What is Worship to You?

There is nothing more freeing then having the Father of my spirit breath his very heart beat into so many lifeless, static, cold words.
Without knowing the spirit behind, in and through these words, is it any wonder that living, and real life is being missed all around us?
My wife and I listened today to a recent pod cast by Darrin Hufford entitled “Worship in the Wild,” a wonderful and encouraging story of one brother’s insights and thoughts as to, “What worship is to him.” Not, “what is worship.”
He shares some additional thoughts here, “Going for the Worship,” and here, “What is Worship?”

According to Scripture, God is spirit, not “A” spirit, and God is seeking such that will worship (love) Him “in spirit and truth.” Is He simply looking for me/us to gratify some self-centered need within Himself by having us spout off none stop a barrage of religious worshiping blather?
As God is actively seeking us out, wanting to engage us in that part that is like wise as He is, spirit, there is something evoked within us that logic, mere common sense knowledge cannot produce, a spontaneous combustion.
It is out of the truth of His heart being revealed, exposed to us that we find a God ability to worship Him in and with that very spirit, Truth.

The letter kills, but the spirit makes alive, breathes life into what we say, sing, proclaim. As in anything of real importance there are those self-qualified authorities that pronounce, “This is worship,” you must do it exactly the way we have laid it all out here for you. On the other hand as our loving heavenly Father engages us and reveals Himself to us, it is from this inner knowing, experiencing his closeness in us, that we are freed to love-worship Him.
Out of the constancy of Him time after time making his heart known to us, worship becomes less and less an IT, but a intimate and personal close encounter.

What worship is to me will not be what worship is to you, for true worship will never happen according to a fixed choreographed script, but by the intensity of His love bursting into our consciousness, this will evoke an expression of a most intimate nature.
I love the heart-insight God gives to us in knowing and seeing what true worship can look like.
“It happened that as he made his way toward Jerusalem, he crossed over the border between Samaria and Galilee. As he entered a village, ten men, all lepers, met him. They kept their distance but raised their voices, calling out, "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!" Taking a good look at them, he said, "Go, show yourselves to the priests." They went, and while still on their way, became clean. One of them, when he realized that he was healed, turned around and came back, shouting his gratitude, glorifying God. He kneeled at Jesus' feet, so grateful. He couldn't thank him enough—and he was a Samaritan. Jesus said, "Were not ten healed? Where are the nine? Can none be found to come back and give glory to God except this outsider?" Then he said to him, "Get up. On your way. Your faith has healed and saved you." (Luke 17:11-19)

The implications here are, there were ten lepers; nine of them were Jews, and one being a Samaritan. Even Jesus had said to a Samaritan “You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.”
Nine of these lepers (Jews) from what I can see received nothing more than a miraculous touch from God, healing their disease ridden bodies, but this non-Jew receives along with his outer touch an inward revelation of being loved which evoked, releasing within him the ability to worship.
This event in my opinion what was experienced here in this account was but a shadow picture of what was to become so much more than mere touches from God, but in fact brought into a vital life-union with Him, which is far more than a mere touch from Him.

Let Him make Himself known to you His way, then be prepared for the dam to be burst within your heart!

Rich

Is It Any Wonder

From day one until we go to be with the Father, it will always be nothing more or less, but revelation. I don’t care how you slice or dice it folks, no matter what persuasion or flavour you hale from, it’s going to be the goodness of God bringing you to see.
We cannot see apart from Him opening the eyes of our heart, and that is but a continuous unfolding celebration of Life!

“The spirit of this world has blinded the minds of those who do not believe, and prevents the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, the image of God, from shinning on them. For it is Christ Jesus as Lord whom we preach, not ourselves; we are your servants for Jesus’ sake. God, who first ordered light to shine in darkness, has flooded our hearts with his light. We now can enlighten men only because we can give them knowledge of the glory of God, as we see it in the face of Jesus Christ.”

Last weekend while enjoying a movie with my wife, as usual the trailers for the up coming movies came on. One of them was a movie entitled “Blindness,” when a sudden plague of blindness devastates a city. The story goes on from there, I hope to see it.
Point being, we were all born blind to the reality of God, the true God and Father of total unconditional love and acceptance. Without this reality invading our world, is it any wonder we are so screwed up, not just before the light and truth of seeing Him for the first time entered our lives, but for many a very long time afterwards as well.

It is this issue I want to share some thoughts on.
Concern over relationships among Christians is a healthy sign. This can be understood when you consider the absolutely wretched state of relationship in the world generally. We have never known a time when human relationship was in such a miserable state as it is today. Even so, this aspect of the human experience is not even an issue for most of the non-Christian world. It is an encouraging sign, therefore, that at least Christians are concerned with their interactions with each other.

As with every aspect of human existence, relationship consists of much more than is apparent in the physical. The health of our relationships with one another requires both healthy motivations and healthy responses to those motivations. Healthy relationships with one another require a healthy, working relationship with the Father. Too often relationships between people appear caring and loving when, in reality, the prime motivation of the relationship is using. Often, one or both parties in a relationship are consciously or unconsciously using each other. We as Christians are often unable to bring ourselves to see and admit the true state of our relationships. We cannot admit that we interact with each other based only (or partially) on what we can get from each other. One of the terrible consequences of this inability to face the truth about our relationships is that Christians as a group, have become justifiably infamous as users.

I’m going to stop here for right now, there is so much more on my heart dealing with the truth as the Truth Himself is dealing with me, stay tuned, don’t touch that dial.

Rich

It's Not Happening

Where there is a will, there is a way.
That adage has many spin offs attached to it, good and bad. I do believe there is a will and a way, not my way or your way (the right vs. the wrong way) but His way, aka Jesus~the Way! His will and Way work harmoniously together and needs none of my suggestions or assistance. He may indeed be the Ancient of Days, and it may appear that He has not put me on hold but in fact, has He forgotten all about me.
I love overhearing my boss (friend) saying from time to time while on the phone, 'you can put me on hold, but please don't put me on forget'!

Getting back to His 'way', there will never be a harmonious marriage between that which is born of the flesh and that born of the spirit. This is clearly highlighted in different places by the apostle Paul. Loosely paraphrased; 'even though one may be re-birthed, as long as the mind-set is on/of the flesh, the things of God will be utter foolishness to them, and to all intent and purposes could be perceived as merely a natural man without the Spirit.'

The foolishness of God causing the so called wisdom of man to be seen for what it is, an illusion. For i.g. 'The Prince of Peace says, "I have NOT come to bring peace but a sword, and I will BE the source of division and that reality will be visibly seen within the family unit."
"I've come to start a fire on this earth—how I wish it were blazing right now! I've come to change everything, turn everything right side up—how I long for it to be finished! Do you think I came to smooth things over and make everything nice? Not so. I've come to disrupt and confront! From now on, when you find five in a house, it will be— Three against two, and two against three; Father against son, and son against father; Mother against daughter, and daughter against mother; Mother-in-law against bride, and bride against mother-in-law."

I wanted to jot down a few of my own thoughts and tie them in hopefully with what Tina shared on her blog dealing with a very similar thought.

Rich

And then God had Abram waiting. A long time. And Sarai, his wife, started thinking maybe it was time to make something happen. So she told Abram in Genesis 16, "The LORD has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my maidservant; perhaps I can build a family through her."

Do you see how we take God’s promise of connection with fellow believers, and if we don’t see it happening, we take matters into our own hands? Perhaps I can build a family through…. my own works.

"And God let them go ahead with that plan, but it didn’t work too well. Ishmael, the child of the slave girl, became the father of descendants "too numerous to count," but they were not God’s chosen people. Finally when Abram was NINETY-NINE YEARS OLD, God said it was time. And Sarai laughed at God. Oh, now you’re going to tell me that it’s time for me to bear a child? Now? Do you know how long it’s been since…

Sometimes we might have to wait for our expression of God’s promise, in this case fellowship. Don’t be nervous. Don’t be concerned what they say about you. Don’t settle for the slave child, for Pete’s sake. Let’s keep reminding ourselves that a real move of God is worth waiting for".

We are in Jesus

The Created Man & The Reborn Man

The following is from a 14 part article my friend Art has written, I wanted to share this here with my friends.

Rich


Part 6 of 14 - The Essential Spirit - The Created Man & The Reborn Man

As stated earlier, God’s spirit is in every created man. This occurred by God breathing His “breath of life” (Genesis 2:7) into Adam’s body of clay, resulting in the total animation of Adam and all his human lineage. God’s breath (spirit) was to give the created man spirit-life on-loan. When God breathed His “breath of life” into Adam, Adam also immediately “became a living soul.” Adam’s body and soul thereby became lively and animated by God’s one “breath of life.”

Here, in Gen 2:7 “breath of life,” the word “breath” is the Hebrew word “neshamah,” meaning “spirit”; and the word “life” here is the Hebrew word “chay,” meaning “lives.” The KJV translates “chay” as “life,” but it more correctly is “lives.” God’s one “breath of life” gave man three kinds of life; in spirit, in soul and in body. The English transliteration of the Greek for “physical life” is “bios,” as being the biological life; and for the “soul life” it is “psuche,” as being man’s metaphysical organ, having the faculties of mind, emotion, and will. The Greek word for “spirit-life” is “Zoë.” These three are the sum of the parts of man.

God’s breath breathed into man is called “the spirit of man” and the “the spirit in man” in the Old Testament Scripture. Apart from God’s breath (spirit-life) in man there is no life at all in the created man. Adam’s physical body creation was as his outer clothing. Man’s body and soul derive their life from man’s spirit that was given by God’s spirit-breath. The core of men then, is their human spirit. This spirit is man’s human life source – the core of man’s whole created living being. 2 Corinthians 3:6b …the spirit giveth life. James 2:26a …the body without the spirit is dead…

The humanist and religious liberals, those who may admit to there being a God at all, often erroneously refer to God as the Father of all mankind, but this is not accurate. Actually, God is only “a father of sorts” to the original created man. Adam and Eve were only created by God; they were not born of God’s Seed (sperma). Only a birth father is a genuine father. As creator of man, God is not man’s birth father. A father is one whose seed (sperma) births His own child to life. Thus, God only “sort of fathered” humanity, when He created humanity and imparted His breath (spirit) to be the “spirit of man.” God did NOT impart His Seed.

Nevertheless, the human spirit that God gave man is the source of man’s human life, and that spirit is “on-loan.” This is not what it is to be born-again of God, by His “Seed.” 1 John 3:9 Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his (God’s) seed (sperma) remaineth in him... Each believer, now in “the body of Christ,” has been conceived of God the Father's Seed (Greek, sperma), which is Christ (1Pet 1:23, Gal 3:16). By that Christ-Seed we bear His very life and nature.

The human spirit “on loan” in the created man has need to become regenerated (Titus 3:5) by Christ’s resurrected “spirit of life” in order to become a genuine, eternal, birthed child of God the Father – born of God’s Seed (Greek, sperma). The believer is regenerated because he has additionally received the resurrected “spirit of life in Christ Jesus.” Jesus Christ is God’s One Seed that became available via Jesus’ incarnation in Abraham’s lineage (see Jesus’ genealogy in Luke), then dying, to rise as “the life-giving spirit” (1Cor 15:45). Now a man may simply receive Christ's resurrected Spirit into his human spirit, to be born of God. John 3:6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. John 1:13 ...born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

Jesus prayed that each believer would be one with God the Father and Him. John 17:21a That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us… And so it is. Receiving Christ’s resurrected “spirit of life,” makes a man eternally justified, righteous, and one with the Godhead. Colossians 2:9 For in him (Christ) dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. The Father and the Son are of One Spirit (Eph 4:4). Romans 8:9 But ye are … in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. We participate in this oneness by a once and for all spirit-union between our “human spirit” and Christ’s “Spirit of life.” The believer thus is one with both the Father and the Son by the addition of the all-inclusive “Spirit of life in Christ Jesus” into his human spirit.

Antagonism

I love how the Father is so good at weaving things together. Reading from two different writers this morning I saw such majesty in simply words.The first is a quote from Os Chambers, the other from George MacDonald.

Rich

The Law Of Antagonism

Life without war is impossible either in nature or in grace. The basis of physical, mental, moral, and spiritual life is antagonism. This is the open fact of life. Health is the balance between physical life and external nature, and it is maintained only by sufficient vitality on the inside against things on the outside. Everything outside my physical life is designed to put me to death. Things which keep me going when I am alive, disintegrate me when I am dead. If I have enough fighting power, I produce the balance of health. The same is true of the mental life. If I want to maintain a vigorous mental life, I have to fight, and in that way the mental balance called thought is produced.

Kiss Of The Spirit

While one is yet only in love, the real person lies covered with the rose leaves of a thousand sleepy-eyed dreams, and through them come to the dreamer but the barest hints of the real person. A thousand fancies fly out, approach and cross, but never meet. The man and the woman are pleased, not with each other, but each with the fancied other. The merest common likings are taken for signs of a wonderful sympathy, of a radical unity. But though at a hundred points their souls seem to touch, their contact points are the merest brushings, as of insect antennae. The real man, the real woman, is all the time asleep under the rose leaves. Happy is the rare fate of the true . . ..to wake and come forth and meet in the majesty of the truth, in the image of God, in their very being, in the power of that love which alone is being! They love, not this and that about each other, but each the very other. Where such love is, let the differences of taste, the unfitness of temperament, be what they may, the two must by and by be thoroughly one.The negative and positive relation we live daily causes us to emerge from beneath the rose leaves and penetrate each other so as to have really seen and be seen. It takes the negative to arouse each of us from our sleep.......But the miracle of love that comes to birth each time forgiveness appears is truly the kiss of the spirit