Set Free to Sacrifice
There was a first for me yesterday. I have often been in meetings where I was ready to preach but the Holy Spirit did something different and I never got to preach. But this was the first time when I am nearing the end of my preparation, having done all the study, writing notes etc., well before the meeting, but then felt the Holy Spirit tell me I wasn’t ready to preach it yet! It was about this word concerning sacrifice and it is as if God is telling me, although I have the ‘content’ of the message, there is still more revelation to come by the Spirit, and more time preparing myself and the message before I can preach it! I wonder if I’ll get to preach it next Sunday?!
However, God did speak to us in various ways in our gathering yesterday about sacrifice/worship and he reminded me of something I had read in my preparation - the words that God gave to Moses to speak to Pharaoh:
Let my people go so that they me worship (offer sacrifices to) me (Ex.7:16/5:3,8)
I have often preached on being free to worship. But God showed us that there has to be a real freedom to offer worship that is sacrificial (costly, extravagant, passionate, messy!) and we found God speaking to us, through various people, about things that hinder us from such worship. These included:
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familarity
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cynicism
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fear of men
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self-consciousness
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shyness
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shame
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independence
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desiring the safe and the secure
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pre-conceptions as to what praise and worship should be like!
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pre-conceptions about ourselves and our temperaments
Can readers think of anything else we need to be set free from in order to offer sacrifices?
March 6th, 2006 @ 12:01 pm
Hi Trevor,
That’s pretty good list already but one thing I long for people to be set free from is a dependency on words on a screen. It’s too easy to get sucked into ‘this song is my worship’ and the words that we read often become the limitations of our expression.
Now in some cases that’s ok because the song we are singing conveys everything we want to say, but so often when we turn off the words people just don’t know how to express themselves freely. We need to teach our people to worship unhindered and unaided. Teach our people how to worship wherever they are, whatever they’re doing - so they’re not dependent on remembering a song but instead they can worship and lavish praise on our God at all times and in all situations.
One tool I have taught myself is the ABC of worship for such occasions as when I start to worship but I don’t have a song or need one. I just go through the alphabet describing Jesus and singing all about him:
He’s the Alpha and omega, my blessed redeemer, the creator of all things, my deliverer, my eternal Father, forever faithful, glorious King, highly exalted one, the great I am, Jehovah Jireh, my provider, King of kings, lord of Lords, majestic one, Name above all names, the ominpotent God, price of peace, the quintessential standard to my life…
and so on. I ejoyed that - I feel a song of praise to my Jesus coming on!
Dave
March 6th, 2006 @ 12:11 pm
Go praise him, Dave!
March 8th, 2006 @ 3:10 pm
God has been speaking to me about the discipline of worship. It took a lot of preparation for Moses and Aaron to bring the sacrifices. Starting right from the animal husbandry and the planting of crops, olive trees etc.. There was an enormous amount of preparation and effort before the sacrifice got anywhere near the tabernacle. Then there was the was the exacting specifications that God laid out concerning dress, type of animal, what was, burned, sprinkled and poured etc. While I am fully aware that the new covenant has set us free from having to follow the law I do think that there are some great principles here about how disciplined we are in approaching for example our Sunday morning meetings. How prepared our stewards, musicians, greeters and other ministers in God’s house are, will all help in our desire to experience God’s presence, after all look what happened when Moses had completed his preparations. Also the discipline of our life styles, what we do on a Saturday evening and even how fit we are for prolonged periods of bringing our sacrifice of praise can all have an impact on our preparation and readiness. I love the idea of messy, visceral, gutsy worship and believe that we can facilitate and steward its occurrence. And all this while still operating under the wonderful, liberating grace of God.