Worship

The other day I was in my car listening to my itouch and Israel’s version of “I exalt thee” comes on. I LOVE this song…simple, perfect, magnify God worship.
Before I knew it was caught up in reverent worship with tears streaming down my face and a freedom of expression I haven’t felt in a really long time.

After it was over I tried to remember when the last time I felt such a flood gate of sincere liberating worship and I am sad to say it was FOREVER ago. It was at a Mercy Me concert. What?! Why? When was the last time before that?
You gotta be kidding me….a Toby Mac concert last winter. Ugh, something is not right here! Before then…ah, having a hard time pinpointing it.

I remember that Toby Mac concert and the fervency in which I worshipped. I know what your thinking…worship to Boomin’ out your stereo system. Yep, maybe not that song in particular but “Made to love you”, “Jesus Freak”, or “Lose my Soul”. There was such a liberty in the Holy Ghost there…how? Maybe because the people there didn’t really care that the only expression of worship was a hand clap or foot stomp or jumping down in one little spot only. They were “worldly” and they danced before the Lord. Their dance probably looked more like the dance David danced before the Ark on its way back to temple then what we express every Sunday night.

Walking away from that experience I knew that my worship up to that point had been capped off and shallow compared to I had just had liberty to do. Think I am strange? I have one other example of a true liberated expression of worship. And up until that point I had NEVER felt such freedom.

I was at a prayer meeting at Landmark. There were about 20 of us there. We were in the sanctuary. Spent hours there…towards the end of evening someone put on “God is a Good God” it was dark with only the night light shining in through the windows above and from what I can remember and from what I could see Worship exploded in that place…there was such a liberty to dance before the Lord and to make a joyful sound. I had never felt so euphoric before in the presence of the Lord. I was giving him my all and everything that he had given me I gave back to him.

After that night I yearned for such liberty again in my worship. I began to have “private sessions” of worship before God in my basement with my kids. I longed for that rawness of emotion and expression before the Lord but I had no liberty to express it within the confines of a Pentecostal service.

There was a time during a community group; when I felt the power of the Lord but no one else seemed to and tears of worship poured out but I felt ashamed as everyone looked at me. I noticed after that instance I never again let on again to the anointing I would feel in worship and I stifled it. So the instances became fewer and further in between…a Toby Mac concert last winter and a Mercy Me concert a few short months after several months last Saturday driving to Park Meadows…So much time has elapsed.

The reason I can not fail...

Acknowledgement

Happy to say that had a brief glimpse of what depression can look like and decided not to hang around and visit. I’m not who you say I am. I am more than a conqueror, I am bought with a price. I’m filled with Living water that flows out and touches the lives of those around me. I am a light in a dark world pointing others to Christ.
I will no longer allow you to bully me or intimidate me. Or cause me to doubt myself and the living God in whom I serve. I will not allow you to condemn me nor persecute me.
I will live above your influence and strive to do what God has called me to do. I will no longer be catergorized by your walls of humanity. The legacy I am striving for; come hell, come high water, come pain, come failure is to be someday called a Christian...someone who really is Christ-like. I will make it. I will be changed. I will become.

I am tired of waking up and not feeling well. I tend to feel hopeless lost and filled with despair. I try to ignore the achy feeling deep in my gut and most of the time I successfully achieve this. However I would be foolish to believe that my ignoring has made it go away.
I’m not sure how to fix this…I know all the “right” answers but they just don’t seem to be the solution to the problem. It seems to be that no matter what my actions are I am going to experience some degree of despair, hopelessness, emptiness, and un-fulfillment.

For quite some time now I have been going through a process that has me walking the line so to speak. I am tired of the establishment, I am tired of the man, I am tired of religion, and I am tired of my complacent self. I would love to see change and reform to the way things are done and handled. Because of this I am fighting cynicism, complacency, bitterness, and even rebellion.

To get to the brass tacks of what I want…. I want nothing more than to be in the presences of God, doing his work, loving and helping others discover Jesus. This seems to be the hardest thing to achieve for me. To me, it seems like I run into barriers of man and their opinion and their control on how things should be and can be done. We let humanity govern Christianity rather than letting Christianity govern our humanity, therefore snuffing out the true potential of the church and its ability to reach the lost effectively and keep the saints healthy.

It’s been in the last couple years that I have seen and understood the true meaning of Christianity. Please don’t get me wrong I probably only see a small fragment of what it is and I have leaps and bounds more to discover and learn. But one thing I know for sure is that what I “knew” before was wrong. I did not exercise my Christianity in love. I lacked compassion and therefore relevancy to the broken and hurting.

I handed everyone I knew who was going through something a clinical “textbook” answer and I never knelt down and got my hands dirty and helped.
I stoically stood there with my spiritual scrubs on, my face mask, my gloved hands and stared down my nose at people as I handed them a rope, tied it to a tree and walked away saying a prayer. It ticks me off to think about how much of a religious jerk I have been.

I’m afraid that most Christians are like this. I can testify for myself now. Being on this side of the fence, it has helped me see who I was and how I can never be again. And now that I need someone I have found there is no one to be found. Most people are look at me standing behind a 10 foot pole making sure they don’t breathe the same contaminated air I do.

I see the look on your faces as you walk past me. I see the language of your body and your darting eyes. I hear your calculated words and detached tone. I feel the emptiness of your half hearted hug. I see you tie a rope around a tree and breathe a prayer in some distant corner for me as you walk away.
I can’t say I blame you. I was taught the same thing you were. Believe me, I know what its like to be on your side of the fence when I tell my daughter she can’t hang out with a kid because they are going to be a bad influence on her…I’ve told her she can’t breathe the same air as them because I didn’t want her to be contaminated.

On this side of the fence though I have to say…wow, does that hurt. I had to recently hear the words come out of my daughter’s mouth that someone has told their kid they can’t come over anymore because they aren’t sure about the decisions we are making. As I choked back the lump in my throat and held back the tears in my eyes I had to be strong and look my beloved in the face and say…its okay. God knows where we are. We don’t need man’s approval.

Problem is…we need man’s approval. We need their seal of recommendation to live out what God has given us. The church is suppose to be a place where saints and sinners alike can draw strength from. Where the blood of Calvary flows freely and the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost. Where the world knows we are the children of God because we love one another. Instead, being on this side of the fence, it’s a cold, dry, lonely place where you are beat down and neglected because your issue is visible, well all the others have theirs hidden well beneath the layers of “holiness”.

I can testify that this process has been a difficult one. I have seen my humanity in all its shapes and sizes. I have seen how I let it lead me to believe I was a better Christian because I knew when to lift my hands and stomp my feet on the right beat. I see how my humanity led me to believe that I had my Christianity down pact because I believed I had a corner stone on truth and on holiness. Now I see my humanity in a whole different light…Woe is me! For I am undone. I have unclean lips and I am filled with iniquity. I finally see myself in the true light of Calvary. I finally see myself in need of redemption. I need grace and mercy to be save me from myself.

I’ve heard it said that “you need to be the seed of change that you want to see grow”. Slowly and very deliberately now I am making sure I become the very thing I need. And maybe somewhere in the process I can be fixed. I am learning to love others despite who they are and what they have did. I am learning to be compassionate and caring towards others. In all my faults; during this process of life, I am reaching out to the hurting, the broken, the wounded and I am offering a hand to pull someone one to dry land even though I feel like I am standing on sinking sand.

I have not and will not give up on the absolute truth of the Word of God. But I can’t say I am not struggling with man’s interpretation of it. As much as I would like to say I have “studied and rightly divided the Word of Truth” I have not. For too long I have lent a hand to someone else seeking out my salvation using fear to cause me to tremble. I do not want to take away credit for a man of God in my life by any means. But at some point I need to start taking full ownership in my walk with God and the choices I make. I need to live my life for God and not for man.