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 a 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.

Here’s this week’s post as part of Fred’s Sunday Setlists…

1. Salvation Is Here (Hillsong Utd)
2. Giver Of Life (Tim Hughes)
3. So In Love With You (Planetshakers)
4. Whole World In His Hands (Tim Hughes)
5. ‘Til I See You (Hillsong Utd)
6. Facedown (Matt Redman)

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!“

Generally speaking, I tend to anonymize my work life from blogging. I’ve never mentioned the name of the company I work for, since there seems to be repercussions for those who do. But today I out myself.

After four years of working at CAM Commerce Solutions, today I tendered my resignation. I received an offer for a new position at a new company that I would just be a fool to turn down, and so I must say goodbye to those I’ve called my colleagues for the last four years and head to pastures anew.

Working at CAM has been fun and challenging and sometimes stressful. I’ve grown and learned and stretched and learned lessons I’ll carry with me for a long time. The reasons for my departure are unimportant, and while I’ll look at the past to learn for the future, it’s now time to look forward to a new challenge. And while the new position and the new company will now remain anonymous, I can’t wait for it. I’ve given two weeks notice, then I’m going to take a short vacation, then I’m jumping in to the new job.

Bring it on.

Jumping on the bandwagon here and joining in at Fred’s Sunday Setlist Carnival.

Here’s the set from The Summit for Sunday August 24th 2008:

1. Your Grace Is Enough (Tomlin)
2. Giver of Life (Hughes)
3. So In Love With You (Planetshakers)
4. You Gave Your Life Away (Baloche)
5. 40 (U2) 
6. You Alone (Crowder) 

“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.

One thing I’ve noticed in books that I’ve read recently 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.

There’s been surprisingly little mention of it in the blogosphere considering how it was pretty much all that every ministry blogger in the known universe was blogging about last week, but it has emerged that Mike has had an addiction to pornography since he was 12 years old.

While I was at the gym today I wrestled with the idea of being a little more transparent on my blog about my past. Since you’re reading this, it shouldn’t be hard to guess that ‘yes’ was the answer. And I arrived at that for a very specific reason. Read on.

Some of you who know me or follow me on Twitter know that on Friday evenings I have been attending Saddleback’s Celebrate Recovery ministry. At first I went just because I was curious about the ‘hurts, habits and hangups’ line, and felt like I just needed to deal with some issues from my messed up teenage years. But it soon became apparent that there were deeper issues to deal. More specifically, God wanted me to face up to the damage that was caused by an intense addiction to pornography that I struggled with between the ages of 12 and 21.

Here’s what I can tell you from experience: an addiction to pornography destroys the soul. I mean it. While I dabbled in substance abuse as a teenager, I was never addicted, so I can’t speak to situations of substance addiction, but what I do know is that pornography is about so much more than some instant, temporal gratification. The damage it does is far deeper than that. It carries with it such a deep sense of shame and guilt that it causes one to do very irrational things while rationalizing them to oneself. I know this because I did this.

So it is with some level of understanding that I can relate to Mike’s struggle with porn and the way he tried to cover it up. I’m not rationalizing his behaviour. I’m not condoning his behaviour. But I can understand his behaviour. He did something utterly irrational, but I can guarantee that to him, at least for some time, he would have felt and thought that he was being completely rational. When I was in the middle of my addiction I did and said some pretty messed up thing. I didn’t make up a life threatening illness, but I did lie and I did cheat and I did steal, and it was all in the name of rationalizing my addiction.

For me, Celebrate Recovery is amazing. It hurts and its hard, but God has revealed to me the depth of the damage done by the stranglehold the enemy used to have on me. There are images and videos that I wish I’d never seen and there are stories that I wish I’d never read, because it is all etched in my mind now, but I can tell you now that God can and will renew and restore me from that self-inflicted damage. In fact He already is. I hope that Mike gets hooked up with something similar to CR and realizes that he can’t deal with his addiction on his own.

I’d also just like to say how thankful I am that Mike’s wife has decided to stick by him. In a world that says she should look out for number one, and the Dr Phil’s and Dr Laura’s of the world telling people in her situation to get out and stay out, it is refreshing to see someone so shocked and hurt by the deception to stick with her man. I hope that they look to God for healing and find success. When all is said and done, the past is the past. It’s what they do now and tomorrow that counts.

“Where you began will seem unimportant, because your future will be so successful.”
~ Job 8:7

I know I’m a day late in posting about this. It’s deliberate. I tend to write out of emotion and often need to take some time to get the cognitive processes working so I can approach subject matter appropriately. Hence, I didn’t post about the Healer scandal yesterday, nor did I comment on it at any of the many blogs that posted on it. Besides, I think there was something of a hysteria surrounding it and some people were simply buying in to that. Anyway, I digress…

In a nutshell, for those of you unaware, Pastor Mike Guglielmucci penned the song ‘Healer’ that appeared on a Hillsong CD and it was, essentially, a smash hit. The story behind the song was that Mike had a terminal illness and was believing for God to heal him. He even sang the song live one time with an oxygen tube up his nose. It turns out that it was all a lie. Another Pastor is ‘exposed’, another high profile ‘fall’ gets documented, and the Body of Christ gets another public bashing.

The most unfortunate thing about all of this is that the song along with its story has become a bit of an anthem for an entire youth generation. It’s them I am most concerned about. Literally thousands of kids are seeing someone they looked up to and respected and trusted engage in fraudulent behaviour. How many of those kids are now going to have a hard time trusting anyone in church leadership? It’s incredibly sad.

I’ve never done the song at The Summit, only because I just never thought it would really fit, but it doesn’t mean that I won’t do the song sometime in the future, even in the light of this unfortunate set of circumstances. Why? Because it’s still an annointed song. The words still speak truth. And just to be clear on why I maintain this position, many of the Psalms that encourage us and speak to us and instruct us and exhort us to worship God were written by a lying, deceiving, murdering adulterer. This, my friends, really is no different when it comes down to it.

Also, consider Paul’s reaction to those with selfish or deceived motives. Phillippians 1:18 tells of how Paul purposed to rejoice in the declaration of God’s goodness and the declaration of Christ, regardless of whether the motives of the person making the declaration were selfish and insincere. Who are we as fellow sinners, let alone brothers and sisters in Christ, to declare an anointed song null and void?

As for Mike and his family, the best thing we can do for them right now is pray. At the end of the day, in God’s eyes, the sin in this situation is no different to any other sin that you and I have ever committed. Remember, we are forgiven so that we can forgive. He’ll be hurting right now. His wife and kids will be hurting right now. The enemy will be doing everything possible to use this situation to bring about division and destruction and hatred and negativity. So cover them in prayer.

What’s more, God can restore Pastor Mike to ministry again. Does anyone remember the Kevin Prosch situation some 8 or 9 years ago? Look how God has taken a broken, fallen man and restored him to ministry. Heck, I don’t even need to point to Prosch. I can just point the finger at myself and say the same thing.

At the end of the day, folks, Pastor Mike isn’t any different to you and I. We’re all subject to temptation; we’re all likely to fall. No, we’re all probable to fall. Our nature as fallen humanity mean that the odds are stacked against us in that regard, but that’s where the real beauty of God’s unending grace steps in. That’s just how it is when you lived a blessed life in a cursed world.

Nobody likes having their picture taken for ‘official’ documents. I’m one of those people that never likes having their picture taken for anything really, but I especially don’t like having a photo taken for such things as my passport, my Green Card, and as we are about to find out, my Drivers License.

The thing is that it’s almost impossible to look half way decent on such official documents. They always require you to use backgrounds that are way too clinical, and then they overlight it so the picture comes out all washed out. Its hard not to look like a corpse in those kind of photos, I find.

Having said that, when I was going through my immigration shenanigans back in 2004, I was quite pleased with the picture that the friendly guy at the Department of Motor Vehicles (who happened to look exactly like Mr. Miyagi, by the way). Look:



That’s not too shabby, in my opinion, and is actually a very close approximation of what I look like, so all in all I was quite pleased with.

That picture was taken back in 2004. My Drivers License expired this year and so I had to go and renew it and get a new photo taken. And this is where my disdain and hearty detestation for the DMV really shows through. After I’d paid my $28 renewal fee and filled out the paperwork, I go over to the desk with the camera to be processed for a new photos. Mr. Miyagi was no longer there (and that makes me wonder if it actually was Mr. Miyagi last time, since Pat Morita has died since then). Instead, the desk and its camera were being controlled by a rather furious and angry looking matron who was clearly having a bad day. I cheerily handed her my paperwork with a smile, and she grunted something to the effect of “stand over there and face the camera”. I moved to the position, began to turn around to compose myself for the picture, and while I’m mid-turn, the flash goes off and Photo Matron declares that I’m done, hands me a print out of my temporary license, and tells me to wait a couple of months to get my new one in the mail.

I swear I shall forever be scarred by what that lady did to me. I am certain she photoshopped that picture or something. Last week, to my horror, this arrived:



“Oh dear” doesn’t quite capture the emotion, does it? Not only is this just a…terrrible…nay, AWFUL…picture that has caught me in a candid moment of a mid-turn, post breakfast burp, it also concerns me that, should I ever be stopped by a cop for a traffic violation, there are some questions that I just know are going to come up.

1. You are clearly drunk in this picture. Are you drunk now?
2. Are you still taking your Tourette’s medication?
3. Do you have any other photo ID taken after your heart had been restarted and you were released from the morgue?
4. Where did that suspicious double chin come from, and where do you keep it now?

Perhaps worse of all is the expiry date on this. I have to carry this thing with me until 2013. Any time I get asked for ID, this is what I have to show.

Oh the humanity.

I have to confess something: I have a real problem with Christian diction and terminology. Maybe it’s the purist in me, but I consider myself to be someone who doesn’t say anything unless there’s something worth saying, and even then, I consider my delivery and choose my words carefully.

And so it irritates me, greatly, when I hear people say “Wow! Service was amazing! God showed up!” or when people pray “Holy Spirit, we invite you here”.

Let’s get one thing straight: God doesn’t show up. God is everywhere, all the time. That’s a part of His infinite nature. Now, I know what people mean when they say “God showed up”. What they really mean is that they, as fallen humanity, have finally gotten past the barriers that they themselves have created, obeyed Him, and through the Holy Spirit have finally tuned in to the fact that God never disappeared and He’s been there all along. This is the big difference between being where God is present and being in God’s presence.

Likewise, who are we to “invite” the Holy Spirit in to anywhere other than our hearts? We can welcome Him, we can ask Him to move in our midst, but “inviting” our God, who is everywhere all the time, in to our little country club services smacks of exclusivity and “by invitation only” participation.

I’m the first to recognize that there is an unhealthy and insane absence of God from many churches. I will even hold my hand up and say that, early on, there were days when I kind of felt like God was absent from The Summit. But let’s be clear on this: God’s absence from our churches is only indicative of His absence from our hearts, and if God seems distant or absent, then guess who moved?

The answer is ‘us’, if you were still guessing.

In an age where so many churches, mine included, are focused on impacting the community through culture, using high impact media, socially cool elements, and culturally relevant messages, it’s so easy to program God out of our services. It’s a fine line, and it’s a dangerous line since it’s easy to slip in to the mindset of “let’s cut a couple of songs so we can play this neat video” or “let’s not do communion this week since we want to highlight our ubercool church website”. Translated, that means “let’s rob the body of Christ of the opportunity to worship together and obey Him together and instead we can look cool and sound cool and be cool”.

Harsh? Maybe. Reality? Definitely. I’m not bashing the use of the ‘cool’ factor in services; I’m all for it. But not when it detracts from what we really should be gathering for. I for one am acutely aware of this after some recent discussion with some of my team on using Igniter Tracks with our worship (which I elected not to use after applying the ‘distraction and detraction’ rule), and I’m becoming more and more focused on the pivotal, focal point of our worship. I refuse to water it down. I refuse to offer to God something that might sound great and have flashy lights and impressive visual elements but lacks motivational excellence. In short, I refuse to program God out of my worship.

Instead of expecting God to “show up”, how about we start entering in to His presence prepared and expecting to meet with Him? There’s a big difference between the two.

Thoughts?