Intimacy W/God

Mar

2010

I love my life

When I was in college a friend of mine would always pray, “God You are so big”, I remember thinking “That is the understatement of all understatements” however; I often find myself at a loss for words explaining what He is doing.

I find myself in that situation today.

Last weekend I had the privilege of being with some great people in Limon Colorado leading a worship retreat for Life in Christ Church. This is the first time a church has invited the community to join them. As a result we were blessed to have three churches represented. What a blessing to have different levels of musicians, different places in their walk with the Lord, and different traditions of worship. It created a different but very good environment.

We started on Friday night with Repentance and Dieing to self. It set the tone for the whole weekend. God was faithful and set a tone of reverence and expectation.

Saturday morning we began with Real worship, went into the rewards of loyalty by teaching through the book of Ruth, after which we were prepared to go to the centerpiece of the whole weekend, “walking in intimacy with God”. What does it mean practically to walk in intimacy with God? I know I’m supposed to read my bible and pray but there has to be more, and there is. We finished the morning answering the question “why music?”. If worship isn’t about music then why music?

After lunch we began by explaining what it means to be a “worship leader” and what is potentially wrong with the titles of “lead worshiper” or “lead follower”. We finished the heart portion of the day talking about excellence. What is it and can we offer it?

The practical “how to” portion began at about 2:00 with the purpose and elements of a worship team. What is the purpose of the choir and each individual element of the team. Where does each instrument fit into the sonic space. My friend Andrew did an excellent job with practical music theory. He starts with where we are rather than taking us back to theory 101 it was great.

After supper we went into planning and delivering a worship set and an actual rehearsal for Sunday morning.

I came home exhausted but energized. Seeing the fruit of God’s word and some practical application is always amazing.

If you were going to have a retreat what things would you add or subtract? What did I miss?

Feb

2010

Confession Time

Not confession in the literal sense of the term. I may need that as well but not in this space.

I have always spoken my mind here without holding much back and sometimes felt like I’ve been a little too honest. Today I need to process and get some things out of my head. As always I welcome your thoughts. I don’t know where this post is going I’m just mind dumping. So consider that fair warning.

In late 2008 I got very discouraged with some of the things being said in relation to the elections. The way I chose to deal with it was to fast all things political for as long as needed and focus on the one thing that can bring real change. Building the Church.

I was so pleased to hear my pastor tell the congregation yesterday. God’s plan is for us to operate in our gifts and there is no plan b. After the elections last year Dutch Sheets, in a letter to his partners, made the comment, God had a plan 50 years and 50 million baby’s ago it was us. These two statements go the heart of what I’m passionate about. Equipping the Saints.

I understand theologically God does not “need” us as much as He has chosen to work in and through us. Jesus modeled this plan as He walked purposefully to the cross while entrusting the message of salvation to 12 men. That is our task. raising up those who have been entrusted to us, calling out their gifts, making sure they are equipped, and then giving them permission to serve with a covering.

This is my foundational message. 2 Timothy 2:2, teach the teachers to teach.

Recently I separated my political thoughts into a different blog so I could keep this one solely for the purpose of ministry. Last week I posted 3 times concerning Conservatism and Christianity on this blog and began to feel bad about it. It is nearly impossible to separate politics from other aspects of our lives. They are completely intertwined.

I am very busy meeting with young men, serving on a couple of boards, helping different people with social media, as well as preparing for worship team retreats, writing a book, and trying to write songs. All good things but it begs the question:

What things, of eternal significance, should I focus on? In what areas should I focus on building the church? It all runs together and gets a bit confusing at times.

As I read other blogs they are mostly focused on one thing. Should I drop the political discussions and focus on building the church? Should I stop doing all but one thing and do it with all of my passion and effort? Religion and Politics are the two things we are told to avoid however Religion and Politics are two of the most important things we should be talking about. (don’t be too literal with that last sentence)

I realize Most of my problems are between my ears and because I’m in a safe place to deal with my pathologies God is bringing them to the surface. It’s good but hard. I’m developing a lifestyle of prayer and fasting that I’ve never understood before.

I am so thankful for my family especially my amazing wife who believes in me beyond my ability to understand. And thankful for friends who love me enough to tell me the truth.

Pastor Brady finished yesterday with this comment. “God has more gifts to give than people willing to use them” I don’t want to be that guy. I don’t want to spend time on things good but not eternally significant. If your still here after 600 words thank you. I’ll keep you posted.

Jan

2010

“Leading” Worship

One of the themes I am seeing around the blogosphere and on posting boards is the idea a worship leaders job is to simply worship. People will either follow or not but it’s not the responsibility of the worship leader.

I couldn’t disagree more.

Though there is some truth to the notion that we can’t make people follow and we definitely can’t make people worship however; the idea that the leaders job is simply to stand and worship in front of people couldn’t be more wrong.

Our job as leaders begins well before we stand on the platform in front of the congregation. Every situation is different and we need to make sure we are seeking God for what He wants to say to His people. When were in leadership we must consider every revelation or communication from the Lord as to whether it is for us or for the people we are leading.

We must live in the secret place. Seeking Him and His desire for His people. Leading worship is not about choosing 5 songs in the same key or chord family. It’s not about doing what were, necessarily, comfortable with. It’s about going to the mountain and hearing God’s heart for His people.

After spiritual preparation it’s about preparing your craft. Whether it’s an instrument, your vocal, a video, a congregational reading, or whatever we must prepare ourselves. Remember we must be about excellence not perfection. Excellence is about offering our best not being perfect or even the best.

When we show up to the service we should invite the Holy Spirit to ruin our preparation. We should have been listening to Him through our preparation but it is so critical to invite Him to disrupt the service. Make it clear to Him and the worship team that we are going to go with Him wherever He goes.

Finally when we stand on the platform in front of those who Jesus bought with His own blood, those who He loves so much He would rather die than be without, we must engage them. We must draw them into the secret place with us. Not by manipulating emotions but by being genuine, leading them to the throne and then getting out of the way. Having been with Jesus we should know where they are and what He has given us to say to them should connect with them right away.

I understand sometimes it’s hard work. There is an enemy who knows the power of God’s people in unity worshiping the living God and is actively at work to disrupt that activity. I am not saying if we follow the right formula everything will work. Sometimes it doesn’t. But if it doesn’t it’s not because we weren’t prepared and haven’t done everything within our control to make sure it does work.

Eddie Espinosa says “worshiping in front of a congregation is like eating a 5 course meal in front of starving people”.

Leading worship is about going somewhere and taking as many as will come with us. This is not a passive activity but a very engaging, purposeful, passionate activity. We cannot take responsibility for how “good” the worship was but we must take responsibility for being prepared and engaging God’s people.

Please don’t embrace false humility in any form but especially when it comes to the responsibility of leading God’s people in worship.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Dec

2009

Are We Asking The Right Questions?

Over the last several months I have been involved in conversations on blogs and forums surrounding all things related to the corporate worship service and the teams of people who facilitate our corporate worship experience.

The conversations are about everything from style, to heart, to practical aspects related to worship in the church. I hear the hearts cry from these leaders and team members and believe the motivation, for the most part, is good. They genuinely want to create an environment where the people of God can come together without distraction and enter into the presence of God with the community of believers they have chosen to identify with.

Today I ran across a conversation entitled “The Ideal Band Member”. I eagerly clicked the link thinking we were going to talk about the type of person we are looking for to be on our worship team. Someone who possesses a servants heart, a lover of God and His word. Someone who will lay down their life for the Bride of Christ, not positioning themselves for something bigger and better but sincerely serving the house. And oh by the way they are skillful. I was disappointed.

The conversation was about instrumentation. “We have two guitars, a bass, a drummer, and two keyboard players what should we be trying to add next?”

Please don’t misunderstand. This is not an invalid or unimportant conversation. If our goal is excellence this is a valid stream however; in the context of the last several months it made me wonder if we are really asking the right questions.

What is our purpose as leaders in the church in general and worship leaders specifically?

I remember receiving an email telling me I would not be asked to be a part of the worship team because the pastor wanted a cohesive group of musicians. And since I was an unknown they were going to choose people who they knew could deliver. I wanted to scream “our purpose is not to build a cohesive group”. Now if my skillset is not at an acceptable level fair enough but if the reason I am not invited is so you can have a “cohesive group” there may be a misunderstanding of our purpose.

Our purpose is first the equipping of the saints, and second to operate in our gifts. This is the order were given in Ephesians 4:12

“the equipping of the saints for works of service” is first and then;
“the edification of the body”

I have much more to say on that topic but for now I’ll leave it there.

Certainly when we stand on the platform we must be invisible. Actually transparent is a better word and the best way to do that is to be excellent. Not perfect but excellent. Excellence is giving the best you have which is much different than perfection. This is not an either or proposition. We can, and must, accomplish both. It was God’s idea and He can certainly give us the wisdom to accomplish it in our context. But if were not even asking the question we are grossly missing the point.

If we are faithful with the faithfulness entrusted to us God will give the increase and bring the right instruments/musicians or whatever we need at the right time. People are our purpose and we must never lose sight of that priority.

Feed and shepherd God’s flock—his church, purchased with his own blood—over which the Holy Spirit has appointed you as elders. Acts 20:28

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Sep

2009

Silence

When was the last time you sat in total silence?

The greatest struggle in my life is finding a quiet place to sit in total silence waiting for the still small voice of my Father.

I love our house the back of it faces the front range of the Rocky Mountains and often in the morning I will sit at my kitchen table gazing at the beauty of God’s creation. Katharine Lee Bates was on Pikes Peak when she wrote the lyrics to “America the Beautiful” and I am blessed to have Pikes Peak framed in my sliding glass doors . But we are also only 200 yards from I-25 and the noise that comes with it. I have learned to ignore it somewhat but it is a significant enemy to silence.

When Kim and I were first married we talked about having a house full of activity. A place where people would find refuge. A place where all our childrens friends would want to come. God has answered that prayer. Our home is full of activity with people coming and going. We love it but it presents a unique challenge when searching for a quiet place.

In Chuck Swindols book “Intimacy with the Almighty” he lists four disciplines essential for intimacy two of them are silence and solitude. Which to me are almost the same thing. In A.W. Tozer’s “The Purpose of Man” he lists seven keys to intimacy and the very first is quiet. Tozer says “I put quietness first bcause unless we can find a place without distraction, the rest is undermined.

Once we have made a practice of dwelling in a quiet place we are more easily able to dwell in the secret place. Brother Lawrence in “The Practice of the Presence of God” says “what offering is more acceptable to God than thus throughout the day to quit the things of outward sense, and to withdraw to worshp Him within the secret places of the soul?”. Unless we have practiced being in a quiet place it is very difficult to dwell in the secret places of the soul throughout the day. Cultivating intimacy and recognizing the voice of God only comes through time and proximity.

I know I’m not alone in my struggle to find a quiet place. We must fight for it, make it a high priority, or we will slowly drift away from that most precious dwelling place where we are changed from Glory to Glory, where we become “like Him”, where we find rest, where He is my strong tower.

David understood the importance of dwelling in the secret place. I believe it was this practice that made him a man after God’s own heart. It was a recurring theme throughout his life and his writing. Among others he wrote:

He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High, shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty (Psalm 91:1), One thing I have desired of the Lord, That will I seek: That I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in His temple (Psalm 27:4).

My prayer for you, and for me, today is that we would get a fresh revelation of His love and passion for close intimate fellowship with us. Make it a priority to find a quiet place this weekend and then go there often.

Blessings as you walk in Him.

Sep

2009

That’s My King!

Do You Know Him?

That’s My King! from Albert Martin on Vimeo.

Aug

2009

So True

Dare you not to cry.

For those of you on facebook click through and watch the video.

Grace is unmerited favor, mercy is a disposition to be kind and forgiving.

H.T. Life is a Gift

Jul

2009

The most important 48 minutes of your life?

When is the last time you heard a message like this?

It’s 48 minutes long and might be the most important 48 minutes of your life.

Please take the time to watch it. It put me on my face before God.

Jun

2009

Bored With Contemporary Worship

I ran across this post from TheWorshipCommunity.com and thought it was worth discussing,

Bored With Contemporary Worship:

Musicademy caused quite a stir when they published this thoughtful post recently.

We don’t want to say it. It sounds like we’re consumers, wanting more entertainment, and we know that’s not the problem. Worse, it might sound like we’re tired of God – when we know we’ve only just scratched the surface of the infinitely creative, dynamically relational being he is.

Hence the collective sigh of relief in the London School of Theology Deep Calls to Deep conference when the outgoing Director General of the Evangelical Alliance, the highly respected and deeply passionate Joel Edwards, used the ‘B’ word without apology or caveat. ‘We’re bored in worship’. You could almost see tense shoulders sag and bright eyes perk up. We’re allowed to say it Our worship has become boring’ It was like permission, not to whine or complain or place blame people do that enough about worship anyway, but to admit the weaknesses in our contemporary corporate worship lives and to begin to address authentic, fundamental and God honouring change.

His full quote expresses it best:

“There is something about the charismatic movement which brought something new and fresh. It came out of something new God was doing.

I am thirsty for something new again. I have to confess to you that mostly on a Sunday morning I am bored And I wonder if one of the reasons why people are not singing is because they too are bored.

It may be a good thing to discover what you would write down if you spent two months noting what songs are sung on a Sunday morning. I cannot believe that so much of our repertoire has become so narrow. So predictable. That the formation of what we do on a Sunday is so utterly predictable. And I think to myself, how come the God who has formed the constellations and put the stars in place and has a new idea every second, doesn’t have something new for us for a Sunday morning? I wonder whether he might not be vaguely bored too.”

And so a conversation is stirring between worship leaders, pastors, songwriters, congregations, and radical thought the communities we are trying to reach, about how we might innovate our worship. No one person, movement or website has all the answers, but we’re pretty sure the questions begin with how we get out of this predictable, narrow, reality-dodging, inward looking spiral towards a creative, indigenous, multi-sensory, outward-looking expression of worship.

via Bored With Contemporary Worship : TheWorshipCommunity.Com.

The original post has some thoughts regarding the problem and solutions but I didn’t want to post them here. I wanted to hear what you have to say about the subject.

Are you bored with Contemporary worship? Do you long for something new and fresh? or are you very content with the way it is?

Jun

2009

To Find Him Where He Can Be Found.

God speaks to me sometimes by sending the same message in different ways over a period of time and then I have what I call a coalescing moment where it all comes together.

I just had one of those when I received a my daily email from the Copelands and from a friend on Facebook from Zimbabwe. We have never met and I don’t know why he found me and asked me to be his friend. He has 6 friends and I am the only one not from Zumbabwe.

Since launching into ministry in January I have had an interesting ride. I am living the dream but have been plagued with fear and doubt shortly after making the decision. Building the kingdom has been in my heart for over 10 years. At a workshop for worship with Job Vijil I knew this is what I was born to do. God has always been faithful so why the worry?

I say He is my strength and my shield, my ever present help in time of need. I’m standing on the Word but I haven’t spoken in in weeks. Instead I have been speaking death. A couple weeks ago my amazing wife scolded me strongly for the way I’m talking and she is exactly right. She is such a blessing to me. The Word of God is the final word but I must put it to work by speaking it out.

I am reminded of a short prayer by Hans Ur von Balthasar I apologize if I’ve posted this before:

Harassed by life, exhausted, we look about us for somewhere to be quiet, to be genuine, a place of refreshment. We yearn to restore our spirits in God, to simply let go in him and gain new strength to go on living.

But we fail to look for him where he is waiting for us, where he is to be found; in his Son, who is his Word. Or else seek for God because there are a thousand things we want to ask him, and imagine that we cannot go on living unless they are answered. We inundate him with problems, with demands for information, for clues, for an easier path, forgetting that in his Word he has given us the solution to every problem and all the details we are capable of grasping in this life.

We fail to listen where God speaks; where God’s Word rang out in the world once for all, sufficient for all ages, inexhaustible. Or else we think that God’s Word has been heard on earth for so long that by now it is almost used up. That it is about time for some new word, as if we had the right to demand one. We fail to see that it is we ourselves who are used up and alienated, whereas the Word resounds with the same vitality and freshness as ever; it is just as near to us as it always was.

Hans Ur von Balthasar, Prayer. Trans. Graham Harrison (San Fancisco: Ignatius Press, 1986)

Today I committ to being in His Word and daily seeking Him in the secret place for His direction. I encourage you to do the same.

Blessings as you walk with Him.

Intimacy W/God

I love my life

Confession Time

“Leading” Worship

Are We Asking The Right Questions?

Silence

That’s My King!

So True

The most important 48 minutes of your life?

Bored With Contemporary Worship

To Find Him Where He Can Be Found.

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