Am I Being Too Critical?

Okay so I'm struggling.

This is not a post about mothering or weight loss or anything like that. This is about something I probably don't talk about much on here but is very much a part of my life. So, humor me if you will.

This is a post about my faith. More specifically about worship, worship styles, worship leadership and my struggles for a desire to see others genuinely worship God.

As a preface I recently learned this about myself: I have a hard time with people not doing things just as I would do them. I have this filter, this grid for how things should be done rightly and if it's not just so, if it's not absolutely right then it must be wrong. This is good when it comes to things that need to have hard lines on them such as believing in Jesus, theology, things like that.

Lord help me to explain myself in a way that honors You... and not me.

Someone emailed me and asked if I knew a certain song so I looked it up on You Tube. I watched a video that I will not name and was... well... saddened I guess. Don't ever look at video comments, they are stupid.

I guess I struggle, not necessarily with the lights and the concert feel of modern day ... I can't think of a word, worship venues? I don't know. I maybe struggle more with the person that I am watching behind the microphone. Or I am struggling with the musician. Maybe I am just being judgmental. I'm just going to come out and say it, I am judgmental. I'm really sorry about that.

I am a worship leader. ... Can I run and hide now? Am I the pot calling the kettle black? Maybe I am too afraid (I keep typing and deleting here) of offending someone (honestly, I'm not afraid of offending someone, I just don't want to feel like I'm offending someone, geez I hate my life).

Okay, maybe what I'm trying to say here is that it has a disengenuious feel to it. This whole "worship music" thing. It feels like a performance. It feels like man is singing more for himself than for God. It feels like we are all trying to look and sound cool and sound and act just like the world.

Why does something in my spirit just get a twinge of uneasiness when I hear lyrics like, "I know you love me" or "come into my heart" or "you've got a plan for me" ... is God someone who can be told what to do? I don't know, it feels like this big, touchy-feely kind of love song thing. Now, there's nothing wrong with us telling God we love him and those lyrics are true, but it feels strange when those are the only lyrics sung over and over and over again.

Lord, am I wrongly frustrated? Am I overly critical? I genuinely want to know. Are we dumbing down lyrics because we don't know the whole truth? Are we shallow in our Christianity?

All these things are my struggles. I need help Lord.

A Sacrifice of Worship

This morning I read this:

While he was in Bethany, reclining at the table in the home of a man known as Simon the Leper, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, made of pure nard. She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head.
Some of those present were saying indignantly to one another, "Why this waste of perfume? It could have been sold for more than a year's wages and the money given to the poor." And they rebuked her harshly.
"Leave her alone," said Jesus. "Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want. But you will not always have me. She did what she could. She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial. I tell you the truth, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told in memory of her."
Mark 14:3-9

This passage hit me in a new way this morning.

Have you ever been rebuked harshly for your sacrifice of worship? I have. I'm not saying I am pure and holy and this amazing worshiper as this woman was, but it is a difficult thing to worship publicly in this way.  I was thinking about how the room they were in was filled with people. People who don't understand why you brought in your most expensive perfume and are now pouring it on Jesus. Isn't this supposed to be a private, intimate thing, and yet it is in the presence of all these people? But really, Jesus was in the room. I mean, Jesus was there and she was so intent on showing him how much she loved him that she didn't even care. She pushed those other things aside because her King, her Lord was there. He was the one who redeemed her and showed her truth in the midst of all her lies. She didn't care.

And she was rebuked harshly because of it.

But I think it was because they didn't understand. But Jesus understood. I imagine others in the room understood but didn't speak up. Jesus said that she has done a beautiful thing for him.

I want to worship in this way. Yes, I may be misunderstood. I pray that I would be pleasing to the Lord, that my heart would be pure in what I do.

Please help me Jesus. I want to give a sacrifice of worship that is holy and pleasing to the Lord. I want to give You everything that I have and hold nothing back. Why hold anything back?

Whom have I in heaven but You? The earth has nothing I desire besides You.
My heart and flesh may fail, but God is the strength of my life and my portion forever.
Psalm 73:25-26

Stuff I am learning part 1

The internet is so distracting. It's like a minefield of ADD stuff. All my usual tabs that I check, the home feeds, the messages, the sites I need to check up on... I usually put off or just don't blog because I wasted all my time just being on the internet without a purpose. I'm not going to do that tonight. Another problem I was thinking about is the fact that I'm writing this at 10:30 pm on a Sunday night. Who gets on the internet and reads blogs on Sunday nights? I will probably have like 3 hits by tomorrow (I hate it that I can see how many people have looked at my blog, but it's like I can't keep from clicking on that "stats" button. I keep telling myself it won't effect me... there you go, there's another one of my weaknesses.)

What am I even blogging about? I don't know. Things running through my mind are how I don't really sleep at night, therefore I don't want to go to bed. Or about this morning's worship service and how I got to read scripture as we sang, it was out of Revelation 4 and by the end of it I was yelling (my voice was starting to go hoarse) the part about "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God almighty who was and is and is to come" Afterwards my dad and I were talking about it and he said, "Yeah, that scripture needs to be powerful, if you really think about what was happening and how those powerful angels were falling on their faces... I can't imagine what it will be like for us when we see God."

I am thinking about how reserved we are in the way we pray or the way we worship.  Maybe it's because we are white, maybe it's because it's always been done. I read a blog from our pastor today about prayer and how we need to be living and walking in prayer, how we don't do it enough. For sure this is true, we are never praying enough.

I went to a prayer meeting a few weeks back and it was difficult. I'm just going to be honest. It was hard to sit there and listen to people pray. I kept sitting there thinking, why am I struggling like this? Don't I love God? What is my problem?  I'm going to say something totally controversial on here, but that's okay because only like 3 people will read it... I feel like we settle for boring prayer. As though we have to pray starting with "Father God" throw in a few "dear Lord"s, and end with "in Jesus name" we need to ask for stuff, but not too much, we need to mention the sick people, but don't pray too boldly because if God doesn't heal them, then both we and God will look foolish... we need to pray in pensive voices with our eyes closed, we need to be articulate because others can hear us... all of that is crap. I shouldn't say stuff like that really, but I am so frustrated to hear prayers that sound like God is some sort of thing you say enough "Heavenly Father"s to and then you will get what you want. He is not a weakling and He definitely knows what is going on in our minds. He hears how we talk to our friends and family and it's not with a pensive voice or furrowed brow unless we are really being pensive about something.

Shouldn't prayer be just talking to God? Isn't He our Daddy? I read the Psalms and I wonder if David ever yelled or wept any of the Psalms. We get very passionate at football games, athletic events, concerts, but we act as though when we gather together as believers we need to be dignified.

Wow, I'm suddenly getting so tired. Maybe I can continue this another day.

Broken Churches Led By Broken People part 2

I always seem to procrastinate with the posting. I doddle around on Facebook and then check my email, check my messages, hoping to get caught up in something else.

For the most part, I loved my church growing up. I loved the music especially. :) Around about 7th grade our old worship pastor moved on to another job. He was the traditional hymns and piano kind of guy. I learned many of the hymns I know today from his time. The old people loved him too:) So when we got a new guy who had just come off the mission field from England and the Czech Republic who had a guitar and kid who played the djembe there was a bit of an exodus. He mentioned once to me and a few others that he would get angry letters in the offering tray about it. I imagine that would be a difficult thing. It's interesting how an offering plate can be passed around and the offering from the body are notes of... well, not encouragement.

I loved this new worship leader. He and his family were so full of life and fun. His wife played piano and they had such a heart for international missions. It was as though we had a worship pastor and missions pastor all in one. At the time our youth pastor was encouraging us to be a part of the church, serve in adult ministries, not just to be the future church but to BE the church. As a home schooler this didn't seem too bad to me. I was comfortable with adults and went to some of our Equipping Classes. I think these days they would be called Small Groups. I also got to sing on the worship team. I remember someone asking me what year I was in college and I told them I was in seventh grade. I was tall for my age, but still... really? Whatever. Seriously though, I don't think I've grown an inch since then. :)

Anyways, so after our new worship leader came our youth pastor was called to leave maybe a year later. He gave us four months to find a new youth pastor.

We went nine months without a youth pastor. The parents tried to do their best to step in, but we had been probably too enamored with our first youth pastor, plus, they were our PARENTS... :) really? Who wants them? I started a youth worship team and we were TERRIBLE. I played the piano and this other guy played electric guitar, we tried to incorporate a trumpet, it was terrible.

We got a new youth pastor the middle of my ninth grade year. I wasn't sure about him, he seemed too happy or goofy or something. Now as I look back I see that he had a genuine heart and a desire to be led by the Spirit. He helped me to break outside of my perfect shell. One weekend on a retreat he had an open time of sharing. I knew I needed to tell the truth about my struggle with an eating disorder, my lonliness, my struggles with sexual fantasies... I didn't want to. For some reason I got up there anyways and shared through tears in front of my youth group of about fifty or sixty kids. As a result I had three girls come up to me that night and tell me they were struggling with some of the same things. Since that night I have made a pledge with the Lord that I would be honest at all costs. I knew He would be faithful to bring others into my life I could share with and it didn't matter who knew.

Lord, what do You want me to share? What kind of details? I don't want to slander anyone, but I want to be holy in the way I say stuff... I want to be honest.

Okay, let's just count here. I've seen three youth pastors leave our little church, three worship pastors, four teaching pastors... there was a pastor "disagreement" that was never truly resolved I felt. I think that was the biggest blow. The pastor who left was gracious and moved to another state to continue pastoring, but still about half the church left. It was hard to watch people leave. Easier to see them go on good terms than bad ones. I had one youth pastor take four months to leave, another one left in two weeks. One worship pastor left to go work as a chef, another left to do full time missions around the world, another one left to make a more "seeker friendly" church... I think... I can think of two friends specifically who were hurt by one pastor's ministry and him confronting them on wrong grounds, I guess it was just messy and people lying and stuff like that. ...

Okay, all of that junk to say, the church is led by broken people. So many times I have asked God why? Why did you allow this? These people are wrong! But God quietly responds that He put men in charge who are broken. The more they realize that and live in a dependence on Him, the better. They will be held to a higher standard and God is a just God. Jesus was the hardest on the teachers of the law, I wonder if that's because there was a carnage of people in their path.

We are to submit ourselves to the authority God has placed in our lives. We are to live faithfully to where He has called us to be. We are to do all things without grumbling or complaining. We are to search the scriptures for ourselves and make sure that no one is committing heresy. We are to grow where we are planted and do what He has called us to do.

Poverty

I was talking to some friends this evening about the book "Radical" by David Platt, what it represents and other books like "Don't Waste Your Life" by John Piper. Here we sit in America with our nice, pretty, clean, safe houses and cars with our computers, televisions, refrigerators full of food, soft beds, soft couches and all the comforts of life... At what point did we go wrong? When did we go too far? Are we really doing what Jesus said to do... "It is harder for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven."

I'm finding myself needing to re-evaluate my own thought, motivations and patterns and wonder how much of them are cultural, and how much of them are actually scriptural.

Later, as I was putting Levi to bed and began to think of a song by Jason Upton:

Poverty
There's a power in poverty that breaks principalities
brings the authorities down to their knees
There's a brewing frustration and an ageless temptation
to fight for control by some manipulation
but the God of the kingdom and the God of the nations
the God of creation sends this revelation
the homeless and penniless Jesus the Son
the poor will inherit the kingdom to come
where will we turn when our world falls apart
and all the treasures we've stored in our barns
can't buy the kingdom of God
and who will we praise when we praised all our lives
men who build kingdoms and men who build fame
but Heaven does not know their names
What will we fear when all that remains
is God on the throne with a child in His arms
and love in his eyes
the sound of his heart cry