Mindful of him

A verse for my birthday:

Job 7:16 I loathe [my life]; I would not live alway: Let me alone; for my days are vanity. (ASV)

You may laugh, but there was a time when this was the type of thoughts that I used to have on my birthday. In those days, my birthday was a day of mourning and sorrow.

But I digress. I found this verse in the ASV because I was looking for the word "vanity" in Ecclesiastes. The verse above is followed by these verses:

Job 7:17 What is man, that thou shouldest magnify him, And that thou shouldest set thy mind upon him, 18 And that thou shouldest visit him every morning, And try him every moment? 19 How long wilt thou not look away from me, Nor let me alone till I swallow down my spittle?

The NIV puts it thus:

17 "What is man that you make so much of him, that you give him so much attention, 18 that you examine him every morning and test him every moment? 19 Will you never look away from me, or let me alone even for an instant?

This put me in mind of another Scripture:

Psalm 8:4 what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? 5 You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. (NIV)

I found this remarkable - that the same idea ("what is man") led to two different expressions, one of despair, and one of awe:

What is man that you, God, make so much of him, that you pester him so?
What is man that you, God, make so much of him, that you lift him up so high?

David redeemed Job's thought. He took the same idea, and changed it from a reason to despair to a reason to rejoice. A good reminder that perspective and attitude matter.

Even concerning ones' birthday.

Awesome Worship

Last night I was part of awesome worship. My church has meetings of small groups of people that meet in members' homes. We call these Kinship Groups. Here people get together for all sorts of Christian activities: worship (traditionally, to the accompaniment of a guitar), Bible Study, prayer, eating, stuff like that. It is a great way to get to know a small group of people in the church better.

Last night we had Kinship, and we had a great worship time. How was it great? For me, it was great because I was so focused on God and on how good He is and on His glory. I was so offended and hurt that the majority of people in the world don't care about Him or acknowledge Him. It felt so unjust, that the person who was the best, who loved the most and was so good should not be treated that way. I longed for the day when justice would be done and God would be honored the way He should be, when everyone would look at Him and say, "Yes, we see, God does deserve to be honored." One day, God will receive all of the honor that He is due. I wanted so intently for that day to come soon.

Why was this worship so great? There are a number of reasons. The kinship is led by a couple who are "old worshipers" - not that they are old, but that they have been worshiping God for decades and they know how to do it. This couple is also accomplished musically, and so the music sounds good and includes improvisation. Improvisation in worship has its downsides - it can get people who know how to improvise focusing on what they are doing musically rather on their worship (this is where I tend to have problems), and it can leave people who don't know how to improvise feeling left out. However, when it works and is focused on worship, improvisation can combine to lift the spirit. When I truly worship while improvising musically, it feels like my spirit opens up and I really begin to believe that all things are possible. In this way jamming in worship is similar to tongues - which we were also free to use last night.

However, beyond these reasons, I think the simple fact is that God has ordained this group of people to be blessed with great worship when we get together. There is just something unique about our times together that I think is beyond our individual contributions. I mean, I could get together with some other strong worshiper (hi, Jess! hi, Kathie!), and it would be good, but it wouldn't be the same. I used to think that this great worship was God's way of giving my wife and I sanctuary during a time last fall when other relationships seemed spoiled, but the other relationships have gotten better and the great worship has lingered.

I said "blessed with great worship" above, but that makes it sound like my focus is only on what I get out of it. It is not. Yes, great worship is a blessing, but it is a blessing in the same way that helping out a friend move is a blessing, or like knowing that that long, emotionally draining talk you had with a friend helped them out. You feel good at what you did, but there is still work involved. In the case of this worship, I really feel that we are accomplishing some work, beyond just blessing God (which is definitely a good work). It is very humbling to be involved in something that feels so great.

Worship God!

Faith teaching

I've had a teaching running through my mind for several months now. I know that it is a "teaching" and not a meditation because I think about it when I hear other people teach. It's like someone else using their teaching gift activates this teaching in my spirit, and I think about and ponder it and imagine how I would preach it. It makes it difficult to focus on what other people teach. On the other hand, it makes listening to teachings very enjoyable, because this teaching really revs up my spirit.

It's about faith. See, for a long time I didn't really understand faith. The word faith is thrown around within the church, until it seems to mean many things, so for a long time it wasn't really something I felt I understood.

The classic definition for faith - or at least, the one I heard all the time as a young believer - comes from Hebrews 11:1. Here it is in the Revised Standard Version, which is how I learned it:

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

Let's see, I said to myself. Assurance means to be reassured that something is true, right? Hmm, what are "things hoped for"? "Conviction of things not seen" - what does that mean? How does all this relate to having faith for healing and that God will make everything work out?

So, this verse didn't really make much sense to me for a long time.

The verse that I like as a definition of faith is just five verses later: Hebrews 11:6. This is one of my favorite verses in the Bible:

And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. (NIV)

This verse defines what faith is. Moreover, it defines a specific kind of faith: the kind that pleases God. I don't know about you, but if I'm going to bother with faith, this is the kind that I want to bother with - the kind that pleases God. Note, also, the converse: if you don't have this faith, you are not pleasing to God. In fact, this verse says that if you don't have faith it is impossible to please God. Gotta get me some faith, then!

Note also the God-centric nature of faith. Faith is not defined as that which allows us to get what we want, or to gain heavenly riches, or to overcome obstacles. No, faith is that which allows us to please God. Faith also allows a person to come to God. Faith in Christian circles is sometimes talked about almost as if it were an entity in and of itself. "You gotta have faith to push on through." "Exercise your faith to make it strong." Nice ideas, but the Biblical view of faith is properly focused on God. Faith is a means to get to God; faith is the way to please God. God is the center point and object of faith.

I'm going to end here for now and pick up the rest of this later.

Healing Service at VCF

We had a healing service at church last night, though "healing" was somewhat loosely interpreted - it wasn't just about physical healing, but also spiritual healing. I wanted to just record my thoughts from last night, and some things I learned.

There was a lot of talk about the Lakeland revival. Many people who had been to Lakeland gave testimonies. Then my dear friend Craig Simonian got up to preach the message, and he talked about being hungry for the presence of God. He ended with a call forward to anyone who wanted prayer to have that closer relationship with God.

I went up, because I knew that so much other stuff is on my mind and I don't often hunger for God. Instead, I hunger for food, and surfing the web, and video games, and watching TV. I realized that I was reluctant to get prayer because it was like I didn't want to hope and be disappointed.

After I was prayed for I went for a walk, because I feel that I encounter God best by myself and I felt like I wanted to just open up to Him how I felt and what I wanted. I told him that I wanted to follow him, that I wanted him to be Lord, and that I wanted to want to open up to a deeper experience of Him. I told Him that though it seems hard, I would give up other stuff if it is what He asked me too. I felt good about the prayer, and after a bit I went back inside.

As soon as I got inside, I was so moved by all the wonderful people that God has put on my heart, and I was drawn to pray specifically for three people that were there in the room that are precious to me. After a while, I realized that I was feeling the Holy Spirit in me, through my prayers, and it struck me that this was "my version" of the spiritual blessing that God was bringing to the church last night. It wasn't falling out, or being emotionally overwhelmed, or laughter, or laying on the floor, or some of the other amazing things that we have come to associate with renewal and revival meetings and that some people were experiencing last night. It was, instead, God's Spirit moving in me in the way He wanted to. And that is good!

I was then moved to spend a bit of time explaining a lot of this to someone who was also feeling a bit left out of what was going on. I think I helped them.

Here is the frustration: it was said last night that we want people to have freedom, and we want to permit God freedom to act. Even so, I and my friend found ourselves expecting something very specific, and we wanted as much of it as other people got. But what if God has something different for different people, which my experience seemed to indicate? We should rethink what we mean by freedom in the Spirit, to realize that it isn't the freedom to be demonstrative. It is the freedom to pursue the Lord, whether that is quiet or loud, contemplative or ecstatic, emotional or intellectual or neither.

Here is the joy: I am amazed, in retrospect, that I was able to fend off depression or discouragement, even though I went off by myself to pray (going off to pray, 15 years ago, always ended up with my just digging into my negative thoughts deeper and deeper). I went from potentially self-condemning thoughts to helping someone else see the fallacies in both of our expectations. That is cool.

It is also cool that praying for amazing people seems to be where God has me right now. I gotta say, it is a pleasant duty.