Pimp my God
I'm continuing to think about worship . . . a lot. It concerns me. We've done the same thing to the word worship that has been done to the word Church. The Church was not a building, but now that it is, we have to go there to meet with Christ, and to be a Christian, depending on who you talk to. In the same kind of way, we have made worship about us, and have tried to customize for ourselves a God that likes what we like. It's comforting to have the master of the universe on your side. It's even more comforting to be able to tell Him what He likes.
Pimp my God . . . trick Him out so He's exactly what I want.
Unfortunatly, X to the Z can't do much to change what God wants. Neither can we. God has this funny thing where he wants us to love Him. He wants that love to flow from us, whether we are particularly fond of it or not. But instead, we say things like, 'God made me to like contemporary music.' Sure. You enjoy contemporary music . . . I hope we can still worship God if we go deaf, or mute, or all of the acoustic guitars in the worlds are destroyed by a freak sandstorm (sorry, looking for something ourrageous: it's the best I could do).
The other thing that's been wearing on my heart is 'infighting' as Gwenyth Redhead recently put it. I just couldn't find the right word to use. Thanks, Gwen. We gossip, and we talk about people behind their back, and we talk about peoples' views behind their back. We declare ourselves good stwards of our resources, when we use our energy to debunk a fellow believer with whom we don't agree.
All the while, Satan sits just outside our peripheral vision . . . cheering us on. As long as we are preoccupied with the one who doesn't appreciate OUR style of worship, Satan is free to do whatever he well pleases.
1As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. 2Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. 3Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. 4There is one body and one Spirit–just as you were called to one hope when you were called– 5one Lord, one faith, one baptism; 6one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
Grace. There's much more to come.
2 comments:
Hey Des, I've recently been thinking a lot about the point you made regarding "infighting." I don't understand the fight and frankly I'm tired of it. How much good can we do as an Army if we're constantly fighting each other over what kind of worship we prefer or something else that's just as simple to remedy - or not so simple it seems? Just a thought that keeps coming up that I can't seem to figure out.
Perhaps all of us can figure it out together. I hope so.
Joy
There is nothing like living in someone else's past. We don't know what it looks like, smells like, or feels like and yet we are expected to live it out and never be ourselves.
The major complaint that I have concerning this resistance to recognizing transitions is that we become so focused on me that even God begins to have very little to do with why I worship or am I even worshipping at all. Maybe I'm just being entertained. (We could drop the maybe and have a more accurate statement.)
I have an Idea, let's stop accepting our roles as status-quotitions, and start worshipping God rather than preparing a Sunday morning talent show. (A bad one at that). Life is too short to make it about me. Tomorrow (that's how quickly it will seem) I will be explaining to God where He was in all of this and He will have a hard time being convinced.
I wonder if I were to walk into the chapel on a Sunday morning and asked who is here to worship, how many would raise their hands. Probably all of them. But what if I then said, "Ok. Worship." How many would know what to do, if there was no one on the platform to lead?
I'm glad we've come to the question of "What is worship?
Let's figure it out according to God's objective truth, and stay away from our own desire of what we'd like it to be according to our likes and comforts.
Thanks Des. Nice thoughts.
Johnny
Post a Comment