Why obey?

Not to us, Lord, not to us
    but to your name be the glory,
    because of your love and faithfulness.

Why do the nations say,
    “Where is their God?”
Our God is in heaven;
    he does whatever pleases him.
But their idols are silver and gold,
    made by human hands.
They have mouths, but cannot speak,
    eyes, but cannot see.
They have ears, but cannot hear,
    noses, but cannot smell.
They have hands, but cannot feel,
    feet, but cannot walk,
    nor can they utter a sound with their throats.
Those who make them will be like them,
    and so will all who trust in them.
Psalm 115:1-8

Sometimes sermons are framed like, “Obey God in this way because it is the best thing for your life and happiness.” But that reasoning starts to feel self-focused and selfish after a while. Other sermons are framed like, “Obey God because God said so and He is worthy.” But that reasoning starts to feel like God is a glory hog who just wants servants and not sons and daughters.

So which is it? Do we obey God because of how it benefits us or simply because God commanded it?

This, of course, is a false dichotomy. If we find ourselves reasoning this way we’ve fallen for a kind of Judo that the enemy likes to do with truth. Judo uses the momentum of an opponent against them to take them to the ground. The enemy likes to use the momentum of a truth as a way to lead us into falsehood. So rather than the reasoning above, allow me to offer a series of truths that may help us to see more clearly.

Truth #1: God is perfectly kind, perfectly gracious, perfectly compassionate, perfectly wise and His love is endless. To be like Him is to be the best possible version of humanity (i.e. Jesus).

Truth #2: We become like whatever we worship. (Read Psalm 115:1-8 above). We not only see this truth in scripture but we see it play out in our society.

By combining Truth #1 with Truth #2 we arrive at an illuminating conclusion: The greatest possible thing God could invite us into is to worship Him with every part of our life and every part of our being. In other words, the invitation to obedience is one of God’s greatest gifts to us and it’s exactly what He deserves as the only One who is worthy.

What brings Him the most glory also happens to be what is the absolute best for us.

Your Breath in Our Lungs

Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Come, breath, from the four winds and breathe into these slain, that they may live.’” So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet—a vast army.
Ezekiel 37:9-10

The worship group All Sons & Daughters has a song called Great Are You Lord. It was released in 2013 and I’ve always really loved this song. There is a line in the song that says, “It’s your breath in our lungs, so we pour out our praise.” This specific line, and the whole song in general, took on new meaning in 2016 after I had a profound encounter with the Lord in a worship service.

It was March, 4, 2016 and I was at a Cultivate Revival conference put on by Global Awakening. It was hosted by a Methodist church in Washington Crossing, Pennsylvania. Bill Johnson, Dr. Randy Clark and Dr. Tom Jones were the main speakers. I drove up and stayed at an AirBnB by myself for the first few days of the conference. By Friday, some other friends had joined me.

Friday night Randy Clark did his impartation service. This is when he invites the Holy Spirit to come and radically touch everyone in the room. After some worship and teaching, Randy invited the Holy Spirit to move. We were instructed to wait on the Lord as worship played and, if we felt anything, we were to come to the front for someone to lay hands on us and pray for us.

As I waited, I asked the Spirit to fill me to overflow. Nothing much happened…at first. But then I noticed that my right hand started to shake involuntarily. This had never happened to me before so I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t think it was significant enough to go down front so I stayed in my seat near the back of the sanctuary.

After a while, the prayer team that was down front started to move out into the congregation and pray for people standing at their seats. A number of other things happened to me in that service as the prayer team began to come out to the people in the congregation. I started trembling and shaking involuntarily. I felt tingling in my hands. I felt the heavy weight of the glory of God resting on me. It felt like someone put a 20 lb. lead vest on me, like the kind you wear before getting X-rays on your teeth at the dentist.

One by one a prayer team member would come and pray for me and as they did God continued to do more. As one man began praying, something different began to happen to my breathing.

I was standing with my hands by my side and suddenly my lungs didn’t seem to work. They weren’t getting enough oxygen and I felt like I had to heave just to get any air. It was like my trachea had closed and very little air was getting in my lungs. It was so hard to breath that I asked the Lord what was happening to me. I heard him speak to my heart and say, “You’re okay. It’s going to be okay.” Then I got the distinct impression that I was breathing in the Holy Spirit.

Fast forward nearly 8 years to today. I have seen many times now that when someone is getting free from a demonic spirit, they sometimes experience this phenomenon where they can’t breathe. This happened to one lady in my church when a spirit of death left her. This happened to another person when a spirit of fear left. I am now convinced this same thing was happening to me.

After a few moments of trying to trust God in the midst of struggling to breathe (it probably lasted only a minute but felt much longer), a man on the prayer team came and gave me this huge bear hug. Now I really couldn’t breathe. I have no idea why he did that except that he felt compelled by the Lord to do it. After he let go, I slumped down into my seat, and I could breathe again without issue.

I don’t know what left, but I believe some demonic spirit that had been attached to my life couldn’t stay while the Holy Spirit was getting poured out on me. And as it was on the way out, I couldn’t breathe. But after it left, the Father breathed His breath into me. He filled my lungs with His Spirit.

And this is why, from that moment on, I could never again sing that line in the worship song the same way.

“It’s your breath in our lungs

So we pour out our praise,

we pour out our praise”

Great Are You Lord, All Sons & Daughters

While I’m sure All Sons & Daughters meant this line to be metaphorical, I experienced this in a very literal, physical way. When I sing this song, I remember that God literally put His breath in my lungs, set me free from whatever was holding me back, and filled me with His Spirit.

Beautiful One

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean.”
Matthew 23:27

While Jesus was in Bethany in the home of Simon the Leper, a woman came to him with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, which she poured on his head as he was reclining at the table. When the disciples saw this, they were indignant. Aware of this, Jesus said to them, “Why are you bothering this woman? She has done a beautiful thing to me.
Matthew 26:6-8, 10

I’ve noticed a trend where some churches who are trying to appeal to younger generations are emphasizing “beauty” in their worship gatherings. They’ll tap into ancient liturgies of the church. They’ll use lots of poetic language. Their songs will sound like folksy, indie rock. Even their language is very artsy, bordering on pretentious.

All of this is an attempt to have a service that feels trendy and leans into “beauty.” It’s also an attempt to get away from the more conservative evangelical focuses on numbers, baptisms, and salvations. But what these churches don’t realize is that they are making the same mistake as the evangelicals just in a different direction. In both cases, these churches are chasing the fruit rather than the source.

Now, to be clear, I believe that creativity and the arts can be used powerfully in worship. We were created in the image of the Creator God, so we were made to be creative. The arts are powerful tools to bring beauty into the world that points us back to our Creator. So, don’t hear me say that I’m against the arts or creativity.

What I’m critiquing is the church that claims to be all about beauty, justice, and love. But they’ve prioritized the pursuit of beauty over the pursuit of the Beautiful One. They’ve prioritized seeking justice over seeking the God who is just. They shout from the rooftops that “God is love,” but what they demonstrate with their lives is their true slogan, “love is god.” The shift is subtle but recognizable.

In trying so hard to be beautiful on the outside, these churches often become just like the Pharisees who were called white-washed tombs by Jesus. Beautiful on the outside, full of dead bones and unclean things on the inside.

What Jesus called beautiful was the extravagant worship of the woman who broke open the alabaster jar. This over-the-top display of public affection for Jesus was embarrassing to the disciples. But for Jesus, this was beautiful. Real beauty is produced not just with meticulously crafted, poetic liturgy. Real beauty is produced with surrendered hearts who are completely abandoned to the Beautiful One.

King David showed us the right heart posture when he wrote:

One thing I ask from the Lord,
    this only do I seek:
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord
    all the days of my life,
to gaze on the beauty of the Lord
    and to seek him in his temple.
Psalm 27:4

When we focus on creating a “beautiful” church service or liturgy, people will leave saying, “Wow, that service was beautiful.” But when we focus on an all-out pursuit of worshiping Jesus with abandon, a singular focus on the Beautiful One, then people will leave saying, “Wow, God is so beautiful,” or “What God did here was so beautiful!”

Can you see the difference? Is our goal to have people think our services are beautiful? Or is our goal to connect people to the beauty of the Lord?

He is the Beautiful One. And what He calls beautiful is extravagant, messy, surrendered worship that will often have onlookers a little embarrassed and a little offended. When the Holy Spirit moves, you will find a room full of people ugly crying, falling on their knees, trembling in God’s Presence, crying out to the Lord. It’s not pretty, but Jesus calls it beautiful. Or you may find a room full of people completely silent, reverently still as the fear of the Lord floods the room. No fanfare. Completely in awe as Jesus enters the room. He’s not impressed with white-washed tombs. He’s looking for those who, with totally abandonment, are willing to let go of their pride and dignity and give themselves fully to the beauty of the Lord.

Hungry

One who is full loathes honey from the comb,
but to the hungry even what is bitter tastes sweet.
Proverbs 27:7

This proverb could rightly be re-written,

“One who is content with religion, who loves church but is not desperate for Jesus, will hate it when the Presence of God comes crashing in with all of His weird manifestations and powerful encounters. But to those who hunger for more of God’s Presence, who are desperate for life-changing encounters with Jesus, who know that church is worthless without Him, even uncomfortable moments with Him are better than comfortable moments without Him.”

Are we full? Are we satisfied with the intensity of the Presence of God in our midst? Or does He have permission to disrupt our comfort? Does He have permission to cause weird things to happen to us and those around us? Do we crave the level of the Presence of God that the priests experienced when the Temple was dedicated?

When Solomon finished praying, fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices, and the glory of the Lord filled the temple. The priests could not enter the temple of the Lord because the glory of the Lord filled it. When all the Israelites saw the fire coming down and the glory of the Lord above the temple, they knelt on the pavement with their faces to the ground, and they worshiped and gave thanks to the Lord, saying,
“He is good;
his love endures forever.”
2 Chronicles 7:1-3

God’s Presence was so thick and so real that it totally disrupted their worship plans. All they could do was bow with their faces to the ground and proclaim God’s goodness and love. Do we hunger for that level of God’s manifest Presence in our midst? Do we long to see God drop fire down in the center of our worship space? Or are we so full with other Christian activities that we’re missing the best part?

While Christian community, small groups, social justice and outreach programs are all good things, they are not the main thing. Jesus is the main thing. God in His glory is the best thing. All other aspects of church should flow from our all-out pursuit of Him and our experience of Him in our midst.

Christ is preeminent. He is above all things!

Father, may you stir in us that deep hunger again! May we become so unsatisfied with Americanized church that we begin to simply long for your manifest Presence in our midst. We are changed when You draw near!

New Worship

“Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”

“Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”
John 4:19-24

Jews and Samaritans didn’t get along. Many of them hated each other. Yet, Jesus finds Himself near the town of Sychar in the middle of Samaria. Not only that, but He was by Himself in the middle of the day with a Samaritan woman with a questionable moral history. And in the middle of a theological conversation, Jesus delivers to this unlikely learner a massive revelation.

Jesus had come to usher in the Kingdom of God. With the presence of the Kingdom comes many changes. One of the changes was in how we worship. No longer would worship be through sacrificial animal offerings at an altar. No longer would it be orchestrated through the old covenant system of priests and ceremonial cleansing. The new worship in this new covenant would not be in the Temple and by the Law but, instead, in Spirit and in truth.

Worshiping in Spirit is what happens when we point our attention and affections toward the Father and are ushered into His Presence by Jesus through the Spirit. If we have given our life to Jesus, our spirit is united to the Holy Spirit in the same way that a husband and wife become one within marriage.

For it is said, “The two will become one flesh.” But whoever is united with the Lord is one with him in spirit.
1 Corinthians 6:16-17

Worship becomes the physical expression of intimacy between our spirit and the Holy Spirit. Sometimes it happens when we pray, or sing worship songs, or read scripture, or serve others. Other times it happens in quiet moments where we experience His Presence as “God with us.” Because we are now the Temples of the Holy Spirit, worship happens wherever we are. It happens whenever we submit our will to His. It happens whenever we lift our heart to God in gratitude and praise.

Worship happens in Spirit and also in truth. This means part of worship is receiving truth from the Lord and coming honestly before Him without deception or pretense. Worshiping in truth means we bring all that we are before the Lord. We bring our failures and our victories. We bring our hopes and our disappointments. We bring our strengths and our weaknesses. We stand before Him naked yet unashamed. And as we bring everything to Him, we receive truth–the truth about who He is and the truth about who we are in Christ.

This mindset changes how we engage in our church services on Sunday. When we sing worship songs, we are not just singing. There is a progression of true worship. We move from singing a song to praising God. Then we shift again from just praising God to actually engaging in His Presence. Many in the church still haven’t learned to worship in Spirit and in truth. They are still stuck on the first part of the progression. They stand there somewhat bored, singing a song, thinking that is worship.

These folks wonder how those other people in the service can be so passionate about a song. How can that person have tears streaming down their face over a song they’ve sung so many times before? How can that other person be so excited and exuberant, lifting their hands and getting emotional? Is it that they just really like singing? Is it just a love for music? Are they emotionally unstable people who lack propriety?

No.

It’s not about the song or emotion or music. It is that they are worshipping in Spirit and in truth. They are passionate about their Savior and Lord who rescued them and set them free. Their emotion is an overflow of the spirit to Spirit connection that is happening in that moment. Their tears are not about the song but about the Presence of the Living God in their midst.

Jesus experienced extravagant worship from a woman with a sinful life. The Pharisees who were present couldn’t believe what they were watching and were appalled by the indignity of it. Jesus then taught us something about worship as He addressed the Pharisee who was the host:

Then he turned toward the woman and said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet. Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little.”
Luke 7:44-47

Often those who are worshipping in Spirit and in truth are the ones who understand just how much they’ve been forgiven. They are the ones who understand just how undeserved their adoption into the family of God really was. They are the ones who see clearly the great debt of sin that was wiped clean by the blood of Jesus. They are the ones who are desperately dependent on the Lord for His provision and His sustaining grace. They are the ones who know how much they are loved by the Father and want to passionately love Him in return.

Worship Now

The Lord is a refuge for the oppressed,
    a stronghold in times of trouble.
Those who know your name trust in you,
    for you, Lord, have never forsaken those who seek you.
Sing the praises of the Lord, enthroned in Zion;
    proclaim among the nations what he has done.
Psalm 9:9-11

Now’s the time to worship Him. Now’s the time to lift up the name of Jesus and praise Him. Now’s the time glorify God for His goodness and grace. Don’t wait until this pandemic is over. Don’t wait until the economy fixes itself. Don’t wait until everyone is healthy and all the hard times have passed.

We have an opportunity to do something now that we cannot do in heaven. In eternity we will not be able to worship the Lord in the midst of hardship and pain. There will be no hardship and pain. In heaven we will not be able to lift up the name of Jesus in the midst of uncertainty and struggle. There will be no uncertainty and struggle.

Right now is when we get to glorify the name of Jesus regardless of our circumstances. Right now is when we get to declare the goodness of God in the face of all the hardship we face. Right now is our chance. Don’t let it pass!

Now is the time to declare our trust in God. Now is the time to declare that He is worthy of our lives no matter what. Now is the time to sing our lungs out about how amazing God is, slow to anger and abounding in love. Let’s not wait for things to return to normal before we lift up His name!

And I’m not just talking about gatherings on Sunday mornings. Yes, we will gather again eventually. But let’s not wait for that. Right now, in our alone time with the Lord, let’s exalt the name of Jesus. Let’s renew our worship of the Only One who is worthy. Let’s sing our song to Him in the secret place as a congregation of one to an audience of One.

We have an opportunity to do now what we won’t be able to do for eternity. We get to worship Him in the midst of this trial. Let’s not miss this opportunity. This kind of opportunity doesn’t come around very often. Let’s make sure we take advantage of it!

Worship now Church!

If

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. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.
1 John 4:9-16

So often our default position when it comes to loving God is to love Him with an “if.” We may not say it out loud, but we say it in our hearts. It sounds like this, “God, I’ll worship you if….” “God, I’ll give you all the praise when…..” “Jesus, I’ll live my life for you if…” “Father, I’ll lay my life down for you if…” “I’ll share my faith with others if…” “I’ll step out boldly for You, God, if and when…”

If You protect me…if You provide for me…if You make this turn out alright…if I won’t lose friends…if I don’t have to be uncomfortable…if I won’t be embarrassed…if it’s not too hard…if I don’t experience pain and suffering…etc.

If.

But there have been moments in my life where I’ve left the land of “if” and entered into something better, something that feels totally free. There is a place with the Lord where there is no “if.” It’s a place where we realize that Jesus is the name above every name no matter what is happening in our lives or in the world. There is a place of worship where we love God just because He is God. There is a place of intimacy where we come to know, down to our bones, that He is worthy. Period. No if. He is worthy. He is good. He is loving. He is kind. He is patient. He is full of grace and humility.

I want to live in this land, not the land of “if.” I can feel myself being pulled away from this place and back into the conditional love of the world. And, yet, when I re-enter this place again, I once again experience the freedom of it. It is so incredibly freeing to simply love God because He is. Not to get something. Not in response to something I need Him to do or something He already did. There is freedom when we are in a place of exalting His Name simply because of who He is.

The freedom is that it doesn’t matter what happens to my life. I’ve already died with Christ. I’ve already been raised with Christ. I’m already seated with Christ in the heavenly realms. My life is not my own. I was bought at a price…a very high price. So regardless of what happens in my life, God is worthy of extreme worship and devotion. Jesus gets the glory regardless. Jesus is worthy of all honor and praise.

Have you been to this place before? Have you ever left the land of “if?” I invite you to spend time with the Lord and experience it for yourself. Once you get a taste of it, you’ll want more. You’ll want to not just visit but to live every day in that place…that place of total freedom.

Worship Music

Elisha said to the king of Israel, “Why do you want to involve me? Go to the prophets of your father and the prophets of your mother.”
“No,” the king of Israel answered, “because it was the Lord who called us three kings together to deliver us into the hands of Moab.”
Elisha said, “As surely as the Lord Almighty lives, whom I serve, if I did not have respect for the presence of Jehoshaphat king of Judah, I would not pay any attention to you. But now bring me a harpist.”
While the harpist was playing, the hand of the Lord came on Elisha and he said, “This is what the Lord says…
2 Kings 3:13-15

In this time of social distancing we can get the idea that we don’t need worship. We may wrongly assume, “Since we can’t gather with others, why would we sing worship music?”

There is a unique place that worshiping through music plays throughout scripture. We see over and over again different commands in the Bible to sing to the Lord and worship Him in song. In the above passage with the prophet Elisha, we see worship music become a conduit of the power of the Spirit.

The kings of Israel, Judah, and Edom were going to war against Moab. But on their journey, they find themselves in the desert without any water. They want to seek the Lord’s direction about this and so they find the prophet Elisha.

Elisha only has respect for the king of Judah, but he still decides to inquire of the Lord on their behalf. The first thing Elisha asks for is a harpist to begin to play the harp. It wasn’t until worship music began that the “hand of the Lord” came on Elisha. This is a reference to the anointing of the Spirit coming upon Elisha enabling him to prophesy.

Yes, I believe there is something special about worshiping together as the Body of Christ. After the social distancing is over, I don’t think we’ll ever take that for granted. But worship music isn’t just for the corporate gathering. It is also a conduit of the Spirit for the individual. When we turn our heart, mind, and affections to the Lord in worship, we open ourselves up to the tangible Presence of God.

Even king Saul, who was demonized, found a bit of temporary peace when David would play worship music for him.

…David would take up his lyre and play. Then relief would come to Saul; he would feel better, and the evil spirit would leave him.
1 Samuel 16:23

And we know one of the directives of the apostle Paul was for his churches to worship. Paul even connects worship music to being filled with the Spirit.

Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Ephesians 5:18-20

Now is a time you may need worship music in your life more than ever. Wake up in the morning and spend some time worshiping the Lord through song. Listen to worship music throughout the day while everyone is home. Let worship music be a regular part of your day! As we turn our heart and mind to God throughout the day in song, we’ll experience the Presence and peace of Christ come near to us.

The Church Gathered

They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.
Acts 2:42-47

The church has gathered in homes from the very beginning. The persecuted church still does this today. No worship band. No big building. No stage. Just a small family of people, gathering in a home around the word of God and the Spirit of Christ. There’s something special that happens when the Church gathers this way.

Because of the social distancing protocols in place, most churches around the world had to gather in homes rather than in buildings last Sunday. In our home, we gathered as a family of five. My wife and I let our three kids each pick one worship song for us. We all sang along to whatever favorite worship song each child picked. Then we listened to a pre-recorded sermon. I worked together with a member of my speaking team to create a podcast for our local church that was a combination of dialogue, teaching, and story-telling.

There were a few things that happened that I wasn’t expecting.

First, I began to sense the power of the Spirit so present in our living room that I began to tear up as we worshiped. Jesus reminded me that He’ll gladly show up for a family of five just as He will for a family of 500. Jesus promised, “Where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them” (Matthew 18:20).

Secondly, I loved worshiping as a family. With my daughter sitting in my lap and all of us singing together, it was a special moment. So often when we gather in a larger group on Sundays, we come as individuals. But it is impossible to stay stuck in that kind of individualism in a living room with your own kids. We didn’t worship as individuals; we worshiped as a family unit.

Finally, physical distance from my local body of believers actually created greater connection to the global Body of Christ. As my little family gathered in my living room, as we sang and listened to a sermon, I imagined thousands upon thousands of families doing that same thing all over the world. I was suddenly connected in my spirit to all of those worshiping families. Every nation, tribe, people and language were gathered in living rooms and under trees to worship The One who is worthy. We’re not just members of our local church; we’re members of the global Church. Our brothers and sisters in Christ aren’t just the ones standing next to us on a normal Sunday, but they are also the ones half a world away, gathered in a living room around a Bible.

After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice:
“Salvation belongs to our God,
who sits on the throne,
and to the Lamb.”
Revelation 7:9-10

The Holy Spirit doesn’t need us to be physically near each other in order to connect us in the spirit. Last Sunday I felt more connected to the global Body of Christ than ever before. Maybe this is what the apostle Paul was experiencing when he wrote to the churches in Colossi and Corinth:

For though I am absent from you in body, I am present with you in spirit…
Colossians 2:5

…even though I am not physically present, I am with you in spirit…So when you are assembled and I am with you in spirit, and the power of our Lord Jesus is present…
1 Corinthians 5:3-4

So as we gather in living rooms instead of worship centers and sanctuaries, let’s keep our hearts and eyes open to what God may be doing in our midst. Could it be that through this crisis the Lord is teaching us deep truths about His Church that are long overdue? Could it be that revival is on the other side of all of this?

Velcro

As Solomon grew old… his heart was not fully devoted to the Lord his God, as the heart of David his father had been. He followed Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, and Molek the detestable god of the Ammonites. So Solomon did evil in the eyes of the Lord; he did not follow the Lord completely, as David his father had done.
1 Kings 11:4-6

At one point in Solomon’s life, he was fully devoted to the Lord. His heart was fully surrendered to God. Yet, as he grew older, he experienced a kind of heart-drift. In order to appease his wives and gain favor with other countries and kingdoms, Solomon allowed the worship of false gods. Then, not only did he allow it, Solomon began to participate in it. Finally, not only did Solomon participate, but he ordered the building of special high places for the worship of these false gods.

But notice that it didn’t say that Solomon became an unbeliever. There really isn’t such a thing. We all worship something, even if that something is ourselves. We’ll make something our god. It is the thing to which we have the most loyalty. It’s the thing to which we’ve given our heart. Solomon still believed in and worshiped the Lord. That wasn’t the issue. The issue was that he worshiped the Lord AND worshiped these false gods. What set his father David apart was his full and complete devotion to the Lord. Despite all of David’s mistakes and failures, David’s heart belonged to the Lord and the Lord alone.

The theological word for mixing our worship of the Lord with the worship of other “gods” in our life is syncretism. There are consequences for treating the Lord as if He is just one option on a buffet of spiritual food.

The Lord became angry with Solomon because his heart had turned away from the Lord, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice. Although he had forbidden Solomon to follow other gods, Solomon did not keep the Lord’s command. So the Lord said to Solomon, “Since this is your attitude and you have not kept my covenant and my decrees, which I commanded you, I will most certainly tear the kingdom away from you and give it to one of your subordinates. Nevertheless, for the sake of David your father, I will not do it during your lifetime. I will tear it out of the hand of your son.
1 Kings 11:9-12

Like the tearing of a garment, the Lord declared that He would take the kingdom out of Solomon’s hands. But, for the sake of David, the Lord would not do it in Solomon’s lifetime but would wait until the next generation came into power. Because Solomon’s connection to the Lord went from being intertwined to being little more than velcro, God would rip the kingdom out of his hands like velcro pulling apart.

A highly prophetic friend of mine once gave me this word that said, “whatever isn’t interwoven will be removed.” If we are interwoven with the Lord, nothing can pull us away from Him. Our heart will be fully surrendered and devoted to Him. But if our connection to Him is little more than velcro, when life pulls on it, there will be a ripping away. Likewise, our relationships to each other must be interwoven and not just velcro or they’ll pull away.

So, we must ask ourselves, “What other ‘gods’ are we worshiping?” “What other things have crowded our hearts and stollen some worship from the Lord?” Like David, is our heart fully devoted to the Lord? Or, like Solomon, have we set up a few high places that have us bowing down to priorities other than God’s priorities?