Help! My Son Is In A Worship Camp

During the old testament days, when people sought the presence of God, they brought with them their offerings. It was always something physical, something that you can see, touch, smell, hear and taste. There were grains, cattle, oil, incense, etc. In Exodus 25:2, God orders Moses, “Tell the Israelites to bring me an offering. You are to receive the offering for me from each man whose heart prompts him to give.” Yes, God expects us to bring him an offering, but it is not the offering itself that he is after, he is after the heart of the one who brings the offering. Remember Cain and Abel’s offering? Is the heart of a person in accordance to what God expects of him? Does God get to see obedience of heart in his people?

Disobedience to God’s ways separates people from God’s presence. We all know this from Adam and Eve. A sense of deep respect, awe and fear of God keeps people closer to his presence. The closer you are with God, the stronger is your love, obedience and loyalty towards him. Abraham was once asked to sacrifice his only heir as a burnt offering. He saddled up a donkey, took two servants and his son Isaac and went on a three day camp. On the third day he asked his servants to stay behind so that he and his son will worship God on the mountain and they will come back. This is the first time in the Bible the word worship is mentioned. Abraham went to worship God with a sacrifice walking and talking innocently beside him. Was God really after a dead burnt Isaac or was he after Abraham’s heart of obedience?

When we are willing to sacrifice or kill our future that we hold so dear for ourselves, then we are ready to worship God. This requires an obedient heart that does what God says without any argument and opinion. Look at the blessing that Abraham received because of his obedience: “I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.” Genesis 22:17,18. When we worship God the right way we will see nations transformed.

Our oldest son is in a summer worship camp that goes on for four and a half days. There is singing and music with some preaching and prayer in between. Sometimes the music is great during ‘worship time’, fast rhythm, loud guitar, everyone is turned on and the worship rocks. It feels good, you sing and swing at the same time. You actually even feel like you have worshiped God with all your heart, might and soul and strength. Then comes the mellow phase of our ‘worship time’. The music gets slow and the good feelings changes to piety, repentance, and sometimes even self pity. To round it all up at the end, there is another song with a cool beat, to get back to the party feeling. We call this worship! What credit is that if we worship God according to the flexibility of our emotional moods? Even unbelievers do that in their music shows! Moses and the Israelites sang song to the Lord when they witnessed their enemies drown in the see and yet they themselves were spared. Their emotion of joy was expressed in singing and dancing. Few days later with that same mouth they grumbled against Moses. In spite of experiencing the miracles of God first hand, in spite of meaningful singing and dancing, their hearts were still far from God. God wanted their obedient heart, not their emotional feelings. If you listen carefully to me and do what I say, pay attention, keep my decrees, I will not strike you like I did to the Egyptians. Exodus 15:26

King David was a man after God’s own heart. Not because he could play well the harp or sing a thousand songs or even compose music, but he knew the sacrificial worship that God delights in. He was willing to sacrifice his position, his riches, his Kingdoms, his music, his everything just to dwell in the presence of the Lord. Better is one day in your court than a thousand elsewhere! Sacrifice everything else in order to hear God and do only that which He says, that is the heart of a true worshiper. David’s heart was steadfast in God. He disrobed himself in front of God. he was willing to become even more undignified than that, he was willing to be humiliated in his own eyes. He pleased God by displeasing himself. That is why he could sing and make music with all his heart and soul and mind and all that is within him.

When God became a tradition to his own people, he spoke through his prophet Isaiah saying how much he hates their appointed feasts and evil assemblies and camps and conferences. It has become a burden that he is weary of bearing them. The multitude of your sacrifice makes no sense, all the meaningless words with and without emotions, slow and fast rhythms, I have no pleasure in them. Stop trampling my courts, in other words stop warming up your pews! Don’t spread out your hands in prayers, because I hide my eyes from you. even if you offer many prayers I will not listen to you. You have not learned to do what my heart is after. If you are willing and obedient, you will eat the best from the land. But if you resist and rebel, you will be devoured by the sword. Isaiah 1

God saw that his people cannot worship him through their own deeds, so he sent his Son to the cross as a sacrifice and earned all the worship that he needs through the obedience of his Son. Jesus became the sacrificial worship of God. This is my son in whom I am well pleased. Jesus obeyed God in every way. He said only what he heard his father say, he did only what he saw his father do. He came down to show us how to worship God by living it everyday here on earth. He obeyed God in every step, even unto death. This kind of obedience to God – sacrificing everything, family, job, hobby, desires and dreams at the altar to ash and obeying (doing) only what God says to you is the profound act of worship that pleases God. If we are followers of Jesus, we got to follow him the same way He worshiped his Father- through sacrificial obedience!

If worship as we know today has to do with singing and dancing, shall we stop for a moment waving our colorful glittering banners to find out what Jesus said about music and singing as worshiping God? He is worth way more than our emotions and singing and dancing. Father sacrificed his Son Jesus not so that we could sing week by week and get our emotional tank full. No, He offered his son Jesus as a sacrifice so that we in return out of his mercies will offer ourselves as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God – this is our spiritual act of worship. Romans 12:1.

Worship is a spiritual act, not words or music to words. It is a doing! It is sacrifice. It is death to one’s self, one’s own future. When God saw that his people do not keep up to His word, he sent The Word in a human form. He sacrificed his own son Jesus in order to get back a people of his very own. Denying all that we are and all that we own and identify with, and then stepping out to follow Him without questions to the very end will lead us to be true worshipers. Worship has to become our lifestyle.

Jesus Unemployed

Each one pursues his own work in God’s name and believes this is what God is up to and is passionately burdened with right now. Belief in God has imploded into people believing in themselves. What is absent in this journey of faith? Is it the lack of hearing and discerning God, or is it disobedience, living and acting according to convenience, or simply the lack of knowledge of the truth, the inability to let go of tradition or the fear of the new?

If Jesus says, “I will build my church”, why then are we so busy building His church? If Church is the body of Christ, which is formed by every one voluntarily binding him/herself to Jesus and to each other, why then is there much disunity, malfunction, retarded developments and cocooned factions in the body of Christ? This doesn’t give the picture of the spotless bride that Jesus wants to marry and live happily ever after. How difficult are we yet going to make it for Jesus to build his Church? When will we resign from the job that is not originally ours and give it over to the right person Jesus who really really longs and waits with passion to build His Church. Any way it is his body; will we at all let him take care of his own body? If anyone messes around with another’s body, it is called violence and rape. We have not only made Jesus unemployed but we also forcefully plunder him.

And we do all these firmly believing that it is God’s will. What ignorance has overtaken us! So we work and work even harder and we run and run until we hit the brick wall and are not willing to learn the lesson. We will not resign and give the job over to the one who is rightly and truly authorized for the job.

Basically, we don’t want to trust Jesus with his job. We know better how to build churches. Therefore we sacrifice everything, even the job that is assigned for us: to be in unity with the Father and his son Jesus, SO THAT the world may believe in the one that was sent. “Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” “May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me”. Here, Jesus, gives an important and valid tip on how to let the whole world know about him. Global evangelisation demands the lifestyle of unity of Jesus’ body. He also gave the most helpful tip on how to unite, to become one like he is with his Father: “All I have is yours and all you have is mine”. When the churches and mission organizations around the globe could honestly say this to each other and mean it then we can experience Psalm 133; his blessing and his life.

So far the world has recognized Jesus as a swear word but not yet as the Word, the sent one who deeply loves them. Why? What are we reflecting on this world? Disunity, despair, jealousy, competition, factions and divisions, selfishness, and the list can go on. Jesus even prays to his father about the glory that he has given to his believers, which his father had given him, so that we believers are one just like he and his father are one. Whatever happened to this glory that he is talking about! Where did we loose this glory? Why no one gives even a little consideration to look for it that which we have lost? Is this glory the main component that keeps us as one? Have we lost it or forgotten it? Do we at all care for it or do we ignore it because we want to build OUR churches?

Jesus is longing for you and me to resign and retire so that he can take his rightful place as the architect and master-builder and do what he knows best to do, build his Church. The one through whom the whole universe came into existence is absolutely able to create his own Bride. Jesus has been lonely for a long time now, let’s unite so he can celebrate the most exciting day of his life: his wedding.

Let’s employ Jesus again and allow him to build his Church and let’s indulge ourselves to unite until the Body of Jesus becomes ONE. As we unite to oneness Jesus will be easily able to build his Church. If we could earnestly say to the other part of our body: “all I have is yours and all you have is mine”, then we know we are one. Then we are dressed worthy for the wedding banquet.

You Mean, A Debt Free Nation?

An excerpt from “Starfish Manifesto” By Wolf:

…When God created Adam and Eve, he did not put them into a vacuum, but placed them into a world that was created and completed for them. It was a “very good world,” with clean water, rivers, gardens, fruits, seeds, animals, a world that was in an incredible balance with God, mankind and itself. When sin destroyed this balance and open communication, enmity came into the world, strife and war not only between man and God, but between mankind itself, mankind and animals, and even among the animals themselves. God started a long road to reconciliation and, in my opinion, lovingly and strategically planned salvation history and its every step.

As the children of Noah’s sons Ham, Seth and Japheth became many nations and the first societies emerged, God chose in Abraham and his heirs the people of Israel to make them a model nation, a blessing and light to the world, so that all other nations in a Godless darkness could watch and see how it is when people live in the light again, in communion with their God. This also included God’s master plan for the corporate, the political set-up of society and not only a salvation plan for individuals. This is why God laid down strikingly simple yet effective political principles, intended for his people to flourish and become all he created them to be. Landa Cope wrote a book calling these principles “The Old Testament Template”. After God liberated Israel out of Egypt, he gave them the Ten Commandments, a foundational Magna Charta regulating the core essentials of a life with God and each other, and therefore provided the very foundation for a civil society.

But that was not all. God went on to establish an entire complex political system, complete with principles that included an open interface and the “traffic laws” between God and mankind (the religious system), the setting down of rules of respect for elders, families, clans, and tribes (the societal system), and establishing principles of learning and teaching (the educational system), simple and transparent tax, hereditary, and debt-cancelling laws (the financial system), clear laws on what is right and wrong, including appropriate penalties and principles of applied forgiveness, complete with legislative, executive, and judiciary institutions (the legal system), and even a system of sleeping and waking, working and celebrating, maintaining a healthy rhythm in life (the life-balance system). In this entire spectrum of society, we can clearly state: God did good to man, in every holistic aspect of the word…

Andrew Jones has published a fascinating speech of Prof. Prabhu Guptara on our current “global culture of debt”. A must read.