Worship
1.8.2009Comment
Yesterday, I ended my blog with a pretty wide open question as to what the point of worship was in church. So today, I thought I would just post Oswald Chambers daily devotion from yesterday, from “My Utmost For His Highest” (from rbc.org) as a response. Enjoy.
He moved from there to the mountain east of Bethel, and he pitched his tent with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east; there he built an altar to the Lord and called on the name of the Lord —Genesis 12:8
“Worship is giving God the best that He has given you. Be careful what you do with the best you have. Whenever you get a blessing from God, give it back to Him as a love-gift. Take time to meditate before God and offer the blessing back to Him in a deliberate act of worship. If you hoard it for yourself, it will turn into spiritual dry rot, as the manna did when it was hoarded (see Exodus 16:20 ). God will never allow you to keep a spiritual blessing completely for yourself. It must be given back to Him so that He can make it a blessing to others.
Bethel is the symbol of fellowship with God; Ai is the symbol of the world. Abram “pitched his tent” between the two. The lasting value of our public service for God is measured by the depth of the intimacy of our private times of fellowship and oneness with Him. Rushing in and out of worship is wrong every time— there is always plenty of time to worship God. Days set apart for quiet can be a trap, detracting from the need to have daily quiet time with God. That is why we must “pitch our tents” where we will always have quiet times with Him, however noisy our times with the world may be. There are not three levels of spiritual life— worship, waiting, and work. Yet some of us seem to jump like spiritual frogs from worship to waiting, and from waiting to work. God’s idea is that the three should go together as one. They were always together in the life of our Lord and in perfect harmony. It is a discipline that must be developed; it will not happen overnight.”
Songs I Sang On Sunday
1.6.2009Comment
I’ll be leading worship again this Wednesday night at Crossroads so I put this set together for Elevation on Sunday to be used there as well. It’s kind of like using the same term paper for two different classes, …not that I ever did that. I’m just trying to get the most out of the work I do. Energy conservation, it’s very green of me.
Here’s the set:
Made To Worship – Chris Tomlin
Hosanna – Paul Baloche & Brenton Brown
Send Revival, Start With Me – Matt Redman
How Great Is Our God – Chris Tomlin
(Sermon)
Better Is One Day – Matt Redman
Wonderful Cross (Hymn) – Arr. By Chris Tomlin & Matt Redman
As you can see this is pretty much a Tomlin/ Redman love fest here. What can I say, they are my main guys. Again, wanting to put together a set of fairly familiar songs, I seem to lean pretty heavy on these guys. Obviously, Tomlin is approaching that Steven Curtis Chapman status, where the general Christian audience are familiar with his work. But as for Redman, (and it used to be this way with Tomlin), if I was playing a CD (now I’ve dated myself) for a non-worship-team crowd, people would be like, “oh he does this song too?”
As a whole, I thought the set was great because it made it easy for people to jump right in and worship God. And wouldn’t you say that’s the whole point? Would you? No, seriously it’s a question, what do you think the whole point of playing music in church is?
