Preparation for Palm Sunday

I just wanted to share a few thoughts with you about Palm Sunday. Some of these thoughts came from christianitytoday.com

The first thing i found interesting is something that we can overlook sometimes when we celebrate this holiday. Often we think Palm Sunday has always been around. However, when Jesus rode into Jerusalem the people were not thinking, “Oh! It’s Palm Sunday!” They had no idea of the power that this day would have thousands of years to come. Although, they were celebrating a holiday. [It wasn't called Palm Sunday in Jesus' day, but each Israelite family chose the lamb they would sacrifice for Passover on the tenth day of the month. As the people shouted "Hosanna," they didn't realize they were choosing the Lamb of God as their sacrifice.]-http://www.christianitytoday.com/tc/2000/002/11.39.html

So often we can miss all the details that Jesus was trying to show the people of Israel with his triumphal entry and his life in general.

The next thing to think about is how Jesus entered Jerusalem. We think sometimes that since he came on a donkey that it was coming in humility and that he chose a donkey in order to show his gentleness to the people. However, [When Solomon was anointed king, he rode into the city on a mule, to the shouts and praises of the people (1 Kings 1:43-45). Zechariah prophesied the Messiah would arrive the same way "gentle and riding on a donkey" (Zech. 9:9).-http://www.christianitytoday.com/tc/2000/002/11.39.html]  So Jesus was entering Jerusalem in a very strong way. Just his action of riding a donkey was his proclamation that he was their messiah. However, the Romans would not have understood that so it was not as if he was challenging their leadership. So in a way he was making a very bold claim but also doing it in a humble way.

Another element to think about is the word Hosanna. Many think it means to praise the Lord. However, Hallelujah means to praise the Lord and Hosanna means save us! So as the people were shouting Hosanna to Jesus…what they were really saying was save us from the oppression of the Romans. They assumed Jesus was going to ride and be the political messiah. How often do we say Hosanna in our own lives. Lord come save us! Are we prepared for the arrival of our King or are we waiting for something else. Are we looking for the gentle king on a donkey or are we waiting for the man who will come and change the politics of our world. He came to change the world through love.

As the people spread out their garments before Jesus it was their way of honoring him. It was common to spread our your garments before a king at that time. They were declaring Jesus as their king.

The people were also worshiping that day. [The phrases "Hosanna" and "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord" both come from Psalm 118: 25-26, one of the "Hallel" or praise psalms (113-118) used every Passover. These Jewish hymns would be as familiar to the Jewish people as Christmas carols are to Christians. - http://www.christianitytoday.com/tc/2000/002/11.39.html]

I hope that we can come prepared this Palm Sunday to worship the Lord fully and be excited about the coming King. Lets prepare ourselves this week by proclaiming Hosanna (save us)! Lets be sure our hearts are in the right place and that we can declare him as our king knowing full well what is to come the week after Palm Sunday.

The Unpredictable Worshipper

Here is this weeks entry. Share your thoughts:

“A relationship with the Living God shouldn’t just fade away or wear out like an old pair of shoes. It’s meant to be new every morning, just like the mercy it responds to. … In my heart, and more importantly in God’s heart, there’s a call to return to the first love, the place of romance in worship. This is God’s invitation to all of us. God often calls worship leaders to do the unexpected…If we do what the Father is doing, when He is doing it, God will break into our services in powerful and surprising ways. That is the key to all effective ministry – to do what the Father is doing, exactly at the right time… We must always leave room for the unpredictable in our worship. Sometimes God, in His wisdom, will step in powerfully through what may seem like foolishness to us. A worship leader can so easily get into following a certain routine or formula. There’s nothing wrong with planning or having a guide by which you choose songs. In fact, that’s really important. But let’s also leave room for the romance. Leave space in your mind-set for the whisperings of the Holy Spirit to lead you somewhere fresh at any time…That’s not to say worship leaders always need to behave unpredictably. That would be stupid. If we did, everyone would soon become irritated and tired of trying to keep up. C.S. Lewis thought that too many new and unpredictable moments in a worship service could end up leaving people focusing on the worship rather than actually worshiping or, if you like,  fixing their eyes on the service instead of Jesus…The key is to somehow find the right balance between the prophetic (the desire to break new ground) and the pastoral (the desire to take people with us)…I recently hear someone use the phrase “lead worshippers,” instead of “worship leaders.” My immediate reaction, to be honest, was “Yes, very clever – a cunning play on words.” But the more I thought about it, the more I’m realizing…There’s a very real sense in which the Holy Spirit is ultimately the worship leader – He is the agent of everything meaningful that happens ni our worship times…The human worship leader then becomes more of a lead worshipper who tries to follow the leadings of the Holy Spirit and throw himself or herself wholeheartedly into worship as an example for others to follow… These are the true worship leaders – people who, with their lives, and when they gather together, keep alive the romance of the first love with hearts that are always ready for the unpredictable.”

I hope you enjoyed this. I did when i read it again. It is so easy to get stuck in the same routine of worship that we forget how wide and deep God is and therefore our worship cannot be the same from week to week. I know of people that have the same routine to build themselves into an emotional state so that they feel that they are worshiping. We need to be careful that we are really worshiping with our hearts and not just working ourselves up into thinking that the “feeling” we are getting is worshiping. A few weeks ago was an unpredictable moment for me and for the team when pastor was finishing up his sermon and i realized there was a perfect song to go with what he was saying. We had not practiced it in weeks and it was still somewhat new. I stood in the back struggling with whether or not to do it. Finally God kicked me into gear and we did the song If I Have Not Love for communion. It was as if we had known the song forever. It went great and God used it for his glory. I had a number of people comment on how that song went well at the end and how it touched their hearts. So lets not get stuck lets push through our routines and our traditions and push on towards the greatness of Christ in our worship.

The Undiginified Worshipper

First off, let me say how fun it was to come together as worship teams and do our games and have food and worship. It was so relaxing and i hope we can do it again soon. If anyone wants to step up and organize the next one just let me know and we can start scheduling things.

This weeks posting is the third chapter from The Unquenchable Worshipper. I hope you like it and feel free to share your thoughts.

“I will celebrate before the Lord. I will become even more undignified than this, and I will be humiliated in my own eyes (Samuel 6:21,22)…What strikes me most about this is the context of David’s celebration. He wasnt just one of the crowd at this event, he was the king. Here was a man of great stature, with a public image to protect; a man trusted with more power, authority and wealth than we could ever imagine. Yet he led the way, ‘losing’ himself so publicly in worship of God and so on fire with praise that it burned right through any inhibitions or pride. True worship always forgets itself…One of the Hebrew words for praise, hallal, means to be clamorously foolish or mad before the Lord…We get so caught up in love and wonder that we forget what others might think and we throw ourselves into God’s pleasure. I long for more of thoe times – seasons where my heart is so consumed with Jesus that abandoned worship floods out in extreme ways…Our heavenly father loves us with an extravagant abandon. Passionate, undignified worship is our only reasonable response…William Barclay once wrote,

Love does not stop nicely to calculate the less or more; love does not stop to work out how little it can respectably give. With a kind of divine extravagance, love gives everything it has and never counts the cost. Calculation is never any part of love.

…Another example of an extravagant worshipper was Charles wesley…One of his earliest songs, written to mark the first anniversary of becoming a Christian, was a song with the first line “O for a thousand tongues to sing my great Redeemer’s praise.”…He was picturing himself having a thousand tongues! He was saying, “I wish I had a thousand tongues, because if I did, I’d praise God with every single on of them.” In one sense, utter foolishness, yet a beautiful picture of extreme worship.

…this is a valuable lesson for us in our worship. In the midst of the madness and energy, we must always make sure it’s simply the abundance of our hearts for Jesus and never a show for the benefit of others. Worship leaders take note of that. It’s all too easy for what was once a pure act out of the abundance of the heart to become more of a performance when we’re on stage in front of others. We need to guard against elements of performance creeping in when we’re leading people before the heavenly throne. God has enough beauty, majesty and glory to inspire us for all eternity, so we don’t really need the worship leader trying to impress us or hype up some praise. … If we’re to usher others into that place of holy beholding, we need to make sure there’s nothing in us that, deep down, still wants to be the center of attention…He must become greater and we must become less.”

How true is that!? He must become greater we must become less. Pastor has said that a number of times in the past few weeks. It is so easy to think of our importance in life and yet forget that we are to be less. I heard of a book that Oprah is pushing called The Secret in which a woman claims that we can think our way into shape. She says that if you see someone who is overweight you should immediately look away from them and imagine yourself in the best shape of your life and you will become that by thinking it. So really she is saying  you need to constantly be thinking only of yourself and think of yourself so highly that you are putting yourself above everyone else. It seems our world is turning more and more to the me mindset. I hope our church can be more of the we mindset and the servant leadership mindset as well.

People and food = fun!

Hey everyone can post how many people they are expecting to bring and what food you will bring as well. See you friday at 7 in the youth room.

Isaiah – The Undone Worshipper

Before reading this section out of The Unquenchable Worshipper take a minute to read Isaiah 6:1-5. If you do not have a bible near you go to Biblegateway.com and search the passage there.

“Isaiah is broken, stunned and shaken in the presence of God. But this brokenness  is not a destructive thing; God is stripping him apart in order in order to put him back together as a stronger, purer worshipper – a worshipper whose heart-cry is, ‘Here am I! Send me’ Of course, there’s a time in worship to be joyful, content and even comfortable. But there also comes a time when God will make us distinctly uncomfortable… Recently I (Matt Redman) went as one of the worship leaders to a Worship Together conference in the United States…As I stood in the congregation, God’s presence invaded my heart in a new and powerful way. But it wasn’t one of those tender, reassuring times. All it did was make me want to repent. Rising to the surface of my heart came those little unspoken attitudes and thoughts that had passed by unnoticed and which I now saw had offended the heart of God…Why on earth am I here as a worhsip leader? I wondered. I need to be here just to get right with God in the congregation, off the stage. I was an undone worshipper… Sometimes we find we’ve strayed off course, and God has to shake us up to get us back on the right path. He’ll often bring us into a season of brokenness, a time to refocus and check that we are heading in the right direction…I’d spent so many years leading worship that I’d lost the plot a bit, and God was giving me a pit stop, a chance to have some long overdue work done on my heart…God undoes us in many different ways: through situations around us, through a glimpse of His glory or simply by speaking into a situation when we’ve made a mess of things. But He never leaves us that way for long. ‘Weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning’ (Psalm 30:5). … Sometimes, though, we are left walking with a limp. We journey into a new season, yet God leaves behind a reminder of the work He’s done in us. The apostle Paul was walking with a limp or, as he described it , a ‘thorn in the flesh,’ which he pleaded to have removed (2 Corinthians 12:7). But God made it clear that it was a reminder of weakness, and soon Paul himself came to see it as something that kept him from becoming proud. (2 Corinthians 12:8,9)”

Whether you like it or not, we are all worship leaders. I may have the title here at the church as worship leader but we, as teams are the worship leaders in the church. I have said many times before to all of you that we are lead worshippers…meaning that people look to us for freedom. If we are free in worship, it helps others feel that comfort in freedom. You may be at a point where life seems to be in a negative direction and that you dont think you can be lead worshipper or feel unworthy. You know what? GOOD! We are not worthy to be worship leaders, however, we are called. This week is the perfect opportunity to step back from the leadership role and sit in the presence of God. With the gospel choir coming in we dont have to worry about anything. We can just sit, stand, kneel, sing, be silent, be in awe in the presence of God. I encourage you to really take this opportunity is a time to have God search your heart and give anything you need to back to him.

In Christ,

Jon