Peace be with us!
I write this at the time when we celebrate our Lord’s Ascension and commissioning us to continue what He has started. He was very clear --- “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Matt 28:19-20)… What a privileged time for us to spread the Good News through the music that we do.
But as I read His message for today, what bothered me most was what happened before He said this great commission. The Word said “And when they saw Him they worshiped him; but some doubted.” (Matt 28:17).
I continue to be amazed by how God reveals His words and messages, at least for me. For the past several months, He has swamped me with just one word, this word --- worship. I don’t know why, but all these past months, all He says to me is worship!
I have to confess too, that for the past months, I felt there was something lacking in me. I felt, just as some of my brothers described with their past experience, about “something spiritually dry and empty inside”. It’s the feeling that as if everything that you are doing has come to naught. And in everything that you do, the perennial question always pops out “Why am I doing this?”
And the answer to this emptiness came from His loving deluge of that one word --- worship. It suddenly dawned on me that for the past months what I lacked was indeed worship --- worship with my heart. Worship that is true to Him and for Him, and not just something that goes through the motions, or just an after thought.
With His infinite grace, He even showed me what He meant with worship. He led me to the YFC ILC, and there He made me remember how it was to worship --- youthful praise, total surrender to Him, with all hands up raised, even unmindful of being in tune --- it was all about just being with Him.
Yes, worship for Him is being with Him. Not because of what good you’ve done, or what great talents you have. All these are His anyway. All He needs is you being with Him. I remember a youth once told me “worship is heaven here on earth”. And another, talking about her worship experience, “I just kept on crying, not because I was hurt or anything, but because I was with Him”.
Then the pieces of the puzzle fell into their places. I am just awed when this concert we are doing now was titled “Heart of Worship”. It isn’t a coincidence that all these time, He has saturated me with “worship”, and now Bob comes with a concert title “Heart of Worship” (from “Labor of Love”).
I was taken aback having learned about the story of how the song “Heart of Worship” came to be. At times I see the parallelisms of the song’s story and what we have right now. We may be too engrossed with being a lead singer, or being with the choir, or being a musician, that we may be blurring worship. We may be too engrossed of how good we are, of how many missions we have and will have, that we may be setting aside worship. But, as one of the lines of the song goes, as we worship, we have to bring more than a song. We have to bring our hearts to worship.
Let not our talents and our songs be louder than our worship.
We must learn how to worship more, intensely, intimately, individually and as one. The focus is always worship, worship for Him.
Maybe that’s why for the disciples, when they saw Him, they worshipped Him but “some doubted”. The doubt maybe was not because they didn’t believe like Thomas, but because their hearts were not yet ready for worship, their hearts were engrossed and being blurred with something else. Worship was half-hearted, worship was in doubt.
It may seem that during resurrection, whenever people saw Jesus, they worshipped Him. Backtracking a bit in the same Matthew’s account (28:8-9), he says: So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell His disciples. Suddenly Jesus met them. "Greetings," He said. They came to Him, clasped His feet and worshiped Him!
Luke (24) even shortly narrates about His Ascension, and even ends his gospel as the disciples saw Him in His glorious ascension: Then they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy. And they stayed continually at the temple, praising God.
Let us pray then that as we do this concert, we may see Him. And as we see Him, we have our hearts of worship.
God bless us all.
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The Role of God's Ministers
1 Corinthians 3:5-23
What is Apollos, after all, and what is Paul? Ministers through whom you became believers, just as the Lord assigned each one. I planted, Apollos watered, but God caused the growth. Therefore, neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who causes the growth. The one who plants and the one who waters are equal, and each will receive wages in proportion to his labor. For we are God's co-workers; you are God's field, God's building.
According to the grace of God given to me, like a wise master builder I laid a foundation, and another is building upon it. But each one must be careful how he builds upon it, for no one can lay a foundation other than the one that is there, namely, Jesus Christ. If anyone builds on this foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, or straw, the work of each will come to light, for the Day 7 will disclose it. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire (itself) will test the quality of each one's work. If the work stands that someone built upon the foundation, that person will receive a wage. But if someone's work is burned up, that one will suffer loss; the person will be saved, 8 but only as through fire. Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy that person; for the temple of God, which you are, is holy. 9
Let no one deceive himself. If any one among you considers himself wise in this age, let him become a fool so as to become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in the eyes of God, for it is written:
"He catches the wise in their own ruses,"
and again:
"The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain."
So let no one boast about human beings, for everything belongs to you, Paul or Apollos or Cephas, or the world or life or death, or the present or the future: all belong to you, and you to Christ, and Christ to God.
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Fellow 29AD Musicionaries, co-workers of God. Isn't it nice to know that rather than reporting to God, we work with God. Rather than checking in with Him and then leave, we check in with Him and then follow. Through "Heart of Worship-Labor of Love" again, our "King" has given us another chance to work side by side with Him. Woah.... soooo flattered and honored, i'm sure everyone will agree.
Being His Music Ministers, I pray that God in His goodness will again pour us His Holy Spirit, for us to be effective in evangelizing to our brothers and sisters out there with our brand of music. The big "O" [oppression] again is with us, but we just have to focus on Him and stick with our conviction to serve Him.
Psalm 95:6 tells us "Enter, let us bow down in worship; let us kneel before the Lord who made us."- On June 7, 2008, let us not forget to bring our worshipful heart at Crossroad 77. Let us just present ourselves to be used by Him. All of us has a burning passion to serve Him. There is no secret formulas. Our worship must be personal. Each one of us worships differently, but at the end of the day each of us should worship Him. We all know that God is with us, so how can we go wrong!
To God be the Glory!
With you in Christ,
roytsee
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