Christ

Corporate Worship

/ Neal Embry / Leave a comment

I talked a little bit the other night about how we have become dependent on our “God-highs,” and this is especially true in some corporate worship services and Christian events.  I think that sometimes we also fail to understand the purpose of worship.  This is something I see in my own life, and in some churches I’ve been to and taken from what I see and hear from fellow believers.

So, tonight, I want to talk about worship.  Specifically corporate worship, that is, the gathering together of believers to make the glory of God known and to rejoice in who He is through our praise, the message brought, and the giving of our finances and all else that our service entails.

Stay with me, and let’s see where God takes us.

First question I’d like to raise is this: What is our attitude towards worship?

Do we come into worship services, both the singing and the message and all else, with an attitude that brings glory to God and that is holy? I have been so guilty in the past, going back to my early teenage years, of not really caring that I came to worship a holy sovereign God.  That didn’t really register with me.  I cared more about getting home in time to watch my favorite NFL team or was thinking about food after church.  I was too busy looking at the cute girl a row ahead of me and not enough at the word of God being preached.

The Lord throughout Scripture says that He is not pleased with our sacrifices, with our religious rituals.  He wants our hearts.  Look at Jeremiah 6:20: “What use to me is frankincense that comes from Sheba, or sweet cane from a distant land?  Your burnt offerings are not acceptable, nor your sacrifices pleasing to me.”

I believe that if we come to church with the intention of not truly worshiping God, we are doing a disservice to Him.  He is not pleased, and it is sin.  He is the Creator of all things, and He is most certainly worthy of our worship.

I believe that if we come to church with the intention of worshiping anything but God, we are in sin.  When the Israelites were in the wilderness, at Mount Sinai, when Moses went up to meet with the Lord, they built a golden calf to worship.  Moses was of course furious when he saw this, as was the Lord.  While we hopefully don’t set up golden idols in the middle of our sanctuaries, I wonder if we realize that worshiping ANYTHING but God is idol worship.  In our worship, are we praising because we love the way the music sounds?  Are we worshiping the music, are we worshiping the praise band?  Are we worshiping our church itself?  These are tough questions.  I think I’ve done this unintentionally.  This doesn’t mean it’s okay, or that that is an excuse, but I admit I’ve done it.  My worship experience is altered by what I think of the music, or what I think of the praise team or choir, and thus, if they don’t do what I think they should for me, I think less of the service.

This is a fault of mine, and it might be a fault of many.  Is your attitude towards worship one that is only focused on yourself?  Do you feel like you have to get something in order to count it a success?  I don’t believe this is right.  Instead of us focusing on ourselves, and on what we can get, we should focus on what we can give….that is, our praise, our time, our money, and our lives to the glory of God and rejoicing in what He has done.

I believe that if we come to church distracted, and do not plan on asking God to help us focus on Him, we are in danger of idol worship.  You see, whatever holds your focus, your time, and your heart, holds your worship.  Think about it.  If all your focus, time, and heart is being poured into God, your natural response is to worship Him.  If all of your focus, time, and heart is going towards your job, or towards your car, or whatever it is, that’s what’s going to hold your worship.  Not that you’ll bow down and worship your Chevy, but in your heart, that car or that job or that girl or that guy has become more important than God.  And when we are distracted, and all our minds can do is think about other things except God and why we come to church, our response should be to go to God and ask that He will clear our mind and help us focus on Him and worship Him.  He’s done that for me so many times in the past.

Being distracted is inevitable.  Being distracted isn’t the sin….failing to recognize it and seek God’s help is.  There will always be things that could distract us from our relationship with the Lord, whether it be our job, our family, our problems, etc.  It’s nothing to be ashamed of.  And this certainly isn’t to say that God doesn’t give us some answers to our questions/problems in church.  He does, but it will come when we focus on Him and let the Holy Spirit move.  It will come when we truly give it all up to God, and stop worrying about it, and start worshiping Him.

So our attitude towards worship should be one that marvels at who God is, not at anything else.  Our attitude should be glorifying Him, no matter what else happens or is going on in our lives.

The second question I’d like to raise is What is our expectation and focus of worship?

This ties right back in with the “God-high.”  I know from my own personal experience at church camps, and not all of them were this way, but some were, that the focus is often placed on the person and not God.  The focus is placed on the emotion of the moment, and on the songs sung and message brought, and not on the saving power of God.  Yes the gospel is proclaimed, but it is too often proclaimed as though we wrote the story, as though we were able to save, and it is proclaimed as if it is made more or less powerful by the speaking abilities of the man or woman on stage.  This is not true.  Look at Romans 1:16 with me: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.”  The gospel is not the power of man.  It is the power of God Himself, through which He calls people to a relationship with Himself through Jesus Christ.  He is the one who fuels it, who uses it, and who makes it powerful and effective.  Not us.  So when we proclaim the gospel, may we proclaim it boldly, but boldly because we trust, not in ourselves and what we can do, but in who God is and what He can do.  We should expect that God is sovereign and powerful over the work of spreading the gospel.  We should focus on Him.

God-highs are not always a bad thing.  Sometimes they’re needed, and they can be good, but when we come to expect that same emotion and feeling every day, we are setting ourselves up for a let-down.  When we expect that God is going to make us feel that way every day, or He’s going to do what He did at that camp each and every day, we will be disappointed.  What happens when those feelings aren’t there?  We feel like God has failed, and this is false.  God never fails.  Ever.  So we must lean on Him for everything, and must walk with Him each day, no matter what the circumstances.  Sometimes it’s going to be hard, but we keep going and doing what we know we ought to do and rejoice in the hope found in Christ.

In our worship services, do we come in expecting to see the music minister belt out an amazing solo, or see the worship team do a sweet-sounding medley of our favorite hymns?  Do we expect to see every single person raising their hands, coming to salvation, giving all they have?  Again, I ask, do we expect that we will personally get a lot out of worship?

You see, sometimes, we don’t get a lot out of church.  And we must learn to be ok with this.  This can affect our attitude in that we don’t worship God, but ourselves.  It affects our expectations in that we are let down when we don’t get a lot out of church.  Our worship services should be built around bringing God the praise He is due, no matter what happens with the music, no matter if the pastor tells a cool story, and no matter if we get anything out of it or not.  I would say that if we are focused on giving God the glory, and not expecting anything but to see Him praised for the God He is, we will get at least one thing……we will get to experience true worship of the Father.  We will experience God’s presence, and we will get to see Him glorified.

Is that enough for us?  I expect to see God move each time I’m in church, but how that happens is up to Him.  He can choose to move by blessing us with great fellowship, or seeing someone come to Christ.  He may move by blessing our church financially and allowing us to give that to Him.  But because of who God is, He deserves our praise no matter what happens.  He created the world, us, gave us salvation, and blesses us immensely with His love.  He deserves our praise, period.  Because our worship isn’t about us.  It isn’t about seeing an incredible “God-high,” or witnessing a “miracle.”  It isn’t about the praise band or the pastor or the people sitting next to you.  It is about bringing glory to God, and if we expect anything more or less, I’m afraid that we set ourselves up for a miserable Sunday.

Our expectations should not be based on humans, on our abilities, or even on the church, but solely on who God is, and that He deserves all the honor and glory.  I hope that we expect to worship God, and that if nothing else happens, that we get to stand in humble adoration of the Creator of the universe, and that that is enough for us.  I hope that our attitudes are ones that marvel at God’s mercy, grace, and love for us, and in humble repentance of where we have failed.

The last question I’ll raise is this: What is our response to worship?

I’m constantly asked “How was church?”  And I usually respond “It was good.”  Sometimes I’ll talk more about the bible study, or the music or the sermon, but more often than not, it’s “It was good.”  I hate that about myself.  Our answer to “How was church?” should be our same response to “How is God?”  He’s awesome!  Not because our church is extra special, not because our bible study went really well or the sermon was especially good, but it was awesome because we got to fellowship with other believers and worship the God of the universe!  It was awesome because we got to be in His house, in His presence.

Our response shouldn’t be dependent on our emotions, but on the character of God.  I’m not saying that you’re always going to have a blast at church….you won’t.  Some Sundays will be better than others.  But if our response after we get in our car and drive away is based only on how we feel about the service and if we were “fed,” and not on the thought “Wow, I just got to experience God,” then we have a problem.  Even if the service itself wasn’t the best in the world, we still marvel and wonder and are amazed by the incredible character of God.

God doesn’t need our guitars, drums, and three-point sermons to make His name known.  All we have to do to be amazed at God is to look at ourselves and see how much we need Him, and then look at Him, and see how much of Himself we have been given in salvation.  This salvation God has given to us is a gift, one that we do not deserve, and yet He loves us enough to call us to Him, and to show us who He is.  He loves us enough to pick us up out of the dirt, out of the pit of our sin, and in our rebellion, He says “I love you!  Follow me.”  How could a God who created all things possibly need our music and our messages and our abilities to make His name known?  Does He choose to use those things?  Absolutely.  But the point is that when these other things fail, God never does.  And our response should be based on His love for us, not on if the guitarist played the right chords on “Come thou Fount.”

Our response to worship is to be amazed by God, to love God, and to respond to Him as He calls out of His love for us and who He is, no matter if the human part behind worship was fantastic or not.

This focus on emotional, “powerful” worship is leading young Christians down a slippery slope.  It places the focus on the worship, and not the receiver of it.  It places the focus of the message on the messenger, and not on who the message is about.  It is all about God.  It is not about us.  It does a disservice to God and it is a sin to place the emphasis on anyone but Him.  The worship team should seek to make God known, not themselves.  The pastor should seek to humbly bring the word of God, and let himself be used by God, not the other way around.  So many times we depend on everything but God, but because they throw His name around, we think it’s okay, that will pass for a relationship with the Almighty.

Hillsong United, Chris Tomlin, and David Crowder cannot save you.  Lakeside Baptist Church, as much as I love it, and am so proud of it, cannot save you.  The Basement and Matt Pitt cannot save you.  David Platt, Billy Graham, and John Piper cannot save you.  The Montevallo BCM, as great a place as it is to serve and grow, cannot save you.  Your parents cannot save you.  You cannot save you.  All due respect to the above and what God may do through them….but they are not God.  The only way you will be saved is by God alone and through His love.  And He has shown us love through Christ.  He loves you, and if He is calling you into a relationship with Him, respond with an emphatic “YES!”  The emphasis of our worship should not be on us.  While God moves through His people, and in His church He does remarkable things, He alone deserves the honor and glory for what is done.  We rejoice as a church when God chooses to do incredible things through us, when He speaks through us to bring someone to salvation, when He does all He is capable of doing, we rejoice….but He alone deserves to receive the praise.

Instead of walking into a building, excited to see this awesome new worship team, or hear this awesome speaker, may we come in, excited and expecting to see God move and Him glorified.  Instead of tweeting how awesome our church is, or how awesome our speaker is, may we shout with every fiber of our soul and every social media network we are registered to, “God is awesome!”  May we come in with the attitude that He is always worthy, and He alone deserves our praise.  And may we respond joyfully to the love God has so graciously showed us.

Thanks for sticking with me, those who are reading this last line.  May this be used to build you up and encourage you, and may God receive all the glory from all that I do.

God bless,

Neal E

Christ Clothes Our Nakedness

/ Neal Embry / Leave a comment

The reason that I chose to title this post this way is namely because it’s not fully mine.  It belongs to writer and Christian comedian Jonathan Acuff, author of “Stuff Christians Like,” which is a hilarious and surprisingly convicting book that pokes fun at Christians and some of the things we do.

It’s a collection of essays Acuff has written and posted on his blog, stuffchristianslike.net.  This particular essay, titled “Thinking You’re Naked,” doesn’t employ much humor.  In fact, as of page 192, it’s the most serious essay in the book.

I’ll post all of it, with all the credit for the writing going to Jonathan Acuff:

“I don’t want to brag, but I’m pretty awesome at applying Band-Aids.  And make no mistake, there is an art.  Because if you go too quickly and unpeel the the wrong way, they stick to themselves and you end up with a wadded-up useless mess instead of the Little Mermaid-festooned bandage your daughter so desperately wants to apply to a boo-boo that may in fact be 100 percent fictional.

Half of the injuries I treat at the Acuff house are invisible or simply wounds of sympathy.  My oldest daughter, L.E., will scrape her knee and my three-year-old, McRae, realizing the Band-Aid box is open will say, ‘Yo Dad, I’d like to get in on that too.  What do you say we put one on, I don’t know, my ankle.  Yeah, my ankle, let’s pretend that’s hurt.’

But sometimes the cuts are real, like the day my five-year-old got a scrape on her face playing in the front yard.  I rushed into the house and returned with a princess bandage.  As I bent down to apply it to her forehead, her eyes filled up with tears and she shrank back from me.

‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.

‘I don’t want to wear that Band-Aid,’ she replied.

‘Why? You have a cut, you need a Band-Aid,’ I said.

‘I’ll look silly,’ she answered.

Other than her sister and her mom, there was no one else in the yard.  None of her friends were over, cars were not streaming past our house and watching us play, the world was pretty empty at that moment.  But for the first time I can remember, she felt shame.  She had discovered shame.  Somewhere, somehow, this little five-year-old had learned to be afraid of looking silly.  If I were smarter, if I had been better prepared for the transition from toddler to little girl, I might have asked her this:

‘Who told you that you were silly?’

I didn’t though.  That question didn’t bloom in my head until much later, and I didn’t understand it until I saw God ask a similar question in Genesis 3:11.  To me, this is one of the saddest and most profoundly beautiful verses in the entire Bible.  Adam and Eve have fallen.  The apple is a core.  The snake has spoken.  The dream appears crushed.  As they hide from God under clothes they’ve hastily sewn together, he appears and asks them a simple question:

‘Who told you that you were naked?’

There is hurt in God’s voice as he asks this question, but there is also a deep sadness, the sense of a father holding a daughter that has, for the first time ever, wrapped herself in shame.

Who told you that you were not enough? Who told you that I didn’t love you? Who told you that there was something outside of me you needed? Who told you that you were ugly? Who told you that your dream was foolish? Who told you that you would never have a child? Who told you that you would never be a father? Who told you that you weren’t a good mother? Who told you that without a job you aren’t worth anything? Who told you that you’ll never know love again? Who told you that this was all there is?

Who told you that you were naked?

I don’t know when you discovered shame.  I don’t know when you discovered that there were people who might think you are silly or dumb or not a good writer or a husband or a friend.  I don’t know what lies you’ve been told by other people or maybe even by yourself.

But in response to what you are hearing from everyone else, God is still asking the same question, ‘Who told you that you were naked?’

And he’s still asking us that question because we are not.

In Christ we are not worthless.  In Christ we are not hopeless.  In Christ we are not dumb or ugly or forgotten.  In Christ we are not naked.

In Isaiah 61:10 it says, ‘For he has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of righteousness.’

The world may try to tell you a thousand different things today.  You might close this book and hear a million declarations of what you are or who you’ll always be, but know this.

As unbelievable as it sounds and as much as I never expected to type this sentence in a book:

You are not naked.”

I’ll ask the question Acuff does: When did you feel shame?  Disappointment?  Hurt?

Maybe you still are.  Do you find yourself wondering why life is even here?  I know for me, that sense of disappointment came at an early age, when I would do something wrong and feel like a failure, before, primarily, my mother and my grandparents.

And now, these days, it comes when I fall flat on my face before God, brought there by sin and pain.  It comes when I fail to live up to others expectations of me, and the expectations I have for myself.  I have a bad habit (I have a lot of those, I know…working on it) of putting too much pressure on myself.  And too often, I embarrass myself.

But those moments where I realize I have nothing, where I realize I’m embarrassed, and I’ve failed, that’s when I look up and see that God is reaching for my hand, to pull me up once again.  He’s done that over…and over…and over…and over, and over.  I’ve lost count.  But God has never let me go.  In the days where the pain seems so unbearable, God is there, telling me to lay it all on Him, because He can bear it.  He’s been there.

Go back and read those questions Acuff lists.  More likely than not, you can find yourself in one of those questions.  Maybe God has asked similar, yet different questions, to your heart.  The following are most likely questions I’ve been asked.

Who told you that you weren’t loved? Who told you that without a father in your home that you can’t be a man? Who told you that you don’t have talent? Who told you that you’re a loser? Who told you that you’ll never find love? Who told you that you’d always be a slave to lust? Who told you that you cannot trust me? Who told you that I’m just like every other relationship, and that I will fail you? Who told you that I can’t wipe away every tear, and every pain in your heart? Who told you that you aren’t a Godly man? Who told you that you will never be a good father? Who told you that you have no future?

I’ve told myself most of these lies above.  And they are lies, every one of them.  I thought, and at times make the mistake of still thinking this way, that I would never get away from the sin of lust.  But God told me, YOU ARE MINE! And He will never let me go!

Because I didn’t have my dad growing up, I assumed I didn’t get the “good dad” gene.  And that scares me to death.  More than anything else.  I love my dad, I do.  And I pray that our relationship would continue to grow.  But at the same time, I realize that he failed in a lot of ways, in ways that I don’t want to.  While I certainly forgive him, I know how hard it would be to forgive myself if I made those same mistakes.  One of my deepest fears is that I will be a failure as a father.  God has, and continues to, show me that He is making me into the man and future father that He has called me to be.

So much has changed this summer.  I feel like my heart has been on a never-ending roller-coaster.  And at times the ride makes me want to puke.  I’ve fallen flat on my face so many times, and I’ve felt lonely, as I’ve said before.  But the one thing that hasn’t changed is God’s incredible love for me.  As the seasons of my life come and pass, and people and dreams come and go, I realize that God’s love for me is truly the same yesterday, today, and forever.

So many times in my life I’ve felt naked.  I’ve felt lonely.  I’ve been ashamed, and I’ve hated who I’ve been.  And yet, God looks at me and says “You are not naked.”  He tells me of His love, and reminds me that He is always there.  Because of Christ’s work on the cross, and His saving of me, I am no longer who I was.

I’m no longer a child of divorce.  I’m no longer a slave to sin.  I’m no longer afraid of never finding love, or of being the Godly father I so desperately desire to be.  I’m no longer dependent on anything or anybody except for God.  I’m no longer naked.

And you aren’t either, if you’re in Christ.  It doesn’t matter what you’ve done.  God looks at you and says, “I see your sin, I see your shame, and I see every little thing that you’ve ever done.  And I love you.  Come, follow me, and live.”  He does this, not out of anything we’ve done to deserve it, but out of His mercy and love to us.

I’m going to make a reference to last summer now.  I’ve talked a good bit about this summer, but it’s always good to go and remember God’s work last summer as well.

So many of those kids have gone through things that I could never imagine.  Abuse, pain, struggles, lack of love, addictions, and so many other things I can’t imagine.  Going back to that first week of camp, I can remember one night that brought back all of the pain and memories of a past life.  We asked the campers to go and find somewhere quiet and alone, and write, on a piece of paper, something in their past that held them back.  What was it they were holding from God? What did they need to give up?  What was keeping them from being clothed in the love of God?

Sin, addictions, hurt, pain, lust, pride, envy, jealously, bullying…it goes on and on.  As I watched each camper come and throw all of their burdens into a fire, letting them go, I was reminded of how incredible Christ is.  The change He produces in our life is remarkable, and He alone is able to heal us and clothe us.

So I don’t know who told you that you were worthless, and that you don’t matter.  It certainly wasn’t God.  God sees you just as you are: dirty, helpless, and in need of Him, and He, in incredible grace and love, comes to you, to show you love so that you may know Him.  I don’t know your past.  I don’t know what’s going on in your life now.  But as I look at my own life, and I look at Jonathan Acuff’s writing here, I’m reminded of how amazing God is, and how He is able to heal us.  He is our comforter.

When we are Christ’s, we are no longer who we used to be.  We are no longer called sinner.  We are called child of God.

It’s time to give up, and give it all to God.  This world will seek to strip everything from you, and demand that you conform to it, and devalue you and it will not provide the pleasure and the satisfaction and the peace that God can.  It will take everything you have.  You will be made nothing.

God doesn’t see you as nothing.  He doesn’t see you as worthless.  And He most certainly doesn’t see you naked.  When you come to Christ…you are His, and nothing in this world can change that.  Let Him clothe you, and follow the God that will never leave you.

God bless,

Neal E