Adoration

'Tis been awhile since I've written anything here. I've missed you all terribly. Especially you. (You know who you are.) Let me give you all a brief summary of what my life has been like since we were last together. I was in Oregon for about ten days and had a fantastic time getting to visit with friends and spend some time in my favorite part of the country. I spoke at a high school retreat while I was there, and it too was a great experience. It was certainly a challenge due to the fact that I had never before preached so much in such a small window of time, but I enjoyed it a great deal. I believe that God did some incredible things in the lives of the students who were there, and it will be exciting to see how he continues to use them all in the future. After the retreat, I flew back to Missouri and have been getting into the swing of things for my last semester at Ozark. I think this semester will be very good. I only have four classes (13 hours), which is the least I've ever had, and I think my Romans and Revelation classes will be awesome. Also, the Steelers made it into the Super Bowl. Time for all of you to pull out your Terrible Towels.

Now that we're on the same page, I thought that I would take a few minutes to share some of the things we talked about at the retreat in Oregon. The theme for the weekend was "Adoration," and we talked about what it means to live a life of adoration and worship of God. All of this was as much of a challenge for me as it was for the students, and I was blessed to be able to research and think on this topic, trying to look at the idea of worship in a new way. I hope it's an encouragement and a blessing to you as well. Each of the paragraphs below is a summary of one of the messages I gave at the retreat.

Why do we worship? That's an important question, I think, but it's not one that we often stop and ask ourselves. Different people would likely give different answers to this question. A popular answer might be, "Well, because it's Sunday." And, as we all know, Sunday is the day that we dress nice and go to church and worship, while we got about all of our "non-worship" activities the rest of the week. This is a lame reason for worship, however. It's like a married person saying, "I adore my wife because it's Thursday, so I'll do a lot of things for her today but not the rest of the week." Another reason that some might give for worship is "Because the music moves me to it." In our modern vernacular, worship has become equated with singing at church, so if they play a song we like (and play it well), then we are enabled to worship. But again, this is a weak reason for worship. Music can't create worship and adoration any more than playing love songs on a boombox can make two people fall in love. It doesn't work. Believe me; I've tried. So why do we worship? I think the answer is this: We worship God because of who he is and what he has done. First, when we get a glimpse of God in his holy, sovereign character, we have no choice but to worship. Just look at how the Israelites respond to God in Exodus 19, or Isaiah in Isaiah 6. Second, we worship by remembering how God has acted in salvation history. After crossing the Red Sea, Moses and the Israelites sing a giant song because of how God had saved them. Likewise, when we celebrate the Lord's Supper, we are worshipping Christ by remembering how he has saved us. Maybe the reason so many of us have a hard time getting into worship is that we have taken out of the context of God's character and actions.

There are several significant obstacles to worship, however, and possibly the greatest one is pride. In Luke 18, Jesus tells a story about two men who went up to the temple to pray--a Pharisee and a tax collector. The Pharisee makes his prayer all about himself, boasting to God how he does good deeds and abstains from the vices that characterize those around him. The tax collector, on the other hand, prays simply, "God, have mercy on me, a sinner." Jesus says that the tax collector is the one who went home justified before God. Why? Because he exhibited humility, while the Pharisee was characterized by pride. You can't worship God when you're worshipping yourself. If we're going to truly worship and adore God, we need to come to the realization (as my former youth minister would say) that it's not about you. Worship is about God and him alone. It's not about what we get out of it, but about what we bring to him. Charlie wrote a blog post a while back about pride and humility that helped me a lot in this message. You can check it out here.

One of my favorite images of adoration in the Bible is in Luke 10:38-42. Jesus and his disciples are going to Jerusalem, and the go to the home of Mary and Martha for dinner. These two sister takes very different approaches to Jesus' visit. Martha is going nuts, running around the house trying to make sure everything is perfect. Mary, conversely, just sits at Jesus' feet, listening to what he's saying. Jesus says that Mary, not Martha, is doing what's best. Not that Martha isn't doing good things. She just isn't doing the best thing. The good things we do aren't always the best things, and we need to learn to adore God through our priorities. The truth is that most of us have crazy schedules, and we spend our time in a number of varied and beneficial activities. But what Mary shows is that our highest priority needs to be to be with Jesus. To abide in him, one could say. God doesn't just want our activity or our busyness (even those of us in vocational ministry). He wants us.

Our adoration should play a part in every part of our lives. It's not something that exists only in our hearts without any outward expression. That's not how we think of things today, though. People will say things like, "God isn't all that concerned with how I live. All God really wants is relationship. He just wants me to really love him." And those people look at the Jews in the Bible and think, "Those silly people. They just didn't get it. They didn't understand that God is all about the heart. They're just legalists." But here's what I think those Jews would say to my generation: "How can you love God without obeying him? Do you really think all he wants is for you to feel warm fuzzies and to sing praise songs and then go on living however you want? Do you really think God just wants your heart, as if it can be separated from your lifestyle?" And so, what we find is that adoration is shown in our obedience. 1 John 2:4 says that anyone who says "I know God" but doesn't obey him is a liar, and I think it would be fair to say that anyone who says "I love him" but doesn't do what he says is in the same boat (Jn. 14:15). Again, it's a lot like a marriage. I can run around telling everyone how much I love my wife, but if I never do anything that my wife asks me to do, it has to be questioned whether I really love my wife. Adoration without obedience is really no adoration at all.

And finally, adoration is shown in our sacrifice. Romans 12:1 famously exhorts us to offer our bodies as living sacrifices as this is our spiritual act of worship. Such a sacrifice cannot be halfhearted. This adoration requires everything we are. When a lamb was sacrificed on an altar, it couldn't be a sacrifice and continue hopping around on the grassy hills. It had to be all in. So what does it look like for us to be living sacrifices? I think a good place to start is with what Jesus says in Mark 8:34-38, when he tells the crowds that following him means that they deny themselves, take up their crosses, and follow him. First, we must deny ourselves. Being a sacrifice means that we are no longer our own bosses, but that we truly make Jesus our Savior and our Lord. We are a sacrifice when we remember that our goal is not to have "your best life now," but that, as I said before, it's not about us. Second, we carry our crosses. Jesus used the most offensive symbol of his day to show that following him is not a call to discomfort or inconvenience. It's a call to death (Gal. 2:20). Third, we follow Jesus. This typically means that we leave something else behind, just as Simon, Andrew, James, and John left their fishing gear on the beach and Matthew left his tax booth empty. Then we follow Jesus wherever he leads us, which is a pretty scary proposition because he could lead us all sorts of places. And yet, in the middle of it all, we are comforted by the truth that God is good and that he has already gone ahead of us with his cross because of his love for us. He's truly worth being adored.

Class Struggles

I think it would be fun to count up all of the different places in the world I have written blog posts from. I mean, there have got to be at least four or five. It's absolutely nuts. Right now I'm back in Oregon for the next week and change. You avid readers may (or you friends of mine) may remember that I spent last summer working with a church in Corvallis, Oregon. Next weekend, that church's high school group is having their winter retreat, and they invited me to come back and preach at it. I'm really excited to be here and to get to spend time with some good friends from last summer, and I'm also pretty stoked about preaching next weekend. I do value your prayers for me this week, both for my own preparation, but more importantly that God would be working in the students this week even before we leave. I'm really excited to see the awesome things God will do next weekend.

I enjoy living in the United States. I don't mind criticizing our nation from time to time, but for the most part, I realize that I am very fortunate to live where I do. Not everyone in the world has all of the resources and privileges that I do because of my national status. Of course, one of the best thing about life in America is that I am a citizen of a democracy, and we function under the principle that all people are created equal. Yesterday, however, I experienced a case in which this principle is not applied very well. I flew from Kansas City to Portland, and I believe that there may not be anything that makes me feel less valued as a human than commercial airlines. After I had gone through security and had been waiting at the gate for a while, one of the airline employees came on the intercom and said something like this:

"In just a moment we will begin boarding United flight 293 for Portland. We will begin by boarding all of our first-class passengers, as well as members of our Premium Gold Star Good-Looking Club, who may walk on this red carpet while we shower them with rose petals. Once these passengers are on board, all of you bed-wetters may take your seats in coach."

Once I got on the plane, I had to walk past all of these first-class passengers, looking smug in their recliners and sipping their drinks from their real glasses instead of the disposable plastic cups. They think they're so high and mighty. After all of us lower-class passengers get seated, they pull a curtain to separate first-class from coach so that all of those in the front of the plane don't have to look at our pimply faces. It's humiliating. As I sat uncomfortable with my arms crossed across my chest because the person next to me was using the armrest, I came to the sad realization that I am just another worthless member of the proletariat, fated to spend my days shining the shoes of "The Man."

The flight was not all bad, though, because I spent the time learning practical dating tips from J.R.R. Tolkein's The Return of the King, which is the third and final book of The Lord of the Rings. Here's what I learned: first, everyone in Middle-Earth talks with such class. They use the word "shall", and they give each other all sorts of names and titles, and they don't sound like a bumbling idiot like me. For example, I just opened up the book to this gem: "But Imrahil said: ' So victory is shorn of gladness, and it is bitter bought, if both Gondor and Rohan are in one day bereft of their lords. Eomer rules the Rohirrim. Who shall rule the City meanwhile? Shall we not send now for the Lord Aragorn?'" I've never said such a fine sentence in my entire life. If I start using the word "bereft" more often, I know the ladies will be lining up to listen to what might come out of my mouth next.

Second, at the end of the book, the hobbits return to their homes in the Shire. Sam has his eye on this she-hobbit Rosie, and while Rosie is near, Sam's gaffer asks Frodo how Sam did on their journey. Then it says this:

"Perfrect satisfaction, Mr. Gamgee," said Frodo. "Indeed, if you will believe it, he's now one of the most famous people in all the lands, and they are making songs about his deeds from here to the Sea and beyond the Great River." Sam blushed, but he looked gratefuly at Frodo, for Rosie's eyes were shining and she was smiling at him.

The lesson? If you want girls to like you, all you have to do is return successfully from a death-defying quest to save the world.

Ain't no thang.