FBCLB Homecoming 2009

Week 2-Understanding Praise

Day 1-Praise is Inevitable. In the "My daily praise" section we're instructed to read Revelation 5 and even make up a tune when the verses express a song. If I can be honest, I feel like this could be an easy "opt-out" for most of us. Make up a tune? How silly? What if someone hears me? Let me urge you to read Revelation 5 as truth, and that scene is happening right now, and one day, you'll be in the scene as well! Don't lose the Heavenly perception of God and the praise He's due. He's far more more worthy than our minds could imagine, so go on, sing to Him.

Day 2-Perfect Praise. This is so convicting. Perfect Praise emerges from a worshipful heart, happens when we approach Him trusting, humble and in total dependence, like children, and Perfect Praise happens when we depend on God to initiate and perfect our praise. WOW! So it's our responsibility to have a pure heart, child-like approach, but ultimately, we must depend on God to put the praise in us. Is our praise of our own mustering and manipulation of emotion? Or is God birthing praise from the Spirit of God in you?
Day 3-Ways to Praise. Eight expressions of praise starting with the visible: kneeling, dancing and raising hands. I love how I'm learning real definitions through this study. Like when 2 Chronicles 20:18 says they worshipped the Lord, the word worship is the Hebrew word "shachaw", which means to bow down, reverence, fall down, stoop and crouch. "Yadah", the Hebrew word in Nehemiah 8:5-6 & II Chronicles 20:21b. Yadah is praise and thanks to God by lifting your hands, throwing out your hands! When the singers went 1st before the enemy is II Chron, they not only were singing, but they were lifting their hands, NOT in surrender to the enemy, but in praise to God! WOW! That could be a good southern gospel song right there!
Day 4-Vocal Praise. If you're redeemed, say so! Shout! Sing! Speak it! I think you'll experience a break through in your visible and vocal praise when its not up to you to come up with it. When it's praise that God initiates in your spirit, you'll say so, you'll have to.
Day 5-Audible Praise. I can't help but be drawn back to this point. Praise in inward-out. Look over the 8 expressions of praise: kneeling, dancing, raising hands, shouting, singing, speaking, playing an instrument and clapping. If these expressions are far removed from your real day to day life, then you must return to Day 2 of this week. God must work something in you. Don't let this week's study pass you by. It's absolutely essential.

Expression literally means: "indication of feeling, spirit, character, etc., as on the face, in the voice, or in artistic execution." An expression is secondary to the source from which it comes. In other words, you can't express gratitude to someone if you're not grateful. And if you do, they usually can tell you're not sincere. You can't express love to someone you don't love. You can't express praise to God if praise isn't in you. Is your heart worshipful? Are you coming to God in trust, dependence and humility? Are you seeking for God to put the praise in your heart?
Psalm 51:15-"O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall show forth Your praise."

Week 1, Day 5-True Worship Changes Us

This video below is the song that the Lord has put in my heart lately. It's over 400 years old, but the words are like a salve or ointment to my heart and soul. I do believe that songs can bear an anointing from God and I believe this one does. My mind and heart has been very anxious for months now and this song rings in my heart continuously and is a calming truth from God's comforting spirit. I can't help but rest in His Sovereign love and truly I am changed when I worship Him. Thank You, Jesus.
Psalm 73:24 You guide me with your counsel, leading me to a glorious destiny. 25 Whom have I in heaven but you? I desire you more than anything on earth. 26 My health may fail, and my spirit may grow weak, but God remains the strength of my heart; he is mine forever.

Week 1, Day 4-Lifting Up Thanksgiving and Praise

For what it's worth, I want you to know that I haven't read ahead and done the devotions before you. I wanted to learn together. So, each day, I read and am confronted just like you are. I love how day by day, the foundation is being built for great truth and learning to take place. PLEASE don't miss it by rushing through or waiting until Saturday or Sunday afternoon right before Choir practice to read through the previous week's material. You will miss it if that's the case.

Today, this Biblical principle of Thanksgiving and Praise isn't a shallow or simple truth. Just like in the devo's example of a life situation that took the couple by storm, they were faced, like we all are, with life circumstances out of their control and to be thankful in them? Impossible, it seems! The truth of I Thess 5:18 is the key: be thankful IN the circumstance, not because of them. The only way this will be is if you have an "upward" focus on the Sovereignty of God and take refuge in Him.

Look at this played out in one of my favorite passages:
Lamentations 3:
16 He has made me chew on gravel. He has rolled me in the dust. 17 Peace has been stripped away, and I have forgotten what prosperity is. 18 I cry out, “My splendor is gone! Everything I had hoped for from the Lord is lost!” 19 The thought of my suffering and homelessness is bitter beyond words. 20 I will never forget this awful time, as I grieve over my loss. 21 Yet I still dare to hope when I remember this: 22 The faithful love of the Lord never ends! His mercies never cease. 23 Great is his faithfulness;his mercies begin afresh each morning. 24 I say to myself, “The Lord is my inheritance; therefore, I will hope in him!”

Week 1, Day 3-Worship in All Directions

Upward, Inward, Outward: Click on the Devotion's Title Above! This will link you to a short video from the Youth Choir Camp I took our Middle Schoolers to and the evangelist, Derwin Gray, taught us this concept: Upward, Inward, Outward!

There's not too much I can add here. This is where the rubber is starting to meet the road, where this devotion goes from casual to convicting and compelling.

I'm eager to get into upward! But I confess, too often I do find myself trying to keep worship one direction, upward. This is the first clue that the very definition of my worship is off, right? As we read in our text, our outward relations are a outflow of our worship to God. ouch for sure! When I'm crossed, disagreed with, challenged or questioned, what's my reaction like? Is it flesh that conflict coincides with or is it a Spirit-filled Worshipper? Well, I've confessed! Now it's someone Else's turn!

Week 1, Day 2-"Created for His Praise"

Created For His Praise? When I read the passage for today, I was somewhat detached from the excitement you hear in Paul's writing. vs. 3 "All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ." Then, after reading it a second time, now with a heart focus rather than an academic focus, the Lord opened my eyes to observe the source of Paul's joy and excitement. Notice how every mention of "us", meaning you and me, there's a direct link or connection to God/Jesus or something only He can do. This was humbling and thrilling. vs 4 Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. 5 God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure.
So, if you can find "us" in the grand picture of creation, you find God making the way for us to be there. No wonder Paul was so excited and said, "did this so we would praise and glorify him."

Truly, we were created to praise God. You can find yourself mentioned in scripture! You're spoken and accounted for because God put you there by His fore-thought, love and grace. Do you put yourself out of it? Do you work against your created purpose of praise? "Our future doesn't depend on our faithfulness but on His, who saved us by grace in order that we might show His glories forevermore."

Week 1, Day 1

First Day and it's already sparked my inner man to action. I shouldn't say "it", rather, the Word of God.
I've read II Chronicles 20:1-30 many times actually several time over the last year. It started with a publication I used to receive for Worship Leaders that included an article on this passage. Some of you probably remember me referring to it. When I read the instruction to read the passage, truthfully, I almost opted out, because of my familiarity with it. I'm so glad I didn't bypass this part. His Word isn't like a movie or something that since you've seen it a few times, you can skip it. Why? Because the Word of God is the only...thing, for lack of better a term, that's a tangible, real, object that has a real and true supernatural power. So all that to say, don't be like me and think you could skip the scripture reading when it's familiar.

vs18 of our passage today says: "Then King Jehoshaphat bowed low with his face to the ground. And all the people of Judah and Jerusalem did the same, worshiping the Lord."

"According to Strong's Concordance, the word worship here means 'to bow down, prostrate oneself before a superior in homage, before God in worship.'" -Pure Praise Devotional, pg 13.
If we aren't surrendering to Him as Lord, not just acknowledging that He is Lord, but surrendering ourselves to His lordship in us is a prostrate type way, then our worship isn't Biblical.

The challenge is to put worship or what we think of it under the scope of a Biblical worldview and be honest with ourselves. Perhaps we've drifted from this Biblical worship. Perhaps? Nah, most assuredly we have.

In the section, "My daily praise", the question is posed, "How has God recently shown Himself gracious, merciful, or powerful in your life?" (pg 14) It would be very easy to run right through these words and give them little consideration because of our Christian vernacular. Please don't. Take each word and write it in the provided section on pg 14 of your workbook, and describe how God has shown Himself each as each of those ways: Gracious, Merciful and Powerful. This will be a great way to begin this study.

Love ya Choir-Let me hear back from you all on any of these thoughts. YAY-we're bloggers!