I have been challenged by two different people to shorten the posts to this blog. This is the first attempt at doing that. We will see how it goes.
Jesus said, "But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him." (John 4:23)
Somewhere in the past dozen or so years, most churches seem to have lost the concept of what a worship leader is and does. We could just keep this simple and say a worship leader leads worship. That is probably too simple. It implies we understand what worship is. Most people, it seems, do not know the difference between "praise" and "worship." The difference is critical if we want to truly worship God. Praise is a function of the soul. Worship is a spiritual activity.
We have usually called the time we are in the church building, doing things together, worship. To the contrary, worship is the time when we are one on one with God, in spirit, no distractions, no disruptions. We cannot really worship "with" other people. We can worship in the same place (body), at the same time, and even do the same things, (soul). To truly worship, we must move into the spirit and be alone with God.
In any church service there are three different groups of people. One group does not need any help to worship. Tell them it is time to worship and they begin. The second group, knows about worship and has experienced it on some level, but they need to be helped, to be led, into the presence of God. The third group has no idea what worship is about. They have to be taught whatever cannot be caught during the worship time. Even when they catch onto what is going on, many find it helpful to be given the whys of those things.
A worship leader has a sole purpose when he or she is standing before an assembly. That is to lead each person into the presence of the Almighty. It stands to reason then, that the worship leader must know how to move into the spirit himself or herself. However, simply playing an instrument and/or holding a microphone while worshiping on stage is not leading worship.
Some people think the worship leader has to have superior musical abilities. Seven times in the Psalms we are encouraged to, "make a joyful noise" not "be excellent in music." The truth is that average musical abilities will suffice if the worship leader is able to bring people to the door of the most holy place and then get out of the way so each person can stand face to face with God.
We have visited a number of churches of late and have found it difficult to move past the distractions of cumbersome, wordy songs that most of the congregation finds difficult to sing. It is often as though the person or group on the platform has no idea the difficulty of the songs gets in the way of worship. We used to attend a church where the worship leader had decidedly average musical abilities. Yet somehow, he managed to lead people into the presence of God on a weekly basis, and sometimes mid-week as well. Conversely, there are many very talented musicians and song leaders who simply cannot make the move from soul to spirit to truly lead worship.
All we do here is attempt to stimulate people and churches to better and greater things, hoping that in so doing we will not be a hindrance to the work of the Gospel and the removal of the religious spirit. Should any of these concepts resonate with your spirit, make the necessary changes. Ultimately we members of Christ's body will all come to unity of the faith. (Ephesians 4:13) God bless!
Showing posts with label worship. Show all posts
Showing posts with label worship. Show all posts
Saturday, October 15, 2011
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
The Weapons of Our Warfare, Part 5
It is as impossible to prioritize spiritual weapons by effectiveness as it is to do so with physical weapons. Sometimes a .50 caliber sniper rifle is the correct weapon to employ in conventional warfare and sometimes a .45 caliber handgun is the right one. In spiritual warfare there are times to use one weapon and times to use another. In this post we would like to discuss worship, praise, and music.
We said in a previous post, the word of God is the most effective spiritual weapon because it is the very essence of God and brings all His power to bear in any given situation. It works every time it is employed. We also noted it is employed by speaking it out loud. When we add music to our speaking of the word, we move into a different dimension in our use of the word of God. Music opens our spirits to the Spirit of God. We make the distinction between speaking and singing the word of God understanding that we will not always be quoting scripture in our singing. Music can, in and of itself, be a spiritual weapon or it can add power to the weapons of praise, worship, and prayer.
Music was created by God. Theologians and preachers like to point to Lucifer, who before challenging God's authority, was the worship leader in heaven. They say he was a being uniquely created to lead worship because he was created for that purpose. As far as we can tell, this is probably true. He is only mentioned twice by name in the Bible, but there are other references that are generally believed to refer to him. He is also generally believed to be Satan since the time of his fall from grace in heaven.
Ezekiel chapter 28 is almost universally considered to refer to Lucifer. Verse 13 says, "...The workmanship of your timbrels and pipes was prepared for you on the day you were created." He had timbrels and pipes! What an amazing being he must have been! It is true Lucifer was uniquely created. Such is the nature of angels. They were each uniquely created. None of them is like another. We are going to let you in on a little secret. You have timbrels and pipes. It is true. A timbrel is a simple, percussion instrument. Clap your hands together. You just made the sound of a timbrel, more or less. There is a tube that runs from your nose to your lungs. It is generally referred to as a wind pipe. We have timbrels and pipes. We can worship. We can make music. Granted that some of us make music and some of us just make noise, but God still receives it as praise or worship. I, for one am glad of that. I have four children who sing like angels. They did not get that ability from me.
Music elevates and empowers our words and moves our speaking of the word of God to a higher plane. Music inspires the angels who fight on our side and confuses the demonic hordes who fight against us. By way of real life illustration, consider your personal reaction to different types of music. I am not a huge fan of opera in most cases. I feel less enthusiastic about rap music. I have been known to leave the room if someone is listening to rap--or change the station in the mission van. (Were I preaching this message, I would add something like, "Angels cannot fight to the accompaniment of rap music because they have to put down their swords to cover their ears.")
As mentioned earlier, we will not always be quoting scripture when we are singing. Although scripture is the best thing to speak or sing, God receives praise and worship from our lips whether accompanied by music or not. He delights to hear what is in our hearts. He knows it is good for us to hear it too. That is why He encourages us throughout scripture to speak or sing.
We said in a previous post, the word of God is the most effective spiritual weapon because it is the very essence of God and brings all His power to bear in any given situation. It works every time it is employed. We also noted it is employed by speaking it out loud. When we add music to our speaking of the word, we move into a different dimension in our use of the word of God. Music opens our spirits to the Spirit of God. We make the distinction between speaking and singing the word of God understanding that we will not always be quoting scripture in our singing. Music can, in and of itself, be a spiritual weapon or it can add power to the weapons of praise, worship, and prayer.
Music was created by God. Theologians and preachers like to point to Lucifer, who before challenging God's authority, was the worship leader in heaven. They say he was a being uniquely created to lead worship because he was created for that purpose. As far as we can tell, this is probably true. He is only mentioned twice by name in the Bible, but there are other references that are generally believed to refer to him. He is also generally believed to be Satan since the time of his fall from grace in heaven.
Ezekiel chapter 28 is almost universally considered to refer to Lucifer. Verse 13 says, "...The workmanship of your timbrels and pipes was prepared for you on the day you were created." He had timbrels and pipes! What an amazing being he must have been! It is true Lucifer was uniquely created. Such is the nature of angels. They were each uniquely created. None of them is like another. We are going to let you in on a little secret. You have timbrels and pipes. It is true. A timbrel is a simple, percussion instrument. Clap your hands together. You just made the sound of a timbrel, more or less. There is a tube that runs from your nose to your lungs. It is generally referred to as a wind pipe. We have timbrels and pipes. We can worship. We can make music. Granted that some of us make music and some of us just make noise, but God still receives it as praise or worship. I, for one am glad of that. I have four children who sing like angels. They did not get that ability from me.
Music elevates and empowers our words and moves our speaking of the word of God to a higher plane. Music inspires the angels who fight on our side and confuses the demonic hordes who fight against us. By way of real life illustration, consider your personal reaction to different types of music. I am not a huge fan of opera in most cases. I feel less enthusiastic about rap music. I have been known to leave the room if someone is listening to rap--or change the station in the mission van. (Were I preaching this message, I would add something like, "Angels cannot fight to the accompaniment of rap music because they have to put down their swords to cover their ears.")
As mentioned earlier, we will not always be quoting scripture when we are singing. Although scripture is the best thing to speak or sing, God receives praise and worship from our lips whether accompanied by music or not. He delights to hear what is in our hearts. He knows it is good for us to hear it too. That is why He encourages us throughout scripture to speak or sing.
We discussed a little on the difference between praise and worship in an earlier post, More on Spirit vs. Soul, 6/28/09. We do not intend to reprise that here. However, it is important to understand that praise and worship are two different activities. Someone has summarized the primary difference well in saying that praise is thanking God for what He has done while worship is thanking God for who He is.
Praise is a two-part activity. While our spirit is supposed to always be active, it is not necessary for it to be when we praise. We make a decision to praise (soul) and tell our body to do so. That can involve using the pipe and timbrels and doing anything else with our bodies that seems right. There are some in almost any church who think it undignified to dance or lift hands or objects to to the Lord during praise. Unfortunately for them, God does not agree with that perspective. The Bible is replete with examples of various physical activities associated with praise. Granted most of those things are in the Old Testament. For those who believe Jesus did away with the Old Testament celebrations and such, we would strongly encourage you to re-read your Bible.
Worship is a three-part activity. Worship may look like praise to the outside observer. The difference is that in worship, the worshipper is one on one with God. Many "worship" leaders make a fundamental mistake in leading people to worship. They do not get out of the way so the individuals in the group they are leading can get one on one with God. The job of a worship leader is to lead in praise so the people turn their souls and open their spirits to God. When this is accomplished, they are ready individually to enter into the presence of God. It is only when our spirit touches His that worship happens. Most people do not understand this concept, but now you do.
Jesus told the Samaritan woman, in slightly different words that it does not matter where we worship. God is simply looking for those who will worship Him in spirit and in truth. (John 4:23-24) Where we worship, how we worship, with whom we worship is unimportant. What is important is that we worship the one true God in spirit and in truth. Those are the kind of worshippers God prizes. We would challenge you to be one of us.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
More on Spirit vs. Soul
In The Church today we take for granted that if we are doing things that look spiritual they must be spiritual. Unfortunately soulical things look spiritual to the uninitiated, untrained or inexperienced. Those statements taken together may offend some. Should you be one who is offended by those simple facts, it is time for some introspection and perhaps some input from one who is farther along in spiritual life than you are. Just my thoughts on the matter. After all, that is the purpose of blogs in general. In this one, we answer to a higher authority. So while the thoughts may be ours, we hope they are directed by the Holy Spirit. Having said that, let us try and explain what we mean by the first two sentences.
Let us first examine our practice of worship. To give greater definition to that term, we are discussing the time during a church service when the primary activity is group singing, praise, and hopefully worship. Surely those are spiritual things? Wait a minute. Let us carefully consider our answer to that question.
We sing. People without Christ sing. Some of them sing very well. Are they performing a spiritual exercise when they sing? They cannot possibly be. Their spirits are yet dead in sin. Why then would we think our singing is a spiritual exercise when theirs is not? We would give you pause to think, but this format is not really conducive to that. You might want to consider the question before proceeding. The defining factor here is that when our singing comes out of our spirits, it is a spiritual activity. We cannot help you any more than that at this point.
Well then, what about praise? Surely praise is a spiritual activity? Let us answer that question with a question just for rhetorical effect. Have you ever given a compliment, or been complimented? That is the essence of praise. In praise we give glory, a compliment, to God for any of his various works that come to mind. The mind is part of the soul. We have likely all had people without Christ give us praise for something. They praise. We praise. One is not automatically a spiritual activity and the other not. Do not stop reading yet. It gets better--we hope.
Singing is not necessarily a spiritual activity and praise is not necessarily a spiritual activity. Worship, however, is always a spiritual activity. By definition, we can only worship in response to God calling forth worship from us, that is from our spirit. Our spirit links with God's Spirit and we communicate directly with Him. Sometimes this seems to be a random act of God, but we can learn to do it intentionally anytime we desire. A dear saint of God told me many years ago she was opposed to the idea that God was like a faucet we turn on when we want something. God is always on. We have to turn on our own spirit to commune with Him in worship.
The problem with saying that worship is always a spiritual exercise is that what passes for worship many times is really nothing more than us attempting, or wanting to worship. We never actually get past our soul into our spirit. Hence, we never actually worship. We do not accurately discern spiritual activities from soulical activities. We may think we are worshiping because someone has told us that what is going on is worship. We think we are doing what everyone else is doing so we must be worshipping. Most people do not understand that worship is one on one time with God, giving Him the glory due Him for being God. This can never be done corporately. We can sing and we can praise God together, but to move into real worship, we must come face to face with Almighty God and give voice to our spirit's yearning to worship. In worship we give glory to God for being God with all that incorporates. Of the items we are discussing, only worship incorporates spirit, soul, and body together in the same activity.
What we have been discussing so far is the vertical activity of worship. There is a horizontal, soulical activity we usually think of as being spiritual. We even often use the Greek word rather than the English word. Using the Greek word must make it spiritual. It is taken directly from the Bible after all. The word and the activity we are discussing is, of course, koinonia, the Greek word for fellowship. We have fellowship one with another. We do not really need to do the whole, people without Christ thing again do we?
Someone has defined koinonia as, "Any church gathering with food." That is a fanciful definition, but unfortunately not too far off the mark. Many churches consider any gathering outside the routine, scheduled services in the church building to be koinonia. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, our suspicion is that most believers have never experienced koinonia. Koinonia is one on one, face to face, spirit to spirit interaction with another believer. It gets interesting here because, unlike worship which is only one on one with the one God, we can have koinonia in groups. What passes for, and is usually called koinonia is often nothing more than friendly, soulical interaction. There is nothing wrong with friendly, soulical interaction. It just is not koinonia. When two or more people are gathered together in Jesus' name, He promised to be in their midst. (Matthew 18:20) When our spirits are tuned to Him, we are also linked to each other by the Holy Spirit. It is only at that point we have acheived koinonia.
Both worship and koinonia function as closed loops. The difference is that in worship the closed loop is God and each of us individually. In koinonia, the closed loop incorporates God and everyone else who is linked to him in the same place. The disciples in the upper room, waiting for the arrival on earth of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:1) were said to be "in one accord". They were enjoying one another's fellowship in the presence of God. Think of the loop as coming from God, running through each of the believers in the room and returning to God. That is the essence of koinonia.
In summary, soulical activities often look like spiritual activities. We have given but two examples although those two incorporate our vertical relationship with God and our horizontal relationship with other people. In a sense, we might say those two activities include everything we can do. We need to be aware that simply because something may look spiritual does not necessarily mean it is. Of course we also need to learn to function in the spirit intentionally and often. The more our activities are spirit centered, the more abundant our life will be.
Let us first examine our practice of worship. To give greater definition to that term, we are discussing the time during a church service when the primary activity is group singing, praise, and hopefully worship. Surely those are spiritual things? Wait a minute. Let us carefully consider our answer to that question.
We sing. People without Christ sing. Some of them sing very well. Are they performing a spiritual exercise when they sing? They cannot possibly be. Their spirits are yet dead in sin. Why then would we think our singing is a spiritual exercise when theirs is not? We would give you pause to think, but this format is not really conducive to that. You might want to consider the question before proceeding. The defining factor here is that when our singing comes out of our spirits, it is a spiritual activity. We cannot help you any more than that at this point.
Well then, what about praise? Surely praise is a spiritual activity? Let us answer that question with a question just for rhetorical effect. Have you ever given a compliment, or been complimented? That is the essence of praise. In praise we give glory, a compliment, to God for any of his various works that come to mind. The mind is part of the soul. We have likely all had people without Christ give us praise for something. They praise. We praise. One is not automatically a spiritual activity and the other not. Do not stop reading yet. It gets better--we hope.
Singing is not necessarily a spiritual activity and praise is not necessarily a spiritual activity. Worship, however, is always a spiritual activity. By definition, we can only worship in response to God calling forth worship from us, that is from our spirit. Our spirit links with God's Spirit and we communicate directly with Him. Sometimes this seems to be a random act of God, but we can learn to do it intentionally anytime we desire. A dear saint of God told me many years ago she was opposed to the idea that God was like a faucet we turn on when we want something. God is always on. We have to turn on our own spirit to commune with Him in worship.
The problem with saying that worship is always a spiritual exercise is that what passes for worship many times is really nothing more than us attempting, or wanting to worship. We never actually get past our soul into our spirit. Hence, we never actually worship. We do not accurately discern spiritual activities from soulical activities. We may think we are worshiping because someone has told us that what is going on is worship. We think we are doing what everyone else is doing so we must be worshipping. Most people do not understand that worship is one on one time with God, giving Him the glory due Him for being God. This can never be done corporately. We can sing and we can praise God together, but to move into real worship, we must come face to face with Almighty God and give voice to our spirit's yearning to worship. In worship we give glory to God for being God with all that incorporates. Of the items we are discussing, only worship incorporates spirit, soul, and body together in the same activity.
What we have been discussing so far is the vertical activity of worship. There is a horizontal, soulical activity we usually think of as being spiritual. We even often use the Greek word rather than the English word. Using the Greek word must make it spiritual. It is taken directly from the Bible after all. The word and the activity we are discussing is, of course, koinonia, the Greek word for fellowship. We have fellowship one with another. We do not really need to do the whole, people without Christ thing again do we?
Someone has defined koinonia as, "Any church gathering with food." That is a fanciful definition, but unfortunately not too far off the mark. Many churches consider any gathering outside the routine, scheduled services in the church building to be koinonia. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, our suspicion is that most believers have never experienced koinonia. Koinonia is one on one, face to face, spirit to spirit interaction with another believer. It gets interesting here because, unlike worship which is only one on one with the one God, we can have koinonia in groups. What passes for, and is usually called koinonia is often nothing more than friendly, soulical interaction. There is nothing wrong with friendly, soulical interaction. It just is not koinonia. When two or more people are gathered together in Jesus' name, He promised to be in their midst. (Matthew 18:20) When our spirits are tuned to Him, we are also linked to each other by the Holy Spirit. It is only at that point we have acheived koinonia.
Both worship and koinonia function as closed loops. The difference is that in worship the closed loop is God and each of us individually. In koinonia, the closed loop incorporates God and everyone else who is linked to him in the same place. The disciples in the upper room, waiting for the arrival on earth of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:1) were said to be "in one accord". They were enjoying one another's fellowship in the presence of God. Think of the loop as coming from God, running through each of the believers in the room and returning to God. That is the essence of koinonia.
In summary, soulical activities often look like spiritual activities. We have given but two examples although those two incorporate our vertical relationship with God and our horizontal relationship with other people. In a sense, we might say those two activities include everything we can do. We need to be aware that simply because something may look spiritual does not necessarily mean it is. Of course we also need to learn to function in the spirit intentionally and often. The more our activities are spirit centered, the more abundant our life will be.
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