“For God is the King of all the earth: sing ye praises with understanding.”
Psalm 47:7, KJV
Human beings are meant to worship. And specifically, to worship God. If we choose to deny this salient fact, we change nothing. Worship defines us, and who we worship is our decision. But it will happen. Our very DNA includes this proclivity.
Among believing Christians there can be an ‘oh hum’ attitude toward ‘worship’. It seems to us to be a tolerated part of our gatherings. Often worship is nothing more than a sequential chain of events that must be endured, for ‘religious reasons,’ but seldom for an authentic spiritual purposes.
The worship of heaven still worries some. It seems too intense, and a bit (shall we say) fanatical for our likings. Our standards are high, after all it will be eternal. At our very best worship is not of an ‘eternal grade’. It may be good and all– but we envision something more, a thing that engages us on an eternal level.
The fault can be with our ‘earthly’ levels of worship.
Worship leaders are doing their best to engage us. Many are busy with their own lives, with all its all consuming issues. However they can lead and direct us into worship every Sunday. They quickly learn to mollify and ‘reduce’ their approach, to the ‘lowest common denominator’ in order to please their congregations.
But worship still sizzles, and the ‘need’ to worship is embedded inherently within. If we don’t choose to worship idols, we take on the task of worshipping the real God. And that real adjustment will truly change us.
If worship is boring, you’re doing it wrong. You see boredom and worship are antithetical. They are ‘miles’ apart. Worship must be an exclusive focus of a ‘burning heart’ not bound with the mundane occurrences of the day. If you are an average ‘Joe, or Jane’ worship leader, you will understand this. At times you may experience this ‘tension’ of earth and heaven. But remember, heaven begins now, and not later.
Be encouraged, boredom is not your fault. It is the “spirit of this age.” But, if I might suggest, more grace is given to those who lead us. Competing with a people fully enamored with ‘entertainment’ will be hard (but not impossible for God.)
Will you be bored in heaven? I hope not. But remember this, ‘worship practice’ starts now.
“God is not moved or impressed with our worship until our hearts are moved and impressed by Him.”
“Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds,”
James 1:2
“There is no circumstance, no trouble, no testing, that can ever touch me until, first of all, it has gone past God and past Christ, right through to me. If it has come that far, it has come with a great purpose.”
Alan Redpath
“All joy,” (verse 2) is a fantastic thought. It stresses a joy that becomes something very powerful and significant. “All joy,” surpasses “some joy” or even “occasional joy.” Instead it’s a joy that remains joy even when tired and weak. It will only shine brighter in the darkness.
Jewels, diamonds, and pearls are typically displayed on a black background.
The black only reveals their brilliance. In the same way darkness should only encourage us to be deliberately brighter than our surroundings. We must understand that we shine only because He makes us shine.
There is a divine incandescence that awaits every believer who feels the need or desire for more of God. When your difficulty is illuminated by grace, it will shine out and proclaim His glory. Perhaps this is what true holiness really is.
The signs surrounding God’s nearness are available to each believer. He is close to those who want Him, and there is nothing will stand in His way. The Lord cherishes and treasures the seeking heart. There is nothing that can detour the believer’s yearning after their Father.
Name your trial, and then tie it to God’s throne.
It’s not yours. Leave it alone and refuse to carry it any further. It’s now the Lord’s concern. Simply watch for the deliverance to come. When God sees your heart, He will lavish Himself out on you.
How you handle your fragile moments is key to the remainder of your life. It’s ok to feel abandoned or alone. It’s ok to be depressed.
But let God know about where you’re at. I’m convinced He really wants to teach you to walk in the truth. And dear one, nothing will be as challenging as that.
I really hope that these thoughts might help. We face challenges and difficulties. Just maybe this post will strengthen your walk? I chose each thought purposefully and every one contains something helpful (I hope).
These each speak wisdom as we try to understand what’s happening to us.
Quotes to Guide You Through Your Trial:
A.W. Tozer
“It is doubtful whether God can bless a man greatly until He’s hurt him deeply.” (Roots of Righteousness, Chapter 39)
Calvin Miller
“Hurt is the essential ingredient of ultimate Christ-likeness.” (Quoted in Christianity Today, July 2007, p41)
Larry Crabb
“Brokenness isn’t so much about how bad you’ve been hurt but how you’ve sinned in handling it.” (Christianity Today, A Shrink Gets Stretched, May 1, 2003)
“Shattered dreams are never random. They are always a piece of a piece in a larger story. The Holy Spirit uses the pain of shattered dreams to help us discover our desire for God, to help us begin dreaming the highest dream. They are ordained opportunities for the Spirit to first awaken, then to satisfy our highest dream.” (Shattered Dreams, 2001)
Alan Redpath
“When God wants to do an impossible task, he takes an impossible person and crushes him.” (Quoted by Gary Preston, Character Forged from Conflict: Staying Connected to God During Controversy. The pastor’s soul series, (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House, 1999)
Bruce Wilkinson
“Are you praying for God’s superabundant blessings and pleading that He will make you more like His Son? If so, then you are asking for the shears.” (Secrets of the Vine, 60.)
Charles Swindoll
“Someone put it this way, ‘Whoever desires to walk with God, walks right into the crucible.’ All who choose godliness live in a crucible. The tests will come.” (Moses, Great Lives from God’s Word, 285.)
“Being stripped of all substitutes is the most painful experience on earth.” (David, p70)
Elisabeth Elliot
“The surrender of our heart’s deepest longing is perhaps as close as we come to an understanding of the cross… our own experience of crucifixion, though immeasurably less than our Saviour’s nonetheless furnishes us with a chance to begin to know Him in the fellowship of His suffering. In every form of our own suffering, He calls us into that fellowship.” (Elisabeth Elliot, Quest For Love, (Grand Rapids, MI: Fleming H. Revell, 1996), 182.)
George MacDonald
“No words can express how much our world ‘owes’ to sorrow. Most of the Psalms were conceived in a wilderness. Most of the New Testament was written in a prison. The greatest words of God’s Scriptures have all passed through great trials. The greatest prophets have “learned in suffering what they wrote in their books.” So take comfort afflicted Christian! When our God is about to make use of a person, He allows them to go through a crucible of fire.”
Helen Keller
“Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through the experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.” (Quoted in Leadership, Vol. 17, no. 4.)
Oswald Chambers
“God can never make us wine if we object to the fingers He uses to crush us with. If God would only use His own fingers, and make me broken bread and poured-out wine in a special way! But when He uses someone whom we dislike, or some set of circumstances to which we said we would never submit, and makes those the crushers, we object. We must never choose the scene of our own martyrdom. If ever we are going to be made into wine, we will have to be crushed; you cannot drink grapes. Grapes become wine only when they have been squeezed.” (Chambers, O. (1993, c1935). My utmost for his highest : Selections for the year (September 30). Grand Rapids, MI: Discovery House Publishers.)
“No-one enters into the experience of entire sanctification without going through a ‘white funeral’ — the burial of the old life. If there has never been this crisis of death, sanctification is nothing more than a vision… Have you come to your last days really? You have come to them often in sentiment, but have you come to them really?… We skirt around the cemetery and all the time refuse to go to death… Have you had your ‘white funeral’, or are you sacredly playing the fool with your soul? Is there a place in your life marked as the last day, a place to which the memory goes back with a chastened and extraordinary grateful remembrance–’yes, it was then, at that ‘white funeral’ that I made an agreement with God.” (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, January 15, (Uhrichsville, OH: Barbour and Company, Inc., 1963).)
“Jesus Christ had no tenderness whatsoever toward anything that was ultimately going to ruin a person in his service to God…. If the Spirit of God brings to your mind a word of the Lord that hurts you, you can be sure that there is something in you that He wants to hurt to the point of its death.” (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, September 27, (Uhrichsville, OH: Barbour and Company, Inc., 1963.)
Charles Stanley
Does God purposefully allow suffering? “The comfortable, but theologically incorrect, answer is no. You will find many people preaching and teaching that God never sends an ill wind into a person’s life, but that position can’t be justified by Scripture. The Bible teaches that God does send adversity – but within certain parameters and always for a reason that relates to our growth, perfection, and eternal good.” (*Stanley, C. F. 1997, c1996. Advancing through adversity (electronic ed.). Thomas Nelson: Nashville, TN.)
“Some Christians are called to endure a disproportionate amount of suffering. Such Christians are a spectacle of grace to the church, like flaming bushes unconsumed, and cause us to ask, like Moses:
It seems that pain is the best teacher. We learn the hard way to come under God’s direction, and we finally learn to love others. Maybe it’s our pain that communicates His grace–is this how God changes us?
After all, the crushed grapes make the wine.
C.S. Lewis once made the comment, (and it’s worth thinking about), that “experience is the most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn.” We face many obstacles, run into quite a few dead ends, and along the way we learn that when we really hurt, we start to teach something that the Church desperately needs.
My discipleship has been chock full of challenges. I’ve lost the use of my right arm, I have struggled with depression. I had a brain tumor removed, and must walk with a cane. I struggle with intense fatigue. I now have severe issues with pain. (I no longer pastor a church or teach in a Bible college.)
In November 1999, my wife and I lost a child.
I have prayed earnestly for a complete healing and had others pray for me. It’s funny, but all of this has happened after I became a Christian disciple! I often ask myself why? Why did God allow this to happen?
What did I do to deserve all of this?
Paul and Barnabas came into an interesting place (we can read about it in Acts 14.)
“Strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.”
Acts 14:22, ESV
Some Bible teachers we listen to on the internet choose to minimize suffering, and of course we adopt a lot of our own theology to factor out pain and difficulty. But is this what the Bible teaches? If we read Hebrews 11, we find that life could be pretty grim for those with faith in God.
“Women received back their dead, raised to life again. There were others who were tortured, refusing to be released so that they might gain an even better resurrection. 36 Some faced jeers and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment.
37 They were put to death by stoning; they were sawed in two; they were killed by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated— 38 the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, living in caves and in holes in the ground.”
Why does it have to be so hard for us as believers in Jesus?
Common sense suggests that things should get easier for those who believe. We somehow think that God rewards faith with instant glory. But I painfully discovered that my discipleship, my faith, doesn’t mean some wonderful existence on this planet. It seems that pain becomes the way we grow up and mature in Him.
I honestly believe, after over 40 years of following Jesus, that suffering is part of God’s plan for me.
It has never been easy. It never was. And I wish it was different.
My God, I wish it was different.
No matter what you are going through, remember that God always loves you. He has chosen us to navigate us through much difficulty. We must however, convert these painful things by our faith in Him. And only our faith does this.
“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”
Romans 8:28
“We must learn to regard people less in light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer.”
Broken Believers 