Blessings

It is important to remember that we are blessed.

It has been a stressful day today. My grandmother is very ill and my grandfather is having a hard time with it and it hurts me to see him so sad so I have to think of better things.

Often time people say they are blessed because they have food on their table, or family or a place to live, and it is true I have all these things and I am thankful but more important than that I am blessed because I have a God who loves me and has a future planned for me in heaven, not only for me but for those I love. There is not better blessing. It makes all the others seem pale in comparison.

Abraham Sacrifices Isaac

Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, "Abraham!" 

      "Here I am," he replied.

Then God said, "Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about."

Early the next morning Abraham got up and saddled his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about. 4 On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. 5 He said to his servants, "Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you."

Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together, 7 Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, "Father?" 

      "Yes, my son?" Abraham replied. 

      "The fire and wood are here," Isaac said, "but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?"

Abraham answered, "God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son." And the two of them went on together.

When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. 10 Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. 11 But the angel of the LORD called out to him from heaven, "Abraham! Abraham!" 

      "Here I am," he replied.

"Do not lay a hand on the boy," he said. "Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son."

I had always thought that God telling Abraham to sacrifice Isaac was in order for Abraham to prove to God his devotion. As of Sunday I have started to think differently.


It came to me during the sermon which was weird because the sermon was on turning water into wine. Anyway my new thought is that God being omnipotent already knew that Abraham was faithful, He knew Abraham would sacrifice his son, He also knew that He would not let that happen. I think for God this was an opportunity to demonstrate His mercy.


The other important part of this is story of course is that it is a prototype for Jesus. God promises us that he will provide the sacrifice, which he does in that very place 2000 years later in Jesus Christ.

Been a long time.

I am a bad blogger. To be honest with myself I am not actually a good writer at all, but at least I should be writing something to make it worth even having this page. Anyway a band mate called me out on not updating this site in a month so her I am.

Yesterday in band practice the idea came up about people becoming disillusioned with organized religion. I can't say I do not understand it after all Church's are filled with people and with people come politics, gossip and what not. As hard as we try to avoid these things they will exist. They exist in our workplace and they exist in our church.
I think that the reason why people get disillusioned with church or organized religion is that they have been sold that it is something that it can not and should not be.

Church is not where we go to seek God, we seek God in our private lives, in our prayer life and in everything we do. God may reveal himself at out church but if that is why we go to church we risk falling into the trap of becoming Sunday morning Christians and that is clearly not the best God has in store for us.

So what is church then?

It just occurred to me that there are two distinct things when we talk of church, there is where we go Sunday morning, and there is "The Church" which is the community of all Christians. I of course and talking about the former

Church is a place of corporate worship and prayer, a school to learn, and a place of fellowship. Any liturgy or formality of "religion" serves to those goals.

When I see organized religion that way and understand it as a tool to be used in our spiritual life instead of its center I find it much harder to be disillusioned. Just as a would not get disillusioned by a hammer or a saw, when what I am really doing is building a house.

Random thoughts.

One of the principal reasons for this blog is to keep me tuned into the Holy Spirit. I read other blogs of people are much better writers than me and I enjoy it immensely but my soul needs more. I need an outpouring of my faith.  What I find interesting though is that the more proclaim Jesus Christ the more I do it. So this helps me.

Blogging keeps me from sin. It is hard to find time to do things I should not be doing when I surround my free time with heavenly things.  I have also found through doing this that there are many people like me out there.

A few things about me.

• I am a Christian and a Progressive. I do not believe that Jesus was a Democrat or a Republican and I do not think either party even remotely represents Christian values.
• I believe that the government as well as the community has the responsibility to care for the well being of  its citizens.
• I think many Christians are unaware of the needs in their own back yard. Coming from an urban church and being married to a free clinic worker this is very apparent to me.
• I LOVE praising God through music. To me every song is a prayer and an offering.

Thats it for now. Perhaps I will get into more later.

Love is the Only Way

Jesus taught us that we should love God with all our heart soul and mind, at that we should love our neighbor as ourselves,( Mt 22:34-40) but what does that truly mean. There are three key words in the command and I want to take a look at each one of them.

• God - There is not a whole lot to interpret here. God is the God of Abraham and Jacob, the God of you and me, the Trinity. I think you know who we are talking about.
• Neighbor - I think this is an important word to know what Jesus was saying here, it tells us who we are to love. Do we only have to love our friends or do we have to love everyone.
  In Luke 10:29-37 when the lawyer asked this very question he found that the neighbor was a not a brother or religious leader but a Samaritan someone who the Jewish people of that time had no love for at all.
  In Matthew 5:44 we are told to Love our enemies so it can be reasoned that our enemies are our neighbors too.  It would seem that we are commanded to love everyone as we love our selves.
• Love - So here it comes down to it. What does Love mean. Certainly it does not mean we should have romantic love for everyone.  I think the key here is the phrase "As yourself". How do you love yourself. Certainly we care about our own happiness so we should care about the happiness of others even our enemies. Certainly we care about our health and well being so we should care about others. 

But love is more that a thought, Love is an action so we need to show that love as we would feed ourselves are we not commanded to feed others. As we clothe ourselves are we not commanded to clothe others. Its a tall order and hard to fill. Good thing we have a Saviour to help us, to save us.

Pure Praise - King David

 ¹² Now King David was told, "The LORD has blessed the household of Obed-Edom and everything he has, because of the ark of God." So David went down and brought up the ark of God from the house of Obed-Edom to the City of David with rejoicing. ¹³ When those who were carrying the ark of the LORD had taken six steps, he sacrificed a bull and a fattened calf. ¹⁴ David, wearing a linen ephod, danced before the LORD with all his might, ¹⁵ while he and the entire house of Israel brought up the ark of the LORD with shouts and the sound of trumpets.

 ¹⁶ As the ark of the LORD was entering the City of David, Michal daughter of Saul watched from a window. And when she saw King David leaping and dancing before the LORD, she despised him in her heart.

 ¹⁷ They brought the ark of the LORD and set it in its place inside the tent that David had pitched for it, and David sacrificed burnt offerings and fellowship offerings ^[f] before the LORD. ¹⁸ After he had finished sacrificing the burnt offerings and fellowship offerings, he blessed the people in the name of the LORD Almighty. ¹⁹ Then he gave a loaf of bread, a cake of dates and a cake of raisins to each person in the whole crowd of Israelites, both men and women. And all the people went to their homes.

 ²⁰ When David returned home to bless his household, Michal daughter of Saul came out to meet him and said, "How the king of Israel has distinguished himself today, disrobing in the sight of the slave girls of his servants as any vulgar fellow would!"

 ²¹ David said to Michal, "It was before the LORD, who chose me rather than your father or anyone from his house when he appointed me ruler over the LORD's people Israel—I will celebrate before the LORD. ²² I will become even more undignified than this, and I will be humiliated in my own eyes. But by these slave girls you spoke of, I will be held in honor."

This has to be one of my favorite passages in the Bible, and I think it is easy to see why. First of all as a Worship Leader King David is my hero. Think about it he was one of the original Worship Leaders. He was a Musician and loved praising the Lord.  Judging be the way he is dressed in this passage he was a contemporary service worship leader.
They say that David was a man after Gods own heart and I think this is why.  God wants us to praise him and he deserves much more praise and worship than we are capable of giving.
I think its also interesting that David not only offered up offerings to God but also to the people. He Worshiped through Love, not only to his God but to Gods people for that is what we are commanded to do.

Choosing Songs for the service.

Every Wednesday at band practice we spend about half our time picking out songs for Sunday, because it is one of the most important decisions you will make. Depending on your place in the service you may find yourself saying a few words, but unless you are delivering the sermon or a devotional what the congregation is going to take home with them are the songs they heard.
Because it is such an important decision I do have a few guidelines that I like to go by.

• Is the song scriptural - This is the most important question you can ask. A good song will leave you singing afterwards and if you leave a person singing something that is not true than you are hurting more than you are helping. I have gotten into a few debates over this with people on songs. Just because a song talks about God does not mean that it is worthy for a Worship Service.
• Does it Praise God - This seems like a no-brainer but you would be suprised how many times I have been asked to play Bridge Over Troubled Water for a Sunday service. True there are times when you can change the lyrics to a popular song to make them about Jesus, my favorite is 'How sweet it is to be loved by you' with the refrain 'I just want to Stop, and thank you Jesus' but you need to be careful with these because singing Sweet Home Up In Heaven might still leave people with Sweet Home Alabama when they leave.
• Does it fit the Sermon or Theme of the Service - This is the hardest to choose, hopefully all of the songs in your repertoire already fit the first two criteria but this one takes a little homework. Also this information may not always be available before hand.  Fortunately our minister uses the Lectionary and we make good use of The United Methodist Music and Worship Planner. 
• Can the Congregation Participate - Remember you are a Praise Leader so don't forget the people who are trying to follow. Try to have songs that the congregation can sing along with or clap their hands. Solos should guide people to a close experience with the Lord. A song for its own sake or something too complex to follow have no place in a Worship Service
  
• Let the Spirit Guide You - Pray for guidance before choosing your songs and listen to where the Lord is leading you. On more that one occasion multiple members of the band have come in and said that they felt that they were being led in a specific direction and we found we were all being led the same direction. Be sure to use discernment here but the guidance may not always make sense to you at the time but remember that God knows things that you do not and will always lead to His glory.

We have other criteria that we use as well but they are unique to the structure of our service. We know we need a prayerful song here or an upbeat worship song there. Hopefully I have given something here that can be of use to you in your own Worship Service.

May His Love Be With You,
PraiseBlogger