|
||
|
Living as God’s Missional
People 7-13-08 Text: Isaiah 61; Isaiah 1 To date… We were created for ‘glory’ and ‘righteousness’,… Glory- transcendence (to connect with ‘the other’); life that’s bigger; weightier. Righteousness- they desire to see things set right; to put an end to the dysfunctionality which has characterized their lives. ● But, we ‘glory’ in the wrong things; we are forever attaching the wrong ‘price tag’ to life. Because we are always attaching the wrong price tag to things/life, our life becomes ‘dis-orderly’. There seems to be a direct link between what we glory in and the rightly-ordered life. Our experience of God will be incomplete unless we are becoming the kind of people through whom his restorative-love is rebuilding, repairing and refreshing a broken world. ● I suggested to you that throughout the story of God, worship always seemed to be the response to glory. “God likes it when we ________”. How would you fill in that blank. ● You’ll discover that there’s no shortage of writing or opinion on the topic of worship. As you glance through the offerings, it seems worship is most often discussed in terms of implementation- the ‘hows’; ‘methodology’: what is the ‘correct’ way to worship. [i.e. ‘stayed’ or ‘boisterous’; is it best ‘prescribed’ or should it be ‘spontaneous’; should it be ‘contemporary’ or ‘historical’--- it was all contemporary at one time]. ● I’ve visited churches where they encourage individual expressions of worship: painting, drawing, lighting candles, the table, etc. ● I’ve been in gatherings where we were actually chastised for ‘not doing it right’. Then, we leave those experiences riddled with guilt or doubt because our experience has not seemed to parallel the group’s. ● As far as I can determine, the only pre-requisite is that we worship “in spirit and in truth” (John 3). It must reflect what’s ‘true’ (reality); of us, of God, of his world, and it must proceed from our ‘spirit’- the vital life; the ‘well-spring’. ►Worship is essentially… … a ‘response’: glory always evokes a response. That response could be wonder, curiosity, or boredom. Since worship is a response, it also requires an experience (i.e. like taking our kids on vacation, excited to share with them some beauty that we have experienced) The objective is never to prompt anyone to worship (that would be like the fake smile on our kids’ faces); my role is to portray God in such a way as to make him attractive and accessible. … the ‘right response’: the grace we celebrate and rehearse is God’s initiative-- his movement toward us. The choices are not complicated: reach back or ignore it. ►A proper response always takes on some form of ‘offering’. Giving our attention, our time, our thanks, our strength, our finances, etc. Not in such a way that we simply grudgingly recognize God as our obligation, but the response of a heart that wants to say ‘thanks’ in so many ways.
So, worship is the right
response to life because it values what God values and re-orders its life
accordingly. |
