As this day winds down and I’m sinfully stuffed for the day, I come right back to the reason for the celebration. Jesus did such an amazing thing by coming to this earth as a baby. This story means so much to me as a Christian knowing what this birth means. I am overwhelmed by the love and sacrifice shown by having that baby come down here.  Let me make sure that I say thanks right now.

I think about all the things that have happened that led up to this day…people have been trampled and died for the perfect gift. People have been shot over the perfect gift. All of this for something material when God gave us a gift that some peole don’t recieve and some of us look over. What a wonderful Savior!!! I want to apologize for what I’ve done to take away from you on this day.

This is your day, we are here to celebrate, we no longer have to wait for you are here.

So Happy Birthday, Jesus! I hope you enjoyed your day. I hope to celebrate you better next year. Maybe I’ll start tomorrow…

Community Life…It’s sort of a buzzword in the church. We like to use it as a catchy name for our small groups. It invokes thoughts of people being together doing life together. What does that really mean? I believe we are called to be in each others lives intimately. Knowing each other and being together in peace is what God wants for us. One of the things we overlook or input on our own is community ‘part of’ life. In the church our groups are part of our busy lives. Now I know that these are generalizations, but hear me out…

I’m a sports fan. Whenever you watch sports news or interviews, people are always talking about chemistry. It’s not only what happens on the field, but it’s the relationships and ‘life’ that happens off the field. The most successful teams always talk about how much they were like a family. Yeah, things got tough and I’m sure they fight, but they were family. The things you don’t see highly affect what you see on television or in the stadiums. What’s in the heart comes out on the field.

How does all of this apply to corporate worship? I’ve read and talked to people who have said they feel like something is missing on Sunday mornings. When you ask them about it, they feel disconnected to the people around them. Church becomes more like a concert or a conference. It is easy to get lost in the crowd and then you begin to pick and choose the things that you like and don’t like about a specific church. Then it becomes more and more about you. It makes it easy for you to choose one place over the other and jump from church to church.

We can begin to experience deeper, more intimate worship when we know the people around us that we are worshiping with. What relationships do you have with the people around you on Sunday morning? Do you really know them? Do you have any community within your church body? If there’s one thing that I’ve learned, it’s that people need community. Churches need people in community. Worship needs people that are in community. Think about what the worship in your church could look like if the people worshiping together actually KNEW each other? I don’t think I’m quite done with this thought, so there may be a part 2 to this one in the near future…

Looking at that question the answer seems pretty obvious.  But why is God’s design more important that our desire? Is it because he was here long before we were? Is it because he created us and knows much better what we need? Is it because in order for us to understand this life we have to talk to the one who started it all? YES! But is there something deeper than that? I don’t know if it’s deeper, but there’s something so cool about this to me.  I’ve struggled for a long time with my own design being opposed to God’s.  Trying to do something that’s in complete opposition to the Father is not easy or fun.  I actually found that out as a teenager living at home.  I thought I knew what was up because I was a teenager and I had a job.  But my father was always trying to help me and set me up to pass.  He had all these ‘rules’ and ‘plans’.  I didn’t want rules and plans.  When I look back at those times, I realize now that if I had been more aligned to what my father was trying to show me, I probably would have had more freedom than what I had.

As I put that into a larger perspective, I think about my life and how I think it should go. When I see things happen around me, I wonder what would happen if everyone would just stop and listen to me. How cracked up is that? Anyway, I have to step back and listen to God and hear HIS designs and plans. As I dig into that point even more, I realize that I’ll be doing even better if I stop trying to live in opposition to the father.  That’s when Psalm 37 starts to become more and more clear. Delighting in the Lord has nothing to do with me and everything to do with him.  I’m not trying to please him so he gives me everything I want. I need to be positioning myself to fit his will for me.

As I always try to do, I want to find a way to make this fit in with today’s worship scheme. I’m not calling anyone else out, I can only talk about myself. The rest is up to you. But when we worship, are we looking for the worship that we desire, or the worship that God has designed? Have we commited our worship to him so that he can act? Or are we searching for what looks and sounds and feels good to us? I believe that if we are looking more to our desire than God’s design, we need him to come and ‘redefine’ what our worship should look like to him…

“Lord, I pray that you would help me to trust in you. I want to align my heart with yours so I can know what your design for my worship is. I want to give you all that you deserve. Help me step out of the way so that you can have all of me. Blessed be your name…”

“Trust in the Lord and do good; dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness. Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him and he will act.” Psalm 37:3-5

That is such a loaded statement.  It doesn’t seem like it would be to hard to follow, but we seem to have a hard time doing in consistently.  I wonder why that is.  As Christians, our desire should be to worship God for everything that he has done.  But so many other things get in the way. The awes of life and the many distractions pull us away from what we are to be doing.  This line is so powerful because in Revelation it is being said to someone who is a follower of God. John is writing the book of Revelation and is constantly amazed by the things that are being revealed to him.  At this point he had seen SO much and was trying to sift through everything the Lord had shown him.  I have to believe he had to be overwhelmed and a little over stimulated with everything and began to worship the angel that was there with him.  But the angel was quick to readjust his focus.  He told him to worship God.

So many times we get focused on the things going on around us.  During these times in our country and world it is so easy to get distracted by all the news and recession and gas prices and lack of money.  But God has never changed and he never will.  So what am I saying to you? I’m saying that even though there are so many things vying for your attention, you need to stop, refocus, and worship God. He’s got all the answers and he has everything in his control.  It may not look like it and therefore you may continue to try and fix things on your own.  But trust me when I say this, he knows so much more than you and I. So instead of focusing on the money and the commercialization of Christmas and buying presents, worship God.

“I John am the one who heard and saw these things. And when I had heard and seen them, I fell down to worship at the feet of the angel who had been showing them to me. But he said to me ‘Don’t do it! I am a fellow servant with you and with your brothers the prophets and all of who keep the words of this book. Worship God!’” Revelation 22:8-9

So it’s official…my brain never really stops. I just wrapped up my latest semester at Missouri Baptist University and I am SO glad to be done right now. It’s been a long year and I’m glad to see it coming to a close. However, now that I have the time to not think about school, I am now thinking about the other things that I have going in my life. For instance, worship180.org is about to blow my head up because I haven’t had the time to get all this stuff out. I’m excited about it all, though. First things first, I’m getting ready to start working on a Spring/Summer Concert Series. I realized that one of the ways to get myself out there is to get myself out there. What does that mean? It means that I can get any exposure by sitting in my office trying to make everything perfect. I have to go for it and let God handle the rest. That’s the first thing that I’m working on right now. In the nearer future, I am working on a project with my friend, Brittany Howard. We want to create a forum for writers to be able to come together and share their stories through music. We came up with the idea pretty much right before school ended. We are wanting to jump on things and get it moving, though.

In other news, I am continuing to try and understand what it is that God is wanting me to do. I have always wanted to be more than just an artist, and I am starting to see some things open up for me to be more than just an artist. I want to build relationships with Christians and non-Christians alike. I am praying that God will help me to develop this thought and give me the boldness to take this step. Being a bridge between the church and the world can be beneficial, but I’m sure it can be tough and maybe dangerous.

In Revelation, John was getting ready to worship this angel because of all the stuff that he had just seen. The angel stopped him and said “Worship God.” That has stuck with me ever since I read it. I want to be able to worship God with my music, my relationships, my everything. So as I start to move forward with all of this stuff, I want it to be worship to God. When I go out in the world, I want them to be able to see that I’m doing something different than they are. I want my life to be a testimony of God’s love. That means to me that worship has to be my lifestyle. That means I have to let God redefine me…

So, I’ve decided that I want to make sure that I keep people updated on what’s going on. As I’ve been thinking and praying about how this thing will unfold, I’ve really seen God work in my heart and mind. So here’s what I have so far…
I sat down with my wife the other night and she helped me think. She thought that I needed a tag line that would be easy to communicate. After much thesaurus searching and an extensive trip through the dictionary, we came up with this idea.

Worship180- Encountering the Savior, Enriching the Community, Engaging the World. I think it works and we’re going to use it. Let me know what you think about it. I will expound on it all when I have more time, but hey, I’ve got finals coming up!