and Baptism more dramatic in their proclamation and illustration of the gospel. Lend your aid to the baptism musically, either before, after, or during, in ways that guide the people of God to cherish Christ in the moment. Explore the ways that the Lord’s Supper can be practiced to enhance how the gospel is felt and apprehended.

Irreplaceable

"There never has been and never will be anyone like you, but that isn't a testament to you. It's a testament to  the God who created you. And that means no one can worship God like you or for you. You are absolutely irreplaceable in God's grand scheme. And God is jealous for you - all of you."

-Mark Batterson, All In: You Are One Decision Away From A Totally Different Life, pages 161 (italics in the original)

We're Curved In On Ourselves

Ever found your "worship" experience to be really more about you and your feelings about God than about God Himself? I know I have- It's a frequent and common issue.  Learning a little Latin phrase (Incurvatus in se) has helped me to understand the problem better, and reminds me to turn my heart upward and outward in worship away from my own feelings and problems.

Good piece here from Zac Hicks (Worship Pastor at Coral Rdige Presbyterian Church):

A Latin Phrase Worth Knowing

I’m a sucker for cool Latin phrases. Incurvatus in se, or “curved in on itself,” is one such phrase, possibly coined by Augustine and definitely expounded upon by Martin Luther.  The Reformer wrote:

"Our nature, by the corruption of the first sin, so deeply curved in on itself that it not only bends the best gifts of God towards itself and enjoys them (as is plain in the works-righteous and hypocrites), or rather even uses God himself in order to attain these gifts, but it also fails to realize that it so wickedly, curvedly, and viciously seeks all things, even God, for its own sake."

Me, Me, Me

It’s such a vivid picture. Incurvatus in se is that self-obsessed tendency in all of us to naval gaze.  Every human being is bent inward, even taking the good things of God and making them “all about me.” For Christians, incurvatus in semanifests itself in unhealthy levels of attention on our own Christian growth and spiritual formation. (Yes, this really is possible, and it may very well be at fever pitch in American evangelicalism.) We become expert self-analysts, tracking every notch of progress and regress, victory and loss, growth and atrophy. We engage in formal and informal scorekeeping of the hopefully upward mobility of our spiritual maturity. Did I spend time in the Word today? How many lustful thoughts did I have? Was my tongue controlled? Was my temper checked? Did I practice the presence of God? Did I exhibit the fruit of the Spirit? Was my prayer intentional and purposeful? Diagnostic questions like these aren’t bad in and of themselves, but they become destructive and antithetical to the Gospel when they are our dominant pattern. If “Christian living,” for you, is defined by your constant asking and answering of such questions, you are probably suffering from a severe case of incurvatus in se, because Christian living at its core has nothing to do with these things.

I-Can-Do-It Worship

Unfortunately, because this incurvature is such a fundamental reality for all of us, it has crept into our worship, preeminently in the songs that we sing and in the way that we sing them. Elsewhere, I and others have called such songs, phrases, and lyrics elements of “triumphalism”—that obsession with how we’re living for God, loving God, giving it all for God, etc. It’s in the “surrender” language we often employ, and it’s in the “I’m doing it all for you” and “I’m giving it all away” lines that we gush. It’s painfully ironic that as we sing such lines, though we’re singing to God, we may be actually reveling in ourselves.... 

Much more at the link.

Holy Spirit, You Are Welcome Here

Sang this song at our church this morning - I absolutely love this song!

Understanding Worship

From Ron Edmondson on "10 Signs You May Not Understand Worship":

1. The volume or tempo of the music determines whether you think it’s a worship song. 
2. A slight change in the order of the service makes you think they’ve harmed “worship”.
3. You think raising hands or not raising hands determines the depth of a person’s worship.
4. You believe the “proper” length of a “worship” service is dictated by your lunch schedule.
5. You think worship has to be in a service or part of a programmed event.
6. Certain instruments keep you from thinking worship is possible.
7. You think worship is confined to a certain place or a certain time.
8. The clothes you wear determines the quality of worship…for you AND others.
9. You think worship always involves music.
10. Your attempt to worship has more to do with a personal preference than the subject of worship.

If any of these describe you, then you might need a refresher study of what it means to worship God.

HT: Blogotional

Shaped by the Doxology

I grew up singing the little chorus know as the Doxology: "Praise God from Whom all blessings flow..." Thanks to Zac Hicks for the reminder that singing such words that are full of Biblical content also shapes us.

One drop of water on a rock has little effect, but a steady dripping will eventually wear a hole into a seemingly impenetrable stone. Singing the Doxology every week is like getting a steady drip of life-giving Trinitarian water over hardened hearts.

James K. A. Smith, in Desiring the Kingdom, reminds us that the very form and rituals of worship have a shaping effect on us.  We don’t just become more godly by learning the theology of the songs and imbibing the propositional content of the sermon.  Our desires and habits, as we move along the path of the liturgy, are shaped to more subconsciously and instinctively move along the direction of that path.   For instance, I have been in a context where I have experienced the same weekly liturgy of Confession, Assurance, and Repentance for over ten years now.  I now find that I have new instincts and desires when I slip into sin.  With nearly Pavlovian certainty, my heart drops to its knees, I acknowledge it before God, I preach the good news to my heart of God’s assurance of my pardon through Christ, and I find greater strength to turn and re-commit myself to God’s service.  Repeated liturgy makes you love it and live it every day of the week.  There are many things that we could point out about the shaping effect of the Doxology.  I will mention three.

First, the Doxology shapes us into whole worshipers.

• Praise God from whom all blessings flow,

• Praise Him, all creatures here below;

The first line gives us the “why” of worship (because of what He does).  But next is the “who.”  First, “all creatures” are summoned to God’s praise, and suddenly our minds are blown about the fact that worship is not merely a human activity.  It is an activity of all creation.  Before the fall, somehow all creation was more attuned to the worship of God, and there was a sense of solidarity between human beings and creation in the act of worship.  ”Praise Him, all creatures here below” is a summons toward fall-reversal, saying to the earth, “Return, and worship the One who made you.”

When we realize this, singing this weekly shapes us into a people dissatisfied with a hyper distinction between sacred and secular.  We become a people who grate against our society’s bifurcation of our private, personal religion and our public self.  God’s demand for worship has equal authority in our schools, homes, and workplaces as it does in the sanctuary.  Our worship is whole, because the summons isn’t “Praise Him, all Christians here below.”  We become a people who are passionate about the reclamation and return of all of the earth’s worship to its rightful Owner and Object.

Default Mode of the Heart

From Christians in Context:

Worship is the default mode of our hearts. We were made to worship. It comes naturally. No one needs to be taught how to worship. However, there is a problem. Our hearts were made to worship God, and that is no longer their default mode. Instead, our hearts will look for and find anything other than God to worship. As John Calvin famously said, "The human heart is a factory of idols". What comes naturally is no longer worship of the Creator but rather worship of created things.

Identifying Idols 

The deceptive thing about these idols, these false gods we worship, is that they rarely take the form of a little golden statue (at least not in our culture). But they are here and we worship none the less. When we look to a created thing to provide for us what only the Creator can provide (meaning, significance, acceptance, approval, ultimate joy, comfort, security), not only do we set ourselves up for disappointment, but we commit idolatry in the process.
Here are just a few questions to help you identify potential idols in your own life:

• What do you brag about?

• Where do you go for comfort?

• How do you explain or identify yourself?

• What do you want more than anything else?

• What do you sacrifice the most for (in time, money, sweat)?

• Who's approval are you seeking?

• What gets the best of your attention, energy, creativity, and effort?

• ...for a more extensive list and explanation, click here.

Good things turned into god things...

After working through those questions, a shock often comes at the realization our idols are usually good things. A spouse, a job, children, a passion or hobby, your church, your position in that church, your health, your looks, your skill and talent, the list is endless. But one thing that almost all idols have in common is that we begin to form our identity around that thing. "I'm a Red Sox fan." "I'm a mother." "I'm a Deadhead." "I'm a Calvinist." And, as Mark Driscoll has said, "When a good thing becomes a god thing, that's a bad thing". When our idol begins to become our identity, other questions are even better at helping us pinpoint those "functional saviors":

• What, if it was taken from you, would shake your faith in God?

• What would make you angry at God or question his love?

• What would you give up everything else for to keep from losing?

• What do you fear the most?

You Revive Me

I love this song! "You Revive Me" as sung by Christy Nockels on the Passion:White Flag CD:

Chorus:

You revive me

You revive me Lord

And all my deserts are rivers of joy

You are the treasure I could not afford

So I'll spend myself till I'm empty and poor

All for You

You revive me Lord

Verse 1:

Lord I have seen Your goodness

And I know the way You are

Give me eyes to see You in the dark

And Your face shines a glory

That I only know in part

And there is still a longing
A longing in my heart

Verse 2:

My soul is thirsty

Only You can satisfy

You are the well that never will run dry

And I'll praise You for the blessing

For calling me Your friend

And in Your name I'm lifting

I'm lifting up my hands

Bridge:

I'm alive

I'm alive

You breathe on me

You revive me

This entire album is wonderful. I highly recommend it.

A Built In Reflex

"Peter Kreeft, a philosopher, puts it this way" 'The opposite of theism is not atheism, it's idolatry.' In other words everyone is going to worship a god. We were created to be worshipers  as birds were created to fly and rivers were created to flow. It's what we do. The question for you is who or what will be the object of your worship..."

"...When you subtract the religious language, worship is the built in human reflex to put your hope in something or someone and then chase after it. You hold something up and then give your life to pursuing it. If you live in this world, then sooner or later you grow some assumptions concerning what your life is all about, what you should really be going after. And when you begin to align your life with that pursuit, then, whether you realize it or not, you are worshiping."

       - Kyle Idleman,  Gods At War: Defeating the Idols That Battle For Your Heart. pages 58-59

Hand Signals

A little help to get ready for Sunday worship services....

Bigger than Just Me & Jesus

"Not only does our worship as rescued sinners reflect an eternal reality, God also supernaturally utilizes our corporate gatherings to mature and encourage His people in ways not available anywhere else. God designed our faith to be communal and interdependent - and markedly supernatural. When believers gather together as a worshiping community, we benefit from all the spiritual gifts of the body of Christ. Worship reminds us that the Church is bigger and more beautiful than any one person or a few leaders alone. Each of us, worshiping together, is used of God to build each other up in Jesus."

     - Matt Chandler, Creature of the Word: The Jesus Centered Church,  page 41

Not Always Spectacular, But Always Supernatural

"Worship gatherings are not always spectacular, but they are always supernatural. And if a church looks for or works for the spectacular, she may miss the supernatural. If a person enters a gathering to be wowed with something impressive, with a style that fits him just right, with an order of service and song selection designed just the right way, that person may miss the supernatural presence of God. Worship is supernatural whenever people come hungry to respond, react, and receive from God for who He is and what He has done. A church worshipping as a Creature of the Word doesn’t show up to perform or be entertained; she comes desperate and needy, thirsty for grace, receiving from the Lord and the body of Christ, and then gratefully receiving what she needs as she offers her praise— the only proper response to the God who saves us. "

- Geiger, Eric; Chandler, Matt; Patterson, Josh . Creature of the Word: The Jesus-Centered Church 

Another book on my wish list!

Hat Tip: Vitamin Z

Big Enough

Hat Tip: The Master's Table

Twitter Gleanings

Gleanings from my Twitter feed:

If you live for the approval of others, you'll die with their rejection.@RickWarren

RT @LifeVerse: If you give beyond your ability, God will bless you beyond your ability. Mark Batterson

RT @bcloritts  "Holiness hardly ever becomes a reality until we care more about Jesus than about holiness"- Steve Brown, A Scandalous Freedom

RT @jeffredding: Primary goal of spiritual leadership: Take people from where try are now to where God wants them to be.

RT @LifeVerse: Divine detours often get us where God wants us to go. Mark Batterson

RT @StephenMiller: We are all always worshiping something or someone. And we will become like what we worship.

RT @PastorTullian: God is in the business of replacing our ladders with his cross.

RT @TimTebow "Happy moments, praise God. Difficult moments, seek God. Quiet moments, worship God. Painful moments, trust God. Every moment, THANK GOD."

RT @parkerwindle: "The mark of a great church is not its seating capacity, but its sending capacity." Mike Stachura

RT @rayortlund: Gospel doctrine + gospel culture = a church marked by human beauty. Makes the truth believable, accessible.

RT @BryanPickering: The cross is the best and quickest summary of what God says to unworthy people. - Ed Welch @ccef

Twitter Updates

Haven't done one of these in a while, so, without further delay, here's some Twitter highlights.

RT @LifeVerse: Without God's Word as a lens, the world warps. Ann Voskamp

RT @DailyKeller: Our bad things turn out for good. Our good things can never be lost. And the best things are yet to come. 

RT @MarloTWells: To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable.~GK Chesterton

 RT @PastorTullian: Whatever we may mean by “Christian growth,” it is ultimately this: less faith in me, more faith in God.

 RT @Calvary__Tweets: "God sends no one away empty - except those who are full of themselves." - D.L. Moody

 RT @RealEricGeiger: Worship gatherings rooted in the gospel are not always spectacular, but they are always supernatural. #CreatureoftheWord

RT @thepearlyg8s: God doesn't care what you have, so long as He has you!  

RT @daneortlund: What old resentment are you coddling instead of bathing in the gospel? (God's forgiven YOU for crying out loud!)

 RT @LeeSmith_1: The beginning of love for [others] is learning to listen to them. Bonhoeffer

 RT @theResurgence: “Grace is given to heal the spiritually sick, not to decorate spiritual heroes.” – Martin Luther

 RT @leebezotte: "we never pray for folks we gossip about, and we never gossip about the folk for whom we pray!" - Leonard Ravenhill

Worship: The Secret to Freedom

From a great post at "Desiring God" on Fighting Sin With Worship, based on  material transcribed and edited from Tim Keller’s sermon “Sin as Slavery” (which can be downloaded for free) :

...If you are a Christian and you are dealing with enslaving habits, it's not enough to say, "Bad Christian, stop it." And it is not enough to beat yourself up or merely try harder and harder and harder.

The real reason that you're having a problem with an enslaving habit is because you are not tasting God. I'm not talking about believing God or even obeying God, I'm saying tasting — tasting God.

The secret to freedom from enslaving patterns of sin is worship. You need worship. You need great worship. You need weeping worship. You need glorious worship. You need to sense God’s greatness and to be moved by it — moved to tears and moved to laughter — moved by who God is and what he has done for you. And this needs to be happening all the time.

This type of worship is the only thing that can replace the little if only fire burning in your heart. We need a new fire that says, “If only I saw the Lord. If only he was close to my heart. If only I could feel him to be as great as I know him to be. If only I could taste his grace as sweet as I know it to be.”

And when that if only fire is burning in your heart, then you are free.

I highly recommend reading the entire thing at the link or listening to the whole sermon.

Basic Human Wiring

"..to be human is to worship. We reflect God's glory by our worship of him, which means to hold him as the object of our deepest desires and as worth of our imitation. Worship is not just singing songs in church; it's how we live our lives every moment of every day - every thought, word, deed, feeling, and desire. You worship what you live for, whatever is most worthy of you attention and devotion. It is what drives you at the core, and it flows from the essence of who you are. You can't turn off worship. It's your basic human wiring. To not worship is to not live."

Mike Wilkerson, Redemption: Freed by Jesus from the Idols We Worship and the Wounds We Carry, page 29

The Age-Old Battle: No Third Option

I'll be posting some quotes this coming week from a 2007 paper by Tim Keller entitled "Talking About Idolatry in a Postmodern Age."  It begins:

When I first began reading through the Bible I looked for some unifying themes. I concluded that there are many and that if we make just one theme the theme (such as ‘covenant’ or ‘kingdom’) we run the danger of reductionism. However, one of the main ways to read the Bible is as the ages-long struggle between true faith and idolatry. In the beginning, human beings were made to worship and serve God, and to rule over all created things in God’s name (Gen 1:26­–28). Paul understands humanity’s original sin as an act of idolatry: “They exchanged the glory of the immortal God...and worshipped and served created things rather than the creator”(Rom 1:21–25). Instead of living for God, we began to live for ourselves, or our work, or for material goods. We reversed the original intended order. And when we began to worship and serve created things, paradoxically, the created things came to rule over us. Instead of being God’s vice-regents, ruling over creation, now creation masters us. We are now subject to decay and disease and disaster. The final proof of this is death itself. We live for our own glory by toiling in the dust, but eventually we return to the dust—the dust “wins” (Gen 3:17–19). We live to make a name for ourselves but our names are forgotten. Here in the beginning of the Bible we learn that idolatry means slavery and death.

Wow!This is a really profound way to see a unified them for the whole Bible. He goes on to say:

The Ten Commandments' first two and most basic laws (one-fifth of all God's law to humankind) are against idolatry. Exodus does not envision any third option between true faith and idolatry. We will either worship the uncreated God or we will worship some created thing (an idol). There is no possibility of our worshipping nothing. The classic New Testament text is Romans 1:18-25. This extensive passage on idolatry is often seen as only referring to the pagan Gentiles, but instead we should recognize it as an analysis of what sin is and how it works. Verse 21 tells us that the reason we turn to idols is because we want to control our lives, though we know that we owe God everything. “Though they knew God, they neither glorified God nor gave thanks to him.” Verse 25 tells us the strategy for control—taking created things and setting our hearts on them and building our lives around them. Since we need to worship something, because of how we are created, we cannot eliminate God without creating God-substitutes. Verses 21 and 25 tell us the two results of idolatry:

1) Deception—"their thinking became futile and their hearts were darkened,"and
2) Slavery—"they worshipped and served" created things.

Whatever we worship we will serve, for worship and service are always inextricably bound together. We are “covenantal” beings. We enter into covenant service with whatever most captures our imagination and heart. It ensnares us. So every human personality, community, thought-form, and culture will be based on some ultimate concern or some ultimate allegiance—either to God or to some God-substitute. Individually, we will ultimately look either to God or to success, romance, family, status, popularity, beauty or something else to make us feel personally significant and secure, and to guide our choices. Culturally we will ultimately look to either God or to the free market, the state, the elites, the will of the people, science and technology, military might, human reason, racial pride, or something else to make us corporately significant and secure, and to guide our choices.

More tomorrow.