Worship

We were doing a bible study about the word “Worship” for the last two weeks in chapel. This has been one of those pivotal teachings for me.  Are you ready for this? This is really cool. I have a lot of thoughts on this so I will share in installments. Feel free please to comment back.

The meaning of the word “Worship”:

In the Greek the most common word for Worship is proskuneo.  It means, “I got down on my knee to do obeisance, to worship”. Pretty straight forward, but it is when we break the word apart that it really gets interesting.

The first part of the word is Pro.. from which we of course get our pronoun “Pro”. It means

- to lean towards, to KISS.

- To move towards to interface with.

- Literally, moving toward a goal or destination with the expectation of reciprocity, That is, it suggests the cycle of initiation and response

So we ask ourselves,” What is a kiss?” Well, I think of it as something denoting affection and giving, a sense of intimacy and relationship. It carries with it a feeling of reciprocation, of trust, of giving and receiving in an intimate way. I note that the meaning here in prosduneo is an action, a moving, a pointing toward the one to be kissed. With it is the feeling of bowing down and giving honor and obedience and subservience to the one who is worshiped, but in an affectionate and trusting way with a relationship implied strongly. They idea of taking hold of the feet, of an intimate worship, not one from afar off.

The second part of the word brings this all into focus in the strangest way. It is Kuon which means a dog…. Literally.

Okay, let’s put this together. So, worship is to move towards and kiss lavishly and humbly as a dog. Get that minds picture. Think about it. How does a dog worship his master? What is implied in this relationship between kissing and fawning and a dog? I think of a dog, now we are talking about a well-trained dog here who has formed a true bond, with his master:

-He trusts him utterly, 
-He looks to the master for all of his needs
-He takes incredible joy in the presence of his master, in fact would rather be with him than anywhere else,
-He delights in doing the masters will
-His affection is expressed exuberantly with total abandonment and is so excited to be in his masters presence that he cannot contain himself. He doesn’t just want to be with his master, he wants to be up on him and in his face, kissing him and whining in excitement that the master is there paying attention to hm. 
-and completely and confidently expects full reciprocation for his affection, and receives that affection with great joy.
- He humbly rolls around on the ground in submission, not thinking or even desiring to be the master or be in charge but just to have the master acknowledge him and love on him.
- He will die without hesitation for his master.
- He will guard and protect his master.

Well, you get the picture. I am sure that you can think of some things of your own. As I have looked at this illustration, within the meaning of the word it brings a lot of diverse concepts to the surface of my mind.

The first is how unabashedly a dog loves. I ask myself frequently, (and I am sure many of us do) do I really, really love God? I have tended to beat myself up over that one for many years. Of course I have tended to beat myself up over a lot of things. Guilt and shame, rather than conviction (which I think of as clearly seeing my sin, my failings and desiring to change) that is where Satan likes to keep us. 1 John 4:18-19 says “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love. We love, because He first loved us” For some strange unknown reason I have always felt guilty that I cannot just love God with all my heart. That I, in fact, struggle with loving Him over self. I struggle with loving others over self. I struggle even with loving myself.

The dog however doesn’t struggle with that, he just loves, he reciprocates with lavish devotion the love that the master gives him. If that is what it is to worship then I don’t do it very much and maybe that is the key to a lot of my struggles, my wrestling’s with myself.  It all makes sense. If we are created to worship, to give God glory then in doing so we would find healing to what ails us. So, what can I see that would come out of a habit of truly worshiping God, of purposely coming into His presence with thanksgiving, to focus on how great and wonderful He is rather than on what I can get from Him; to have a thankful joyous heart, as it says in Ps 92:2 “Let us come into His presence with thanksgiving in our hearts; let us shout with songs of praise to Him.” 

The following are some of the things that He has shown me so far that come out of having a spirit of and a practice of worshiping God:

1. I struggle with a bitter heart, a heart that stumbles into being easily hurt and resentful. If I practiced worshiping God, instead of whining about all my little hurts I would naturally practice that with other people. I would see the good in them, I would praise them more readily instead of criticizing.

Joe and I used to really struggle with saying kind and uplifting, complimentary things to one another. It was crazy how hard it was. We used to say, how can we learn to do this instead of getting angry with one another? How can we learn to continually build the other up instead of always pointing out what they do wrong? I think this is a common struggle because every single marriage class or seminar we took gave the suggestion of writing out the good things you see in your spouse and of leaving them notes telling them of ways that you appreciate them. If it is pretty much universally seen as something that needs to be taught then I think that we all struggle with this. Perhaps if we spent more time praising and worshiping God than we do asking Him for things and telling Him of all our sorrows that would translate into how we treat each other also. Just a thought.

2. I also have been working on this thing of being real. We have been having a lot of discussion about that at Northwood. How to be real with others, not putting on a Christian act, and letting them be real with you and getting into the down and dirty of their lives and walking through each other’s valleys, bearing one another’s burdens. Somehow I think a spirit of worship also translates into this area.  If I am practicing worshiping God then I am in His presence, focused on Him, receiving from Him rather than telling Him. He is feeding love and joy and affirmation back into me and I am receiving it with gladness, not saying, no, I am not worthy but just receiving with open arms straight on. That attitude has to translate into and open heart, one that is able to be real because it is strong in knowing that God loves me. And if I am strong in God’s love then I am strong in loving others. If I can come boldly and confidently into God’s presence then I can stand beside my brother with love and total acceptance also as she or he goes through a hard times. And I can trust God to be the one to fix them, not me.

3. It also comes into the struggle with being humble. We struggle with “giving up” pride because we don’t fill that hole, or let God fill it. We see humility as something smaller and lesser. But, if humility is just absolute devotion and totally abandoned love to the One that is worthy of all love and adoration and who poor’s back into us far more than we can ever give up then the act of Worshiping, truly worshiping is going to most naturally lead to a humble heart in practice.

So, I have purposed to open my prayers with a time of just thanking God. I have started  my days and ended my days with praying some praise Psalms back to Him. I stand in excited anticipation to see how much God is going to expand my heart, teach me to have a gentle and forgiving spirit, change my thinking and make me whole, just be doing what He created me to do, to worship Him.

Lessons in Grief

Ephesians 3:18

“And may you have the power to understand, as all God's people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is.” 

I have learned something as I travel this path of grief. I think I am grasping a new dimension of God that I never understood before. God grieves, all the time, over our sin, our rebellion, our lostness, our pain. Having gone through some truly deep grief gives me a different perspective on what that might look like from God’s point of view. I think that everything is masked in our world. We do not experience anything to the depth that God does but rather we skim through our world, snacking on this and that as we go by, but seldom sitting down and just completely experiencing something. We don’t seem to have the capacity, or maybe the desire even, to really experience at the deepest levels. It is too exhausting, to overwhelming, to intense. But God is not fragile like us, He is always intense, and deep and wide.

I do not grieve with those who are in chains as if I were also… I don’t even know what that feels like. I don’t even grieve when I hear of brothers and sisters being killed for the gospel. To be in church and have gunmen come in and shoot the place up…to survive that and know the fear the loss the horror, I have no touchstone for that; I cannot imagine it because, though the loss of my husband and the way he died is horrific to my soul, it was comfortable and sheltered in comparison. How can I grieve with others when I don’t even know what grief feels like? Now I have had a taste of it. God grieves with us because He knows the grief. He feels it as God and He demonstrated that by becoming a man and feeling it as a man also, not because He didn’t understand it before but because we didn’t know that He did and does.

The love of God that suffers with us and for us at such depth and intensity and… loves so much that, He purposely put Himself in a place where He would also suffer it at a human level so we would let Him love us and love Him back. The sacrificial humble Love of God… it is overwhelming.

Jesus is humble and meek and he is an exact reflection of God. To see Jesus is to see God. Willing to suffer for the joy set before Him, that joy being us accepting His love and embracing Him back…

I remember when Brenna first called me mom. I thought my heart would break with joy and roll right out of my chest. For her it was a tentative acceptance of me… but for me it was huge. For God our every little half baked acceptance of His love is intensely felt by Him….. May we become even more conscious of that, to be driven, not by guilt of doing wrong but by an increasing consciousness of the true, deep, breath snatching, heart squeezing delight that God takes in our returning His love back to Him and of our shining it out on others.

How Deep the Father's Love

I have been meditating much on the compassion of the Lord. How passionately, over the top He loves us. There is a word used in the New Testament , splagchnon, it means "moved with compassion", referring to How Jesus sees us, and how the father in the prodigal son saw his lost son. I heard about this word in a sermon last week. It means to be moved in your inward parts, especially the heart, lungs, live and kidneys, the nobler organs thought to be the seat of love. In Philippian 1:8 it uses this word to refer to God’s tender mercies towards us. I wonder, how often are we moved with heart stopping, breath taking, gut wrenching love and compassion for another, the kind that drives us to reach out to another, the kind that comes with action. God’s love is not a passive little foo-foo feeling, it is a gut wrenching love that moves Him to reach out and rescue us.

As I have meditated on this word this week it has taken me back to Isaiah 59, (an amazing passage, from which I think that Paul was drawing his illustration of the Armor of God in Ephesians 6, which implies a little bit different interpretation of that passage than is normally given,  but that is a thought for another day.) In Isaiah 59 it begins with the introduction:

1“The Lord’s arm is not too weak to save you.    His ears aren’t too deaf to hear your cry for help.2 But your sins have separated you from your God.    They have caused him to turn his face away from you.    So he won’t listen to you.”

It goes on to detail how God sees us, how we are so full of sin and violence, evil with no peace and justice. The people respond in vs 9 ff with a confession of their sin.

11“We want the Lord to do what is fair and save us.    But he doesn’t do it.We long for him to set us free.    But the time for that seems far away.12 That’s because we’ve done so many things he considers wrong.    Our sins prove that we are guilty.

God responds to this with: 

The Lord sees that people aren’t treating others fairly.
    That makes him unhappy.
16 He sees that there is no one who helps his people.
    He is shocked that no one stands up for them.
So he will use his own powerful arm to save them.
    He has the strength to do it because he is holy.
17 He will put the armor of holiness on his chest.
    He’ll put the helmet of salvation on his head.”

And He finishes by making a covenant to give His Spirit and His Words

I am astonished and delighted by this, that God, takes up His armor on our behalf! He does what no one else will do, or is even able to do. He executes justice and mercy, He does it with great compassion and much emotion, not from afar off, like moving a chess piece, but with His hands, as going into battle for His people and for right.

Do I have this energy to fight for the oppressed, to comfort the broken hearted to strive with people in their mess and their troubles? Sometimes, but then I grow weary, I get tired of being all caught up with all that emotion. It is exhausting to deal with others stuff. It is even exhausting to deal with my own stuff. I shut down, I disengage from life, I turn to idle pursues so I do not have to feel so deeply, hurt so much… or even, be at risk to be hurt.

In Galatians 6 it says “Do not grow weary of doing what is good…” but we do, I do. God doesn’t though.

Isaiah 40:28

"Do you not know? Have you not heard?The Everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earthDoes not become weary or tired.His understanding is inscrutable.29 He gives strength to the weary,And to him who lacks might He increases power.Though youths grow weary and tired,And vigorous young men stumble badly,31 Yet those who]wait for the LordWill gain new strength;They will mount up with wings like eagles,They will run and not get tired,They will walk and not become weary."

Lord help me to walk in your strength, Your love, Your compassion, to not fear pain, to not run from being gut wrenched over someone elses troubles, to run in your love, to mount up on your wings, to live mercy and compassion, to truly love as You love me.

An Oath vs a Promise

 We got into a little discussion in Sunday school Sunday morning about the passage in Hebrews 6:17-18,

“God also bound himself with an oath, so that those who received the promise could be perfectly sure that he would never change his mind. So God has given both his promise and his oath. These two things are unchangeable because it is impossible for God to lie. Therefore, we who have fled to him for refuge can have great confidence as we hold to the hope that lies before us.”

Here it refers to both a promise and an oath. The question was, "why does God, who cannot lie, also swear on Himself. It seems redundant and unnecessary."

I did a little word study on the passage of Hebrews 6:17 (Reading down the Right side, literal translation, meaning is second part)

By whichGodwilling – has an affectionate desire to execute a purpose.
more abundantly –exceeding, more than is necessary, superior, extraordinary, surpassing, uncommon.
to show – to display so it can be looked upon. To set forth and prove so it can be acknowledged.
to the heirs – one who receives his allotted possession by right of sonship.
of promise – To voluntarily announce  or proclaim what one is going to do or furnish.
the immutability – unalterable, fixed, cannot be transferred or deserted.
of His counsel –affectionate, desired deliberate purpose
Confirmed – to mediate between two parties, to pledge oneself as a surety. To accomplish something between two parties.
it by an oath. - a fence, an enclosure or confinement. To pledge or promise with and oath. It is something definite, measureable, confined, describable, tangible.

Doesn’t this just show God’s heart? We know, and He knows, that His promise of salvation and relationship with Him is His bond, but He is so tender to our hearts that He says, “I will make sure that you know and are utterly confident that I will make this happen, that I will execute it with extraordinary, surpassing, willing, affectionate desire. . .”  

I think it shows not only God's desire for intimate relationship with us, but also humility in God’s heart, one of those character qualities that He is building in us. He does not say… “how dare you not believe me when I say something”, He goes out of His way to let us know in our deepest heart, where logic doesn’t not reign but absolute trust should, that He holds us and He holds the promise of salvation. That He will happily and most willingly do whatever it takes for us to trust Him and enter into relationship with Him freely and without any reservations. 

And thus vs 19 of Hebrews 6

“This hope is a strong and trustworthy anchor for our souls. It leads us through the curtain into God’s inner sanctuary.”

Oh, that I should trust Him utterly… Oh that I should be so tender towards others, not thinking of my own pride, but only of them.

Other thoughts on oaths. There is a difference between the promise or betrothal and the final oath or marriage. I wonder how much these two intersect or are similar, an oath between us and God. A marriage is far more than a piece of paper. It is a bonding, a tying of souls..........

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and later.....

 I was really discouraged this morning. I had weird icky dreams again and woke up incredibly depressed. I don't know why. Maybe cleaning out some of Joe's stuff set me off. I don't know. I was so depressed breathing was a chore. Doing that devotion turned me around.

I love the quote from Matthew 8. It puts me in mind of. Isaiah 30:15 "This is what the Sovereign LORD, the Holy One of Israel, says: "Only in returning to me and resting in me will you be saved. In quietness and confidence is your strength. But you would have none of it."

I wonder how often we are not healing... or rather, are delayed in our healing, because we will not rest, we will not rest, we will not be still and KNOW that HE is God? Ah, so difficult to become.