Immersion Worship

Psalm 100:3

I will walk in my house with a blameless heart

There’s an old saying that I used to hear a lot when I was growing up - “Charity begins at home.” I used to think it meant that we should all give each other gifts all the time. Now I know what it really means. Check out this TLB translation:

How I need Your help,
especially in my own home,
where I long to act as I should!

Here’s what it comes down to: If you struggle with the connection between your faith in Jesus and your actions in your home, when you are on your own or with your family, then there is a real problem. I know this because I struggled with it for a long time. I used to hate hearing those two words - ‘character’ and ‘integrity’ - because I knew the definition; my character being who I really am when nobody is watching, and my integrity being reflection of the qualities and standards I profess with my mouth.

Unfortunately, at home is where it’s often the hardest to live a life that accurately reflects what we say and what we believe. At home is where we are the most real, and our guard is down because it’s our comfort zone. We sometimes think that it won’t matter too much, telling ourselves “My wife will understand; I’m just not a morning person, and that’s why I’m grumpy and that’s how it is” or “I feel so worn out at the end of the day that the last thing I want to do is have a deep and meaningful conversation with anyone.”

Fortunately for us, David understood a principle here that, even though it is scary, reassures us somewhat because it shows that everybody struggles with it. And that principle is this: We will never be in public what we are not in private. Who we are when no one is watching is very important when we walk in a cursed world where people are watching us. And so the prayer he prayed in Psalm 100:2 becomes so relevant for today; we need God’s help to act as He wants us to act, starting with in our own homes.

Set 1
Name Above All Names
Here Is Our King
Salvation Is Here

Set 2
Facedown
‘Til I See You

Thoughts

It’s been a few weeks since I did a weekend wrap up. Yesterday was just awesome. The message was hard hitting and challenging, but absolutely took it’s place in the ‘My Story’ series and, frankly, completely owned me. It’s definitely caused me to question some of my own attitudes and behaviours. Awesome.

Musically I feel that we’re really starting to come in to our own. The music was tight, our communication was locked on, and our transitions were seamless. The effect of that is that the musical aspect of worship becomes more accessible to the congregation, and there was a tangible and visible response to it. It’s amazing what happens when you remove distraction.

Yesterday the worship team took communion together about 15 minutes before service, and prayed together. It was a highly unifying experience and put us all in the right place before leading worship. It also reminded me of the importance of having right attitudes, and how the heart has to come before excellence. Waaaaay before excellence. We will share communion every week from now on.

People that know us are often more impacted by what we are than by what we say. Or to put it another way, they are more affected by our behaviour than our beliefs. That’s not to say that what we say is unimportant or that we should stand off from speaking up, but rather that our actions must reflect our words, and vice versa.

Psalm 100:2 says…

I will be careful to lead a blameless life

David knew the importance of living a blameless life. He knew that only too well from the bitter experiences he had when dealing with his adultery with Bathsheba and murder of her husband, and the subsequent lies he told. The fact that his talk didn’t match his walk cost him dearly.

Or lives may or may not be assailed by temptation on that scale, but what about the small things? God only knows, I need to start with the small things in my life! How about not being grumpy in the mornings? Or at work when I’m dealing with difficult people, why not treat them with respect even when their actions don’t warrant it?

As representatives of God’s light and God’s love, what we say must match the way we live our lives. People will follow our example much more readily than our advice. People might not always be persuaded by theology, but they can be won by the love of God in our lifestyles.

Repeat after me: “I Will!”

“I will”. Two words that many of us remember from a day in our lives when we made promises and have since worked hard to keep them. For example, on our wedding day, Rhonda and I exchanged vows that we had written, and those vows contained several promises that all began with “I will”. “I will love you.” “I will respect and honour you.” “I will build you up and not tear you down.” Without action, these commitments are meaningless. These words carry with them a sense of determination to do something; a decision once made and now being worked out, our words backed up by actions.

Something I’ve been working really hard at this year is reading the Bible through in a year. It’s a commitment I made at the end of last year, and it’s a journey that I’m on with several other people in The Summit’s launch team. It’s sometimes hard - I’ve gone for periods without reading the daily verses and had sit down with determination to catch up. But when asked if I would do it, I said “I will”. Without action, that commitment is meaningless.

One thing I’ve noticed as I’ve been reading is that God Himself uses the words “I will” a great deal. He said to Noah, “I will remember my covenant.” He said to Abram, “I will make you a great nation.” He said to Moses and Joshua “I will be with you.” God exemplifies the meaning of ‘I will’ in His actions. They are not just words that are said with passive acknowledgment; they are said with meaning and intention to follow them with action.

David used these same words in his songs to God. And today we use them ourselves regularly in day to day conversation; “I will call you”, “I will see you”, etc. We use them as a promise that we intend to act.

So why is it so often that we use them so passively and negligently before God? We repeat the words that David sang, yet often we don’t follow them with action.
Check out Psalm 101:1

I will sing of your love and justice

The Hebrew word for the phrase “I will sing” was used to describe a traveling minstrel singing as he goes along, ergo when David sang it, he intended to live that constant lifestyle of remembering God’s love and justice in song.

For us, with the rat race we live in, we miss the mark, but this verse should serve as an encouragement to us. Yes, God’s mercy plays the biggest part in it all, but remembering how God has dealt with us brining in to play both of these attributes - love and justice - we should be encouraged to be zealous in our pursuit of singing about it. God has to be just with us, and the sin that affect our lives has to be dealt with. God’s answer was to send Jesus, and that is the consequence of the attribute - His love. His awesome, unending, perfect love.

I remember when I was kid, one of my teachers taught about a guy named Billy Bray. He was a born again tin miner from Cornwall (a region in the south west of England) who used to go to work in the mines, singing as he went, full of joy as he remembered how he had been saved from hell. Sometimes we just need that fresh dose of heavenly joy, and one of the ways to find it is to remember what we have been saved from, and what have been given in it’s place.

I was at the cemetery yesterday and I saw four men carrying a coffin. About an hour later I saw the same four men still wandering about with the same coffin.

It was then I realized that they had lost the plot.

Set 1
Name Above All Names
Awesome is the Lord Most High
Salvation Is Here

Set 2
How Great is Our God?
‘Til I See You

Thoughts
Without doubt our best since Launch Sunday, and I think the biggest difference was the set-up team prayer we had 30 minutes before service. The more I see how God moves in when we get out of the way, the more I want to minimize myself and maximize the room for God to do what only He can do.

We tried a slightly different stage configuration and seating arrangement, and it made all the difference in the world in terms of visible unity and congregational accessibility. While people are still learning new songs and getting comfortable in a new church and getting to know new people, the individual response in worship is somewhat hesitant, but we’re gaining momentum and the team are doing a fantastic job of leading.

Thoughts on Isaiah

Last night Christian and I recorded the next podcast installment, featuring my friend and Pastor, Scott Turner.

Scott had some excellent thoughts on the processes of worship and the product of which is an inspiration to serve, based on Isaiah 6.

I read over that chapter again today, and I had a few more thoughts that I wanted to jot down.

Isaiah 6:5 is a real eye opener, I think. Isaiah found himself in the presence of a holy and righteous God and was forced to acknowledge his own uncleanness. When he experienced God’s presence, he humbled himself and acknowledged God’s rights and authority in his life.

Knowing this, there are times when we come face to face with God’s Righteousness and Holiness and we reject it. We are offended by being faced with a God who is bigger than we are. Why is that?

I think it’s because we want to be the ones in charge of our lives. But if God is bigger and more powerful than we are, He (not us) has the authority to set the rules. And the question of who is in charge in our lives sometimes comes down to who we recognize as being bigger.

When the Israelites gathered at the foot of Mt. Sinai to receive the 10 Commandments, God deliberately and decisively made it clear that He was in charge. He drove home in no uncertain terms that He was bigger than they were.

The thing is that finding faults in my life (and in yours) is not that hard to do. If someone were to look into my life they would find all kinds of shortcomings and weaknesses, and it’s the same for all of us because we all fail somewhere along the line. And so the fact remains that none of us deserve to stand in God’s presence. If we had been with Isaiah when He saw the Lord high and lifted up in the Temple we would literally fall on our knees and cover our heads and pray that God didn’t destroy us. Compared to God, we have no righteousness or holiness to be proud of.

Because I know that is true, one of my favorite passages of Scripture is Psalm 103:8-18.

The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. He will not always accuse, nor will He harbor his anger forever; He does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities.
For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is His love for those who fear Him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.
As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him; for He knows how we are formed, He remembers that we are dust.
As for man, His days are like grass, he flourishes like a flower of the field; the wind blows over it and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more.
But from everlasting to everlasting the Lord’s love is with those who fear Him, and His righteousness with their children’s children, with those who keep His covenant and remember to obey His precepts.

He remembers that we are dust and He knows that we’re frail and we’re weak

That’s motivation enough to pour our entire being in to worshipping him. God is bigger than we are. He is big enough to stand in judgment of us but He is also big enough to protect us and care for us in our frailty and humanity. He is big enough to love us even when we are not everything we should be or want to be.

Simply awesome.