Conductor

P 3436 There is a time to jump up and down.   

/ DVH

“Praise the Lord, all you nations; extol Him, all you people. For great is His love toward us and the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever. Praise the Lord.” NIV Version Psalm 117, V1&2. This is the shortest Psalm in the bible, it has just two verses. Sometimes brevity can be incredibly important. This Psalmist knew what to focus ON! It’s anonymous. Plus it is an exhortation for all of us to praise the Lord, no matter what nation we belong to or what is going on around us. By the way …

…to extol means: “to praise someone or something with a lot of energy and high emotion. It is a formal verb used when normal praise is not strong enough, often translated as glorifying, celebrating or speaking very well of a person or idea.”  Praise is not a just starting place for worship, it has an entity all of its own, just like thanksgiving does. 

Praise isn’t only about singing. The Lord can be celebrated with words, like this Psalmist does. It’s what I call … pulling focus. We stop wandering about talking to each other and focus on Him. We choose to praise Him because He is worthy of praise, our focus, our energy. Praising God doesn’t mean we sit about like stunned mullets half-heartedly mumbling the words and hoping no-one will notice our lack of participation. Nor is the sermon the only point at that moment either! When we focus on Him with praise, it opens our ears and eyes to His possibilities in our impossible situations.

A lack of praise is like going to a birthday party, where the guests, the cake, the balloons, the bunting, the trimmings… the celebratory things – are the point! We go to a birthday party to wish the person who is having a birthday a happy day. In the same way, praise takes our eyes off us, and our circumstances, and puts the Lord where He always belongs … foremost in our minds. It is a way of tuning into Him, and tuning UP to each other. One voice, one heart, one song — all for Him.

We don’t sing, dance, clap etc. to amuse Him, we do these things because every single part of us needs to stop our normal busy everyday lives and completely focus and recognise “we are His people, the sheep of His pasture.” Doing something physical helps us focus. It is not about how rhythmic we are, or how polished our choir is … church is all about HIM. Then, because He is so incredibly generous, our spirits come alive gazing at life Himself! 

Coming to church is not about singing songs and learning, it is about corporately giving the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit honour. All of us come together to bow down before the One Who has given our lives salvation, purpose, direction and meaning. That’s why we get in our cars, etc. and drive across town and deliberately come to a time and a place that has been set aside for Him. We come to be with Him — together.

We are mistaken if we think praise and worship is for us. Church is not FOR us! We do what we do because He deserves it. When we don’t participate in praise, or worship, we’ve missed the reason we came to church. These things are not flattery, or meant to be lip-service, instead we are calling out to the Lord …with a deep desire to give HIM something that will please His heart. Our unity will blossom in these circumstances. Because we don’t want anything back, instead we choose to leave our own agendas at the door. What He has done for us makes us a grateful people.

We can’t praise and worship without the Holy Spirit guiding us … this means we come to church having prepared our hearts to go and be with the Lord, and His body. For just a short while, we stop focussing on our busy lives, and enter His Rest. When we sing, we are singing to Him. Just like the people at my mythical birthday party sing – “Happy birthday to you.” A birthday party is not for the other people, it is for the birthday person. Praise and worship are for our King and Saviour, Jesus, and our Heavenly Father. Let’s prioritise that!

It is good to ask the Holy Spirit as our conductor and choir master, to come and help us, because human beings can be caught up in themselves and their own lives, becoming selfish and self centred. His holiness will prompt us from the inside and remind us that God Himself is the reason for our lives. There may be times we come to bring a sacrifice of praise and worship, because our life has chucked a wobbly and it took all we had to come to get there. There is no right way to approach these things- we do them the way the Holy Spirit tells us to do them. 

In church, Father God has His own purposes, and His will supersedes what we think we want or need. Part of that is letting the people who are leading us, lead. If someone happens to need ministry, God will arrange it. So we choose to trust the Holy Spirit, the One Jesus gave us to help us, because He knows what is in our Father’s Heart at any given moment. We go to participate. 

We don’t have to see Him to be able to give Him glory –  we have His book! More on that tomorrow. “Rejoice in the Lord, always, and again I say … rejoice…”  Like I said, jump up and down! Almighty God loves us, now, and always. Bye. 👋

P 2927 God loves diversity.

/ DVH

Inadvertently, in Christianity, people have made some subjects into major things — stuff like the speaking gifts. Some things are entirely up to the perseverance of the individual and application. Things like speaking in tongues will help believers with their focus. It takes faith to step into this gift, but people should not drive themselves crazy because they don’t speak in an unknown tongue, or they haven’t so far.

Christians from all generations – people who came from all over this planet, have followed the Holy Spirit into this world’s darkest places. They died for what they believed. We know that they were devoted saints – yet they didn’t happen to speak in tongues and if they prophesied we weren’t told! Tongues, teaching, exhortation,  prophecy, any speaking gifts are not some sort of spiritual badge, they are spiritual GIFTS and those gifts have been given to us to benefit everyone else! Our aim should be to step into the flow of what the Lord wants, so we can carry it out. Every gift matters.

By the way, people who pray in tongues pray as the Holy Spirit leads them, but their minds may not understand what they are praying. That’s why we need to pray both ways, with the Spirit and with our minds. We have inadvertently divided His Body over things that were given to us to be a blessing, not a prerequisite or a qualifying mark of greater spirituality. Personally, I ask Him to help me pray, and I let Him choose how!

Those Christians who find that this precious gift is not part of their package from the Lord, are often people who are afraid of being blasphemous – their fear of hurting the Lord is blocking their faith in His ability to be faithful to us! That’s not SIN. It is a sensitive, badly-informed heart. When anyone prays in tongues, they have stepped into the stream of Eternal Never-ending Flow of what God is doing and saying, using their faith… We are speaking the Holy Spirit’s language, not necessarily ours!

The real test is the level of our humility, not our ability to look spiritual. Prophecy, for instance, should edify and build up everyone’s faith, as well as speak directly into the heart of the people who hear it. It is not a badge that proves one person is more spiritually attuned than someone else. It is a gift. It was giv-en to them — but the Person really responsible for all that beauty is the Holy Spirit! So when others hear Him speak, they will hear Him speaking directly into their hearts, their situations, their pain and joy. It touches them, sets them free, and makes them feel they are not a failure. Father God doesn’t see His kids as failures – He sees us through the shed blood of His darling Son! 

We need to honour what Jesus did for us over how we feel at any given time. Yes, we might have a good reason to be caught up in our feelings, but that’s often precisely when we need to step out in faith and tell the Lord that He is bigger than our feelings, and then do whatever it is, anyway! This means we are putting Him into His rightful place. Making Him our first and highest priority. 

Just like repentance and reparation are not optional extras, they are a part of a living faith. We get muddled up because we think those two things mean we need to feel something. Maybe we should feel sorry about what we have done. But actually these two things are about sheer, unqualified obedience to His Word, not our feelings. I have asked for forgiveness from someone and it was months later I realised what I had actually done! Think of this as being like an orchestra, when the instruments are not tuned together there will be disharmony. Only the conductor knows each part and how in tune to His composition accurately.

1 Corinthians 12:4-11 says: “God’s various gifts are handed out everywhere; but they all originate in God’s Spirit. God’s various ministries are carried out everywhere; but they all originate in God’s Spirit. God’s various expressions of power are in action everywhere; but God Himself is behind it all. Each person is given something to do that shows Who God is: Everyone gets in on it, everyone benefits. All kinds of things are handed out by the Spirit, and to all kinds of people! The variety is wonderful:”

These verses explain the main point of Spiritual gifts. The majority of Christians have gifts they have not activated, so they remain unaware of the power of letting Him operate through them. All His gifts showcase the glory of Almighty God to others. That’s why we were given them. Those gifts are all about HIM, not us. I really don’t care if anyone prays or exhorts others well, or prophesies so brilliantly that God’s glory comes down upon everyone, or teaches us so clearly, it is mind-blowing… They are still His gifts, for His glory. It’s about HIM.

We can elevate some gifts over others – but we should never underestimate the gifts that operate quietly, behind the scenes because that’s the Lord too! Jesus served humanity without capital letters on everything! (Unlike me! 🤣 –  I’m still being perfected!) There are no big or small gifts, only big or small human attitudes. Our God loves everything we do to honour, elevate and illustrate His goodness to others. Spiritual gifts are for everyone’s benefit – and God loves diversity.  Bye for now, 👋