Yep, I am currently playing catch up on last weeks discipline of worship. However, my day of practicing worship yesterday was so exciting and full of joy, yes that's right, joy-FULL! After a morning full of dancing out of the response to the blessing of life, I meet a new friend in a science lab class that I had introduced myself to in an earlier lecture. To make a very long story short, this brave and loving woman (who is curious and wants to know more about Jesus) began sharing her whole life story with me. How she moved to So. Cal., her relationship with her brother, how her parents both passed away when she was a kid, the questions she has about life, and how God has sequential moved in and out of her life through those major life events she experienced. Then, in my humility of this stranger ultimately sharing with me very big parts of herself, I felt that my spiritual act of worship was to then suck up my pride, allow my outer image to be crucified, and follow in the foot steps she had just modeled to me by telling her mine. For the visual image, please image this conversation starting as we stood outside on the grass during an emergency response drill and continuing on as we were riding stationary exercise bikes experimenting with raising our heart beats to complete a lab for my exercise Physiology class. Boo-BAM! (or I should say jingle-bam now...) Jesus is aworkin' and how humbling it is to have a first hand experience in his work. Overall, my experience with practicing the posture of worship encouraged me through the entirety of my day and gave me a new lens to view the world with more clarity and joy.
Totally jumping back in time to the reading this week, page 169 leveled me by directly connecting me to my passion for dance as a form of praise and worship as well as the idea of worship being "the body, mind, spirit, and emotions should all be laid on the alter." Honestly, dance is a very foreign concept to many people, and trust me I can totally sympathize as the extreme physicality of the whole art form can freak people out or quite frankly seem offensive. But Foster has so beautiful put into words what I experience through dancing in the second paragraph. The old testament idea of the sacrificial system is fresh on my mind as I have been traveling through the first few books of the OT in the past months so I was surprised to hear this concept of worshiping by my life lived out as the sacrificial meat on the alter. That my worshiping my God, our God, THE GOD, first stems from laying my flesh open, bleeding, cut, slaughtered on the alter before God. I know that I have heard it so much, but for some reason I had never made the connection between worshiping from this place. This concept had a significant impact on the way I practiced worship yesterday.
I am still trying to comprehend Foster's meaning in this phrase on page 172, 'Lord, I don't feel like worshiping you, but I desire to give you this time. It belongs to you. I will waste my time for you.' What gets under my skin is the word waste referred to time spent in worship. My take on this phrase is the perspective being taken here is from the point of the person not "feeling" like worshiping at that particular point in time, making it then seem like "their own time" being wasted in worship. Rather than the person truly wasting their time by choosing to worship when they don't feel like it. Maybe? Clarity? Help? I would love some feedback here so please hit me with your best shot!
My favorite commentary on wasted worship is John Chapter 12. Mary wastes everything in absolute extravagant surrender and passion for Christ. She wastes her finances (year wages), dignity, identity, person, role, performance, everything. She gets ripped on for being "wasteful" but Jesus drinks up her worship and wears her pouring out to the cross. This might sound weird but I sometimes wonder what Nicodemous and Joseph thought when they wrapped up Christ's body at the foot of the cross and smelled sweet fragrance all over his body broken and blood shed. This probably sounds really weird but did God use Mary's pouring out to sweeten that perhaps first communion between Christ and these two men? Does he use our heart's passionate surrender to His sacrifice to sweeten the communion of His body broken and blood shed to a lost and dying world? I have no idea but I can say that hearts poured out in worship are an amazing, beautiful testimony to Christ's song and dance.
ReplyDeleteBlessings!
I was going to write more about my kids and how our home is where they waste time. I'll spare you the stories. In short -- they abide at my home. Evidence of abiding is a loss of pretense, self-consciousness, self-judgment, and a loss of time consciousness. With a loss of these things, our home becomes where they waste time. When they waste time they are far less conscious of self and far more conscious of their father's unconditional love. When they waste time they have genuinely abandoned role and performance and within the love of the home their hearts are exposed. They are free to express their joys and fears and rest in the accepted tenderness of their family (mom and dad.) Wasting time is a testimony to your heart' embrace of Christ's call to "keep on abiding in me."
Steve! Thank you so much for your response! The connection you made between your kids and them abiding really sank in with me. Thanks for your time and energy. By the way I don't think your question about Mary's form of worship is strange or weird. I think it is honest and very interesting toward God's intentionality behind every action, even Mary's devotion to the Lamb only a few hours before his slaughter.
ReplyDeleteWith Love.
Steve! Thank you so much for your response! The connection you made between your kids and them abiding really sank in with me. Thanks for your time and energy. By the way I don't think your question about Mary's form of worship is strange or weird. I think it is honest and very interesting toward God's intentionality behind every action, even Mary's devotion to the Lamb only a few hours before his slaughter.
ReplyDeleteWith Love.
Jenn, all I think he is saying is that when we dont want to participate in worship we can often view it as a waste of "Our" time. He turns the phrase to "waste time on you" which i think we all know is not and cannot be a waste of time. For me often times it is the areas that i dont consider "High Worship" that i view as a waste of time. Taking out the trash for my wife, Washing her car, washing clothes, cleaning the floor, mowing the lawn - those seem like a waste of time to me but to God it is all worship!
ReplyDelete