Hello everyone!
I want to take the opportunity to strongly affirm the great attitude that everyone has adopted as we tough out this pandemic, and the restrictions upon everyday life that it has brought upon us. Person by person, as I speak with you, has such a great attitude – an attitude of faith and hope that God has got His hand on us, and will see us through all this.
I am so proud of our churches …
These last few weeks my mind has turned to what it means to be a worshipping church, a worshipping people of God in the current circumstances. I have wondered deeply about what God hears and sees from heaven as His people, being sorely tested, continue to offer up praise and worship. I have thought so much about that as I have read through the psalms and Job, the Book of Revelation, and the Book of Lamentations … so many thoughts, so many questions … that eventually give way to deep worship of my God …
I was sitting with these kind of thoughts just this morning (Monday) and I had one of those moments when everything around me in the physical environment suddenly went quiet … and I knew that the presence of the Lord was right by me. He wanted to show me something … These are the sweetest of sweet moments in communion and fellowship with the Father. My immediate response is always to stop what I am doing and, as the four living creatures did in Ezekiel’s vision (See, Ezekiel 1:23-24), “let down the wings of my spirit” to be still before the Lord. Body still. Mind still. Spirit resting … heart quietly at attention …
In the quietness I felt (not heard an audible voice, this time, it was very clear) the voice of the Lord …
“My son, … that you have set your mind to enquire into these things, I want to respond and share My heart with you …. (pause, I wait for His voice again …) There are many moments and seasons where My people are tested …. moments of loss, moments of pain and firey trial, even doubt … and when their faith is greatly tested … (another pause, and I wait ready and listening for what was coming) … even then … when My people praise and worship Me from their hearts that are fully devoted to Me, there comes up to Me a very special, richer fragrance that delights Me, and blesses Me … this potent fragrance can never be released in heaven … my angels marvel at how this can be. To them it is a mystery … but not to Me. They gather to see its colour and beauty ascending to my throne … and they all bow down in reverence at the spectacle …” [10:17 am, August 24, 2020]
Then His tangible presence withdrew … not that I was alone, of course … and the usual sounds of life returned – way too loud ... It was an overwhelming moment … I was so touched that my heavenly Father would share that with me, and I began to worship Him right then and there … to bless Him … to please Him, to enrich the moment for Him …
What we offer up to the Lord in deep worship especially in the testing, painful seasons of life friends, is far, far sweeter, far richer to Him than any other kind of worship – not even the angels in heaven can replicate it, let alone better it. And Satan? He has no idea how all that works. He thought he could kill worship in Job. But could not. In David. He could not. In Paul. He could not. I now see how potent was the worship of Paul and Silas in jail at Philippi, deep under the ground, locked in stocks and bleeding from the lashing they’d received that morning. Their choice in the midst of all that? Praise and worship!
And so, what is it about our passionate, honest worship in testing times, or painful seasons, that makes it so much more fragrant than at other times? (Not that God doesn’t value our other-season worship, He certainly does). I have been pondering all that since this morning, and I offer some thoughts here, but it is still a work in progress for me as I meditate on this word, search the Scriptures … and pray.
The core issue, I am coming to see, is that when we worship out of the painful place, when we worship out of the places of deep faith testing, we ruthlessly choose to honour Him with our love and faith, and we do so by faith (Heb. 11:6). We choose Him over wallowing in our suffering and self-pity. We choose Him over pain, over the sorrowful circumstances and over injustice, we choose Him over complaining just as Jesus demonstrated on the cross … In these moments we choose worship. It is never something we attend, or “go to”, it something we determine to do over anything else, because the Lord is worthy of the first things … the best of our choices – even in times of pain and sorrow ...
We choose to worship in spirit and in truth – not flesh, or with attitudes plagued or affected by flesh concerns. We put these aside for the moment, not in an act denial but out of devotional priority, and we choose to worship in spirit and in truth and delight the Lord. How God loves that choice … and, of course, these are the kind of worshippers the Father seeks according to Jesus in John 4:23.
Pain and suffering serve to refine our choices. These come into sharp focus during trials and testing times … we get real about what is very important and what is not … and we become much more intentional about worship. We even craft and shape worship as a personal gift to the Lord in a single-minded, highly focused pursuit … and this involves sacrifice. It is always a sacrifice to choose the Lord, over self – but it becomes a glorious one as He inhabits the praises of His people. Genuine worship will always cost us something, or else, it isn’t really worship, is it?
True worship out of the painful place is a deeply refined, more honest kind of worship. The martyrs knew this in heaven when they finally got there, but not before … and in heaven their worship is the richest of all worship, including that of angels. Selah!
You are dearly loved!
Ps Milton