Love Aliens?

Love Aliens?

 

“You are to love those who are aliens” Deuteronomy 10:19

Men become what they worship.  If you love stuff, you become a materialist.  If you love indulging yourself and worship feelings and thrills, you become a hedonist.  If you love your image more than you love God and people, you become a narcissist.  If you worship the “God of gods and Lord of lords” who defends the vulnerable, you become a tender warrior.  This means taking on His character, conduct, and causes with aliens.

When Jesus charged the disciples saying “Go make disciples,” it was synonymous with saying, “Go fight for the captives,” because freedom from sin and death through the Spirit would be the outcome.  The Holy Spirit’s mission in our lives is to conform us to the God we worship, and He is passionate about delivering people.

Through the Holy Spirit, God’s Man shares God’s heart.  Making commitments in His name is synonymous with faithfully acting according to His character.  Make no mistake: His character is to defend the vulnerable, the captive, the marginalized, the persecuted, the oppressed, the lonely, the left out and the left behind.  If we are listening to the Holy Spirit, our hands and feet will eventually take us toward the aliens among us. It may take some time, some maturing, and some changes within us firs, but eventually the Holy Spirit will raise us up as tender warriors who are unafraid and unapologetic to stand up for those who need a spiritual champion to fight for them.


Thank you Father for giving me your heart to reach out to an alien that I once was.



“Tune My Heart”

           I have been thinking.  Having been a Worship Leader, I realized that we could get away with a lot in the first song each Sunday, if I really wanted. Very few would even notice.  People are coming in late, trying to settle their kids, silencing their phones, checking their phones, wrapping up conversations, or just generally disoriented.

            The truth is many of us walk into worship not quite ready to worship. We need a little time to center and focus ourselves. Some of us are frustrated with our kids. Some are disheartened about our work. Some are stressed about the demands of school or the deadlines of our jobs. Others are depressed or apathetic about life. Yet others are fearful, distraught, or mourning. Weekly worship calls us back into a story with the emotional highs and lows of sin and salvation, so we all need to recalibrate.

            The beginning of worship is a critical moment when we release everything else demanding our attention into the capable hands of the very One we are preparing to encounter.

Tune My Heart

            Some historic hymns seem to run on an endless tank of fuel. No matter how many times we sing them, they speak to us, stir us, and lead us to worship. “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing” is one of those hymns for me.

Come, thou fount of every blessing,
Tune my heart to sing thy grace.

          Tune my heart. It’s like guitar in its case, or left out on a stand, it’s not the same guitar. When it is picked up a few days later and strummed, it’s out of tune. Because of forces inside (wood, tension, aging strings) and forces outside (temperature, humidity), a guitar left alone will always fall out of tune.

The same phenomenon happens in our hearts. Between Sundays, we get knocked around, and the forces inside and outside of us — our sin, others’ sin, and the fallenness of the world — send our hearts in all kinds of directions. When we come back to worship together, and the Holy Spirit begins to strum the strings of our hearts, we hear dissonance. Hearts always require re-tuning.

            Because this kind of calibration is critical, but can be difficult, consider a few tips for how to prepare your hearts well for worship.

Worship starts before you enter.

            As many have said before, we don’t enter into corporate worship and begin to worship. We come into the space already worshiping. Our hearts have been loving and desiring in all kinds of directions this week. The first step is to simply recognize and confess that fact, praying that the Holy Spirit would increasingly narrow the gap between the worship offered on Sundays and the worship offered Mondays through Saturdays. The worshiper who grows in orienting their heart toward God Monday through Saturday (whole-life worship) will find themselves more calibrated for Sundays (gathered worship).

Center your heart before worship.

            Before a worship service, all of us can do things that make entrance into worship easier. We can meditate on a verse or two in Scripture or pray through a psalm. We can listen to music that stirs and orients our hearts. Perhaps just ten minutes of quiet is what we need. Certainly turning our phone to “do not disturb” (or even off) can be a helpful, intentional practice to calm our frayed, distracted minds.

Arrive early.

            Few things make it harder to fully engage in worship than arriving just on time or late. Arriving early gives us plenty of time to find a place to sit, and then center our hearts through the word and prayer.

            We’ll also have a chance to prepare for worship by greeting others. Some people think the only way to prepare for worship is to quietly pray and ignore everyone else. That’s a one-dimensional way to approach worship. Because worship is both vertical (us and God) and horizontal (one another), greeting the people worshiping next to you is a wonderful way to calibrate your heart for corporate worship.

Make the most of the first moments.

            Jump into the deep end. Let the call to worship and the opening hymns or songs flood your mind and heart. Sing loudly, breathe deeply, feel passionately. Sometimes, participating physically actually leads our affections to engage spiritually. Recognize that the opening of worship is meant for our calibration, and let it prepare our hearts to worship.



Pure Worship

Going organic has become all the rage now.  People are more than willing to drive the extra mile and pay the extra money for it. The dictionary defines organic as “constitutional or inherent in the basic structure of something; fundamental.”1  So those who take those extra steps to get it want to be assured of getting a product that is as close to nature as possible from a source they trust. They also, more than likely, handle it in such a way as to protect its purity.

This got me thinking; “What if we applied this “organic” concept to our worship – what would it look like? How could we have worship that’s pure, untainted – as God intended?”

Organic worship would be a worship that is grounded and nourished in the Word of God.  It is where we experience His love, learn His ways, and discover His purposes. It’s where we hear the story of His pursuit of us and His call for us to pursue Him.  It is also where we learn how to live a life that is pleasing to Him.  Allowing the Spirit to guide our day-to-day life, including our worship.

God’s Word is also where He reveals His purpose for us.  It is where we can learn from the first worshipers.  We can hear their hearts and see their faith.  It is also where we get a glimpse of His amazing response to their worship.  If we take in all that His Word teaches us regarding worship, we won’t want to just settle for anything less than what He desires.  The attitudes of ignorance, apathy, or callousness would be wiped away.  We will come to the realization that, a focus on ritual, self, or anything else other than our Almighty God just work.  We will not want to “go through the motions” anymore.  Once we get a taste of true, organic worship, and realize that it is so much better and accomplishes so much more, nothing else will do.  We will not get hung up on the things that do not matter or that seriously hinder us.  We will just want to get to the feet of Jesus.  Remember – the WORD is ALIVE! (Hebrews 4:12) It pierces our hearts. It diminishes the glories of this world and raises the glories of our King – giving us a greater passion to worship Him!
 
“What is the cost?” you may ask.  It does cost a little more.  If we haven’t had to go the extra mile to get there, chances are it is not organic. True worship involves sacrifice.  Once we understand the value of true, organic worship, there is no cost too high or sacrifice too great.  We know that He alone is worthy!  We know that His sacrifice was far greater.

“How do we pursue this organic worship?”  Here are a few steps that will help:

  1. Do our homework: Know what the Bible teaches regarding God, your relationship to Him, and worship.
      1. “Like newborn babies, long for the pure milk of the word, so that by it you may grow in respect to salvation” 1 Pet.2:2 NASB.
      2. “O send out Your light and Your truth, let them lead me; Let them bring me to Your holy hill And to Your dwelling places” Psalm 43:3 NASB.
  2. Pay attention to the source: Allow the Holy Spirit to reign in your life and trust His guidance of your worship.
      1. “Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship” Romans 12:1 NASB.
      2. “But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth” John 4:23-24.
  3. Don’t taint it: Pursue a pure, singular focus on God Almighty in worship.
      1. “Who may ascend into the hill of the LORD? And who may stand in His holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, Who has not lifted up his soul to falsehood And has not sworn deceitfully. He shall receive a blessing from the LORD And righteousness from the God of his salvation” Psalm 24:3-5 NASB
      2. “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect” Romans 12:2 NASB.
      3. “For we are the true circumcision, who worship in the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh” Philippians 3:3 NASB
  4. Pay the price: Sacrifice the time and attention necessary to pursue an intimate relationship with God and to worship Him.
      1. “Through Him then, let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that give thanks to His name” Hebrews 13:15 NASB.
      2. “Willingly I will sacrifice to You; I will give thanks to Your name, O LORD, for it is good” Psalm 54:6 NASB.

1 – https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/organic

 


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