The Wonder of Worship

Sunday, November 18^th, ends the teaching series Blue Like Jazz with a look at Worship. I like what Miller says in Chapter 17, “Too much of our time is spent trying to chart God on a grid, and too little is spent allowing our hearts to feel awe. By reducing Christian spirituality to formula, we deprive our hearts of wonder.” (p. 205)

Worship has two dimensions private and public; it’s in our private time of worship that we devote our hearts to God and it’s in our public/communal worship where we demonstrate our hearts to others. Remember whatever we value close to our hearts and spend the majority of time in we become. For me, I don’t spend enough time in private worship of God---how about you?

Oh, don’t get me wrong, I do worship. I worship certain television programs, sports, getting together with friends---some noble entreats...some not so noble. Yet, there is that nagging truth...”whatever we value...spend the majority of time in we become...”

I muse a lot these days about spiritual things and like Miller often my mind doesn’t understand, but “my heart feels wonder in abundant satisfaction.” (p. 205) One of the key “Millerisms “that struck me in BLJ came from this chapter---“there are things you cannot understand, and you must learn to live with this. Not only must you learn to live with this, you must learn to enjoy this. And so it goes....please believe me; I’m trying to learn this thing called humility. How about you?

This I Believe

“At the end of the day, when I am lying in bed and I know the chances of any of our (my) theology being exactly right are a million to one, I need to know that God has things figured out, that if my math is wrong we are still going to be okay...I don’t think there is any better worship than wonder.” (p.206) God does have things figured out. Amen, Mr. Miller....and Selah

Grace,

Bob

Another Look at Love

This past Sunday (November 11^th) Andy challenged us with some Donald Miller’s words from Blue Like Jazz. In Chapter Thirteen, entitled Romance, Miller mused, “I’ve had about fifty people tell me that I fear intimacy. And it is true. I fear what people will think of me, and that is the reason I don’t date very often. People really like me a lot when they only know me a little, but I have this great fear that if they knew me a lot, they wouldn’t like me. That’s the number one thing that scares me about having a wife because she would have to know me pretty well n order to marry me and I think if she got to know me pretty well she wouldn’t like me anymore.”

Love is a little scary, isn’t it? Miller was afraid of “being found out” and so are we. If you love God, have you ever found yourself hiding from God? Andy challenged us to allow love to grow into willing to sacrifice...a sacrificial love. Innately we all want to love and be loved; to know and be known. But it is scary. The funny thing is that this love thing gets even stronger when we find out about another’s warts and all.

The Jesus Way

How did Jesus practice love? As the saying goes...let me count the ways---one way is to step up living a life of service; our needs at The Loft are simple---greeters and connection point at 9:29 and pouring Loft Java at the Café---any takers?

A second way is encouraging others to live life in community. Do you know someone who needs to be connected to a core group---after all, that’s where Lofters deepen their experience of expressing and receiving God’s love. Do you have friends who need to attend “Speed Dating”?

A third is giving. Who can’t get involved in helping feed Costa Rica kids this Christmas during the “Stuffed” teaching? And...a secret---we gotta pay for the electricity, lights, staff and stuff. Love is consistent giving of self including finances.

Finally, another way is to be bold and become an investor in Kingdom work and invite those unattached to a faith community to The Loft...muse on this for a moment.

It’s been said that the investor/inviter is the one who’s responsible to help their guest navigate the experience. That seems simple and easy enough...want to try it? Let’s commit to practice this love thing a little and invite someone apart from God to come to The Loft with you during the Static series beginning Nov 25th. Who knows...it may be a little scary to do that, but that’s what love demands.

What about it? Are you an inviter and investor toward those you meet along the way? How are you doing in ways that Jesus practiced loved? Need to step up living a life of service, encouraging others to be involved in a core group, simply give more and often? When was the last time you invited someone? Love is, indeed, a little scary. Selah

Grace,

Bob

God's Romance

This Sunday, November 11^th, we will look at Chapter 13 of Donald Miller’s book, Blue Like Jazz. Miller learns from his friend Paul that marriage is so much more than he ever thought it would be (p. 146). “One of the ways that God shows me He loves me is through Danielle, and one of the ways that God shows Danielle He loves her is through me.” He goes on to say, “We learn that we are lovable or unlovable from other people...that is why God tells us so many times to love each other.” Pretty good stuff...it’s worth musing about a minute.

Dictionaries usually defines love something like this "an intense affection for another person based on familial or personal ties". Often this "intense affection" stems from a sexual attraction for and strong emotional ties toward that other person. We love other people, or we say we love other people, when we are attracted to them and when they make us feel good.

Notice that a key phrase in the dictionary definition of love is the phrase "based on". This phrase implies that we love conditionally; in other words, we love someone because they fulfill a condition that we require before we can love them. People also love based on feelings and emotions that can change from one moment to the next. A couple may go through a rough patch in their marriage, and they no longer "feel" love for their spouse, so they call it quits.

Can anyone really comprehend "unconditional" love we learn about in Scripture? Many use the example the love that parents have for their children is as close to unconditional love as we can get without the help of God's love in our lives. We continue to love our children through good times and bad, and we don't stop loving them if they don't meet the expectations we may have for them. We make a choice to love our children even when we consider them unlovable; our love doesn't stop when we don't "feel" love for them (i.e., angry, detachment, disappointment). This is similar to God's love for us, but God's love transcends the human definition of love to a point that is nearly impossible for us to comprehend.

God is Love: It is truly Unconditional
God is Love, and His love is very different from human love. God's love is unconditional---it's not based on feelings or emotions. He doesn't love us because we're lovable (doesn’t this relate well to BLJ) or because we make Him feel good; He loves us because He is love. He created us to have a loving relationship with Him, and He sacrificed His own Son (who also willingly died for us) to restore that relationship. (John 3:16)

The Bible tells us that "God is Love" (1 John 4:8). When the Scriptures say, "God is love," they aren't telling us that God is some vage, warm fuzzy feeling of love. The writers of Scripture weren't saying that in our limited form of human love we will find God. Not at all -- in fact, when we read that God is love in the Bible, this means that God defines love. And when we say that God defines love, we don't mean that He defines it like the dictionary might define something -- we mean that God is the very definition of love itself. There is no such thing as love without God. As hard as we might try, we cannot define love outside of knowing God..yes—now love is beginning to make sense and so is Chapter 13 of BLJ!

God is Love: True Love Only Comes Through a Relationship With Him
God is Love! As such, true love -- God's love -- can be summed up 1 John 4:7-11: "Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God, and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. “

God’s romance is pretty powerful, uh?

Muse on this a moment: I guess if I really want to know this love - true love – more and better I need to get to know God more deeply. If I don’t or don’t place this as the priority of my life, what does that say about me? Selah

Grace,

Bob

Confession

We cannot leave the subject of confession without musing about The Great Confession of Peter (or at least I can’t). When Peter made the confession to the ultimate question that was asked by Jesus it started a radical movement. His confession was more than lip service; it was demonstrating faith in action.

I guess part of my BLJ confession booth exercise really needs to be asking myself: Is my confession lip service or one of action? Visit and reflect on Acts 6:3-15; 7:51-60.

It is so easy to be caught up in what is commonly called “legalism”---a do and don’t checklist. Yes, correct decisions and behavior, albeit, I admit, sometimes a struggle, is a demonstration of what the Holy Spirit is doing in a Christ-followers life---a call to holiness. This thing Peter experienced seems to be much more....a calling to a fully devoted life of following the Christ; one that calls to demonstrating faith in action. Peter’s confession changed everything about Peter’s life and all those who choose to follow Jesus. I don’t know ‘bout you, but I think Donald Miller of Blue Like Jazz fame and I need a “gut check” every once in a while to make sure that we are putting “first things first.”

...and that gut check will (aka confession), as Andy mentioned this morning, “will create space for God to work.” And that, dear friends, is really something special. So...how’s the confession booth thing working for you?

Finally, I really like Miller’s confessions to the Reedies (p. 123). I mentioned these in an earlier muse this week (e.g, not doing much about feeding the poor and healing the sick; lashing out at those when he felt threatened, mixing politics and spirituality). Miller focused on those things that seemed to get in the way of the central message of Christ.

You Know What?

I think that’s a great illustration of putting “first things first.” If we are willing to commit to do more (act) then Jehovah is glorified and we’ve joined God where He is working in the world. I’m trying to practice this more and more in my life and guess what....my decisions are getting better, my behavior and attitude is self-correcting and my do and don’t checklist is decreasing. Simply amazing---no simply grace. Selah

Grace,

Bob