Connecting with God

Yesterday, most churches in the UK celebrated Trinity Sunday. It came one day after I drove down to Southborough to attend ‘It’s Your Calling’. I was actually driving to a new locale by myself. Of course, it had to be a dark cerulean day, complete with overweight rainy clouds. 'It's Your Calling' was the place for me to discover the ‘authorised’ ministries the Rochester Diocese has on offer for training and equipping its members. It is the next step for me to take as I seek how to serve the Lord and His church in this country with the talents He has gifted me. He blessed me with nature art on the way home when the sun burst out and the biggest rainbow ever splashed its colours all over the beautiful green downs and valley! What a message!!

Trinity Sunday also came one day before I read a blog entry from my friend, Mary Lou (click above on title). I met Mary Lou and her Christian high school sweetheart, Kim, years ago on a youth mission bus from Baytown, Texas. The occasion was a summer campaign for Christ in St. Louis, Missouri, organised by my uncle, Stanley Shipp, a dynamic-and-in-your-life evangelist. Mary Lou, now a master English-language teacher, writes that she started off her blog with Sunday and Church, relating both as synonyms. She ends with a thought posed by her Sunday school teacher: that worship and service are also synonymous.

My blog entry today is, besides being long (go get a cuppa!), a bit of reflection on all of the above, and a rather poor commentary on Mary Lou’s blog. We are both researchers on this quest.

Hmmmm ... service for God and worship to God are synonymous ...

I’m quibbling with the prepositions. What if we did a switch, and said 'service to God and worship for God'? Did God quibble with prepositions when He was creating the world?

I'm chewing on this one, too. The first word that pops into my mind when I think of 'service' is 'sacrifice'. That word is so weighty, like those rain clouds I had to contend with on the way to Southborough! Could it be residual leftovers from a CofC upbringing? I've been told by several religious pundits: God does not need you, but He does want your love.

Throughout my lifetime in a variety of churches, godly men and women have informed me God would be displeased by my not serving others (like them, or doing things they would rather supervise but not do). They implied that I would not be allowed to enter honest worship if I did not comply with the needs of the church.

I think about 'sacrifice', and am reminded of sacrifices studied in the OT. The very first sacrifice seems to be a hot contest of offerings between two brothers. One offering missed the mark, and did not please God (who obviously is not a total Vegan). Professional jealousy, pride and murder emerged – oh, excuse me! -- materialised, from that sacrifice. I understand ‘emerge’ is now being used as a new buzzword for American evangelicals, as in ‘emergent church’?

Sacrifices were brutal and bloody, ugly and humbling, and smelly with incense. (My family related to the visceral experience of those OT sacrifices when we lived in Afghanistan and Egypt, and watched our Muslim friends make their animal sacrifices.) They are gut wrenching to observe. But they were to give God glory, and that is what He wants us to do. Today we have the searing image of Christ and His sacrifice for our sins upon the Cross. He tries to tell His disciples, those who would be leading a new ‘emergent church’, what it’s all about in John 14:15-30.

We had two fabulous readings yesterday: one was doom and gloom – Isaiah 40:12-17 and 21-31 – with an upbeat reminder that our God never grows tired or weary (so maybe there’s hope for some of the new worship songs where the same one-to-two line verse gets repeated over and over for 15-minutes). The other reading was Psalm 8, which is so powerful in its descriptions of God’s awesome and majestic nature. (Anyone remember singing Tom Fettke’s ‘Majesty and Glory of Your Name’? I still love this choral piece!)

I guess all three of those scriptures converge at some point to say that we give glory to God when we love and obey Him, and those acts produce our worship to God. Not to mention the Trinitarian concepts found within.

I love my running conversations with God. These are parts of my continual worship with Him. Not everyone knows about all the times God and I are in conversation. It’s none of their business, and is not a tick in the box for them to keep an accountability score. (Kind of like the 40 days of Lent, when people want to know what everyone else is sacrificing, like it's a game, but that’s another rabbit trail.) I guess when I go about the mundane, every-day tasks and I keep God present in those, God will speak to others, as He desires. If I glorify God in the smallest daily event or object, a natural consequence of that private worship will be to edify others as they see Christ in me. At that point, the Holy Spirit will take over.

I wonder if today’s idea of corporate worship is still in concert with what the Apostles had in mind when they were helping the first churches to ‘emerge’?

Did Jesus address the idea of corporate worship? If so, then how? In His ministry time, what did He do? But what makes me even more curious is wanting to know how He worshipped prior to age 30. Somewhere in there He developed a knowing presence of God. Well, He was perfect, so perhaps He did not need to develop, like you and me. I know He participated in worship at the Temple. The thought of worshipping with Jesus -- wow! Did He sing out when He sang the hymns? Did He close His eyes during the Readings (OT, of course!), or was He on the Temple Rota-to-Read? What was His 'preferred worship style'? Did He play the harp or have a go at the shofar? Did He enjoy singing in the a cappella Temple choir, or did He teach the youth? Did He get a choice of worship styles when He went to Temple, or is that a modern-day convenience a lot of us demand and enjoy? We all know that He openly questioned the leaders a lot. Now there's a thought!

When Jesus left to be with our Father in Heaven, He promised a paraclete (Greek), a Comforter, Encourager, Counselor, Advocate: the Holy Spirit. God is always with us. For the moment, when I look at each of those English definitions of the Greek word, I see Christ's body. As a group of Believers come together as one, I just want to be a part of a group that can be each of those things to one another. By the power of the Holy Spirit.

This weekend at 'It's Your Calling' I read some inspiring words by St Teresa of Avila:

Christ has no body now on earth but yours,
No hands but yours, no feet but yours;
Yours are the eyes through which to look out
And see Christ's compassion to the world,
Yours are the feet with which He is to go about doing good,
And yours are the hands with which He is to bless us now.

love ... obedience ... sacrifice ... honour ... glory ...
Service
Worship
GOD!