we can't survive without worship

Eagle Rock, oct8’06
I can’t see it yet, but I heard it today. I heard the rhythm, the beat, maybe even God’s very pulse. My long standing shelter of fear, anger, disappointment, disillusionment, and ill-placed faith was fatally struck today. Condemned now—I hope never to dwell there again. How can I put this—how can I even describe for my own clarity what God worked today in my front row seat at Christian Assembly, Eagle Rock. With my regular impetus to write, I’m sitting down gambling that putting pen to paper will elucidate my soul’s deep, murky waters—perhaps God will guide me and spell out in ink where I’ve come from and to where he’s calling me.

Most sermons and worship tend to leave me grasping, wanting, disappointed by the black and white, cut and dried three point display of God’s love, his character and what I should do about it. Most songs lately leave me feeling foul-mouthed and hypocritical as I speak words I don’t believe—mostly about myself—and confess simply bliss and adoration for God in whom, if I’m honest, I find so much confusion and disappointment. But today was different. I think it started…I think God found a weakness in my armor with the song, “Jesus, be the center”. And as I was opened to worshiping Christ through begging him for mercy, the pastor’s sermon that at first I heard only intellectually, began to seep into my heart. God loves me. Not only that, but he is so fond of me and my species that he longs to and does sing and dance over us (zeph.3). And therein is the paradox—the uncomfortable reality that most folks ignore but is so central to God’s hear beat for our world: in his joy and unashamed, abandoned dancing, God’s heart throbs for all the pain and destruction these same creatures are capable of. Experiencing indescribable joy and utterly exhausting, acidic pain is just a peek at God’s heart, daily warmed and chilled by the disparate acts of peace and war my human race daily displays.

I for one tend to be uncomfortable with what I don’t understand. I think that’s requisite for being a post-eden human. The result: either I reduce all the evil in the world to simple consequence working itself out—action and re-action. I shield myself from the dehumanizing wars, diseases, popular diversions and stinging, disorienting pain. Or, I immerse myself in it, drinking deep of the destruction and violence and crash to the floor in helpless self pity, hopeless.
How does God do it? How can he sit on his throne and listen to my world cry out in tortured pain, watch as we slowly dismantle our world and mutilate our own neighbors, cursing His very image. And yet I still see bumper stickers shouting, “JESUS LOVES YOU”.

For one, I don’t see God sitting on His throne yet. I see him on the front lines, astride his white horse, the commander, the Lord of heaven’s armies. And yes, He, more than any other, can count the cost. And still he delights in me. Wounded and desperate as I am. Wounded and desperate as my world is, His grace gives me the strength to see it for the fallen, broken, sick and hurting place that it is and yet, in the midst of that, experience love, peace and a joy that isn’t trite, wrote, forced or fake. Because He does, I can live in the ambiguous present, hopeful for what will be. Christ’s isn’t a pain that births hatred but a pain that creates compassion. His is a suffering that reveals truth.

Pastor Mark Pickerill started by reading through Psalm 73—a psalm I intimately connect with. And he spoke on worship. The transition for the psalmist was vs. 17. “Then one day I went into your sanctuary…” And in worship realized that God made me so that he would have someone to dance over! Not because he was short on troops. And an interesting conclusion; “I have made the sovereign Lord my shelter…” So that’s why he started smashing down the walls of my previous one…

In perhaps a more personal, less theological vein, I think that is what God has for me today. To say, “Listen son. I’m singing over you, I love you, you have no idea how much I long to be with you. That’s OK to reset what you thought was me. But if you reset, do it in a place of worship, of crying out to me. Because I want to reveal myself to you. I want to build you. To teach you. To walk with you and blow your mind with the overwhelming depth of my character, love and strength.
If Jesus was God’s ultimate expression of His person, how can I imagine God any other way that one who is intimately present, willing to incarnate into a world of pain and darkness. And never, ever force himself on anyone. One with endless compassion and fiery anger. One who withheld the display of his power for incomprehensible reasons only to reveal a mysterious plan undertaken simply because of God’s intense love for me and a desire to share His glory with me in eternity
There is the transformation, the liberation, the rebirth. The destruction of my old hiding place. After so long, I worshipped again. After so many months struggling in prayer, my heart opened to God…and heard God. After keeping my ignorance and disappointment on like blinders, God is shaking me, teaching me, and holding me close to hear his heart—to sense his love, his pain, his compassion, his power. Its just been so long.