On the Necessity of Right Worship...Even if We're Not Axe-Murdering

Last week I was in an anxiety-induced fog. I was so dazed and confused, I didn't even realize I was dazed and confused.

And then Sunday morning rolled around. And I strolled into worship and I had an epiphany: I needed to worship. Desperately.

I desperately needed to worship Jesus because my heart had been fixed on tasks and challenges and people and not on God in any of it. Last week God was something I checked off in the morning before moving onto my real day--like brushing my teeth. I spent a little time in Scripture, a little time praying, and then it was on to the things that really mattered that day.

It wasn't like I was out recreationally axe-murdering. I was just doing my thing, getting stuff done.

But as I put my head down and got to work and forgot who and what I was supposed to be worshipping a funny thing happened: I started worshipping the work. I stopped worshipping God. And as that happened, the work became a curse to me rather than a blessing.

People were made to worship. If you're alive, you're breathing, your heart is beating, and you're worshipping something--probably a mulititude of somethings.

So I was worshipping all the wrong stuff. So Sunday morning, I needed to get re-oriented--repentance is the old word for that. I needed to worship at the right places.

I grabbed a hold of everything offered--every word of every song was life or death to me. I needed to worship God. If I didn't take God up on his offer through the worship leader to enter in with all my heart, I would leave there still stuck in my sin.

And a funny thing happened: repentance lightened my load. I came out of the worship experience refreshed because I was re-centered on what I was supposed to worship. This is what repentance is always supposed to be about, though it's sometimes talked about heavy-handidly and therefore doesn't offer the life it's supposed to.

As I end this week, I'm grateful for the gift of last Sunday. Last Sunday's corporate worship experience blessed me every day this week. And I'm thankful for the gift of repentance and for the gift of worship, re-routed to the right place.

Should it Stay or Should it Go: Stuff, Worship, and Cleaning Out the Clutter

This past week I was hanging out with a friend who is hanging out with Jesus in the Scriptures for the first time. We talked about how Jesus seemed to always invoke strong reactions. To meet Jesus was a violent fork in the road for many people. He was not just a passive, benevolent grandfather figure. Jesus demanded a response.

So what does that mean for us? How are we to respond to Christ?

Specifically, we started talking about the comfortable life of white, middle-class folks. Should we need to be spending our time mowing lawns, surfing several hundred t.v. stations, and the like? Do we have to give all that stuff up in order to really be a part of this whole Jesus business?

As we talked, it seemed that there are a couple of equal and opposite truths that we're called to live in.

First, there can be a false dichotomy between sacred and secular. We are invited to do everything to the glory of God: eat, drink, mow the lawn, raise kids, and yes, even watch t.v. All of this is offering-material for those of us who are following Christ. It is possible for him to be delighted in all of it.

On the other hand, sometimes our lives are cluttered with crap. And some of that crap needs to go.

Some of us need to cut out things because it's killing us, choking us out with worry and anxiety and fear and upkeep. Jesus talks about such people with the parable of the soils: the cares of this life are multiplied the more stuff we have. It literally could destroy our souls. For many of you in this boat, it is already killing your joy.

Still others of us need to get rid of stuff, good stuff, even, simply because Jesus has specifically called us to do so. "One thing you lack," Jesus once said to a rich young man, "Go sell all you have and follow me." This is a specific command he offers to this one man (i.e. he doesn't tell everyone to do this) so we must be careful to not recklessly universalize this. But some of us are called to do this very thing.

And so we must all be willing to do so. And in that is the worship. If there's anything that we wouldn't give up in order to follow Christ, it's become our God. And it must go.

This tension between gathering up the things of our lives as our worship and clearing out the things in our lives in order to worship is a tough one. I generally would prefer attempting door number one first.

But the work of the Spirit is to lead us into the worship of Jesus. He is the end of all our "stuff." All our resting, playing, living, working, breathing, parenting, soccer-coaching, errand-running, hope-setting must be done ultimately with him in view. That is the true work of following Christ, even and especially in suburbia-ville.

Confusion and Rays of Clarity About the Meal Jesus Gave Us

Thursday leading up to Easter is called "Maunday Thursday" in the Christian calendar. "Maundy" is from the Latin meaning "mandate," as in Jesus mandated that we eat the bread and drink the cup--communion or the Eucharist.

Which is all well and good except that ever since last Thursday I've been realizing that, with all apologies to my sacramental-type friends in the Anglican, Catholic, Episcopalian, and Lutheran traditions, I just don't get it.

Growing up in Baptist churches with a communion service maybe once a quarter, I realize that communion in my contexts had a low value and Scripture a very high value. And I think that if I had to choose one or the other, I'm glad for the tradition that I grew up in.

Bottom line, how do people grow spiritually? Communion wouldn't make my top five, maybe not even my top ten. I don't believe that taking communion will break someone's porn addiction, for example. But Scripture, prayer, community, accountability... I have seen these things make a difference.

Take away communion, people can still grow. Take away Scripture or prayer, not so much. So what's this thing all about?

I was pondering these things as I visited a church on Sunday. They happened to be having communion this past week. And for a variety of reasons I was deeply impressed with my need. My need for mercy, for strength, for new life, for refreshing.

And then I got the elements. And something about the bread and the cup impressed the reality on me: I had already received those things I felt I needed. Mercy? Strength? New Life? Check, check and check again. I had been given those things and more in the work on the cross.

A little piece of bread and a shot of grape juice spoke those realities to me, re-oriented me around the most-true things that I had lost sight of in the clutter of my everyday life and the various and sundry tyrannies of the urgent.

I still have a long way to go to really "get" all that's wrapped up in the communion thing. I don't ever think that I'll be a full-fledged sacramental kind of guy. But the Lord shed some light last Sunday on a part of my corporate disciplines experience that I needed to be awakened to

Dealing with Disproportionate Disappoinment...Like Carolina Basketball

Sometimes things just go wrong. And of course, there's disappointment. But sometimes things go wrong and many, many months (or even years) later, we're still as ticked off as ever. What's up?

It seems to me that when we experience obviously disproportionate pain in the aftermath of some sort of disappointment (break-up, job-related, our "performance" in relating to a friend, co-worker, child or spouse) it's indicative of a deeper issue. It's indicative of our worship.

Everyone worships something. Whether you'd call yourself a Christian or not, to be alive is to worship. We can't help it. We were made for it. If you're alive, you're breathing. If you're alive, you're worshiping.

And when we worship anything apart or alongside or over and above God, that's sin. That's called idolatry.

And when those things that we worship let us down (as they are often wont to do) we feel the effects disproportionately. Whenever we wrap our worship up in our work, relationships, achievements, sports (lots of Carolina fans are feeling the disproportionate effects of basketball worship this winter) we set ourselves up for disproportionate pain.

So if you're carrying something around right now that makes you wonder "what's my problem? why can't I get over this?" Maybe the real issue isn't the thing itself, but the heart's disposition towards that thing.

And the biblical solution for idolatry is always the same: repent, turn around, change your mind about the nature of your worship. And ask for grace to redirect the current of your worship to the place it was intended to flow towards.

And on behalf of a basketball-crazed Carolina nation, I'd like to thank the guys in blue for giving us all plenty of opportunity to repent of our worship of sports success.

Emerson Meets Worship Meets Soy Milk

In response to yesterday's post, my good friend and fellow Fight Club member Ben Bowman emailed me this quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson:

The gods we worship write their names on our faces, be sure of that.
And we will worship something - have no doubt of that either.
We may think that our tribute is paid in secret in the dark recesses of the heart -
but that will out.
That which dominates our imagination and our thoughts will determine our life and character.
Therefore it behooves us to be careful what we are worshipping,
for what we are worshiping we are becoming.

We are hard-wired to worship. It is not a question of if we'll worship, but where and what. We can route our worship this way or that, but we cannot turn it off.

Emerson here echoes the Psalmist who writes about the worship of idols made of wood and stone: all who worship them will become like them--that is, dumb, mute, foolish.

Not only must we worship, we must inevitably become like that which we worship.

And so the question for all of us is one of the most important ones we can ever grapple with: what am I worshiping today? Success? Money? Security? Escape? People? Power? Applause? To be left alone? All this fights for our religious affections and worship.

But this created necessity to worship must have an appropriate outlet. We must breathe--this tells us that we were created for oxygen. We must eat--this tells us that we were created for food. To attempt to breathe soy milk would be deadly. To try to meet our hunger for food with a meal of rubber shoe soles would not be the appropriate response to the drive planted within us.

And so we were made to worship God. And to worship other things necessarily leaves us hungry, never satisfied, like drinking salt water.

What are we worshiping today? What are we becoming as a result? It will, indeed, write its name on our faces and shape our souls.

Child Pornography and Sunday Morning Worship

Yesterday morning I was reading a disturbing front-page story about a man who got tangled up in the underworld of child pornography.

His story was part disturbing, part tragic: sexually molested as a child, discovering his dad's porn magazine a few years after that, drugs and alcohol addictions conquered, sexual addictions that remained un-conquered and that eventually over-ran his life. And now he's awaiting sentencing, minimum of five years.

A separate story ran next to it about how the internet has fueled the exponential growth of the child pornography industry over the past ten years.

Yesterday was Sunday. So of course I'm reading this as we're getting ready to go to church. And a part of me wondered: what's the point of sitting in a room of beautiful (and not-so-beautiful) people and singing songs and listening to someone talk about a good God when messed up stuff like this is going on in the world?

I went to church smarting. I was angry at the crap in the world and wondering what good it did to go to church in the midst of it all.

And then I got there. And then I noticed the words we were singing, the truths that we were being taught. I took the bread and the wine. And I remembered what good it all did.

Everyone worships something. The man in the article had his life built around sexual addiction that fed a disfigured industry that led to a disfigured soul and the exploitation of kids. That's the power of worship, mis-directed: lives not just destroyed but mangled in all directions.

And so I must be there on Sunday mornings. I must be reminded to worship rightly because my culture invites me to worship wrongly--and then they wonder what happened when it careens out of control.

Child pornography happens because right worship doesn't. We exist to worship, and so we will--one way, one thing, or another. And so I must worship God. And I have come to believe that he has made himself known in Jesus in a uniquely historical way.

And so I worship this God, so that I might not fall into my own version of a mangled and disfigured life with consequences in every direction. And I call others to do so as well, that they, too, might worship rightly and avoid the destruction that inevitably follows a life of mis-directed worship.

Child pornography needs Sunday morning's worship. To be sure it's not a magic potion, not a cure-all--there's all kinds of broken, messy, mis-directed worshipers gathered on any given Sunday morning in any given church.

To worship on Sunday morning does not guarantee that right worship will happen. But to not worship on Sunday morning, almost certainly guarantees that it will not.