Every time I read the story about Paul and Silas in jail, I am impressed by the manifestation of a physical occurrence as a result of a spiritual act. If you are not familiar with the story I am referencing, please read through Acts 16: 16 – the end of the chapter.
The story bears no mention of the fact that Paul and Silas were asking God to bail them out of jail. I’m actually more inclined to think that they were “giving thanks in every circumstance” in keeping with Paul’s stance on worshipping no matter what the situation.
I cannot imagine that their worship was particularly melodious. I think it sounded more like an out-of-tune, halting noise by 2 guys. Considering they had just been beaten and thrown in jail for saving a girl from demonic torment, my guess is that they must have been battling the desire to be negative and outraged at the injustice. I know for sure that if it had been Paulo Mugarura in that situation, the atmosphere in the jail cell would have been far more toxic than a bunch of men singing hymns.
The fact of the matter is that on the face of it, there were no ingredients leading up to the massive move of God an evangelistic worship service.
Grumpy beat up men… check!
Jail cell… check!
Injustice … check!
Hymns of praise… what?
I say this A LOT – it is easy to come to a worship service and approach it as a same-old, same-old gathering of lukewarm believers… a gathering that is devoid of passion, energy and above all, the work of the hand of God. The experience of Paul and Silas in their jail cell should be a constant reminder about the fact that no matter how small and insignificant our act of worship may seem, it is a platform for an awesome move of God.
As facilitators of worship, we are in charge of overseeing times that have the potential to be incredible encounters with God. It makes sense that we should approach the times that we have the privilege to facilitate worship with great expectation that a simple act of singing a bunch of songs in the natural can have a tremendous impact on the lives of those that bear witness and even on the physical facility in which we worship. If you think about it, as the worship team, through our worship we could have saved the church a lot of money through the demolition of our old facility! Heh!
I think that the fact that their chains were loosed was a natural manifestation of a greater spiritual loosening:
- The injustice that had been served
- The jailer’s family coming to know God
- The prisoners that were touched – possibly transformed – by the experience
- The slave girl getting freed from demonic oppression
- Possibly other things that are not recorded in this story
2 weeks ago I made mention of David in my first entry on this topic of spiritual warfare. Early on in his life, there is evidence that he too experienced first hand the fact that worship had tremendous power in the spirit real that would then manifest itself in the physical. All he had to do was simply playing his harp and his king - Saul was able to experience release from spiritual oppression.
Looking at illustrations like this throughout scripture convince me more and more that what we do is more than simply providing a good stepping stone/atmosphere for the messages that are preached. Many worship leaders and pastors fall into the trap of making worship just that. It is much more than making church relevant and attractive to people that are on a spiritually seeking journey. Many more people – leaders and facilitators alike – also have this misconception. It is SO MUCH MORE than performing a bunch of well-executed songs. I confess that I have been guilty of this a lot. What we engage in on a week-by-week basis has implications far bigger and greater than we can ever imagine and reach well beyond the natural into the spiritual to loose bonds and bring about a change in people’s hearts and lives.
I do not know whether you know this, but in practically every culture and religion in the world, in order to invoke spiritual power, people engage in worship – specifically music – of the being that they are invoking. It is interesting that even on the other side of the field – the enemy’s side – the same rules apply. Worship allows them too to tap into the spiritual in an attempt to affect what happens in the natural.
Whether you acknowledge it or not is another thing, but the fact of the matter is that we live in a world that starts and ends in the spiritual and what happens on the spiritual playing field has direct influence and implications on what happens in the natural. (Genesis 1: 26, 3:22, Exodus 17, 1 Samuel 16, Revelation 5: 8, etc…) Prayer, praise and worship allow us to reach into, and operate in more than a natural/physical playing field and this is why we talk about “approaching the throne of God” because it is not just a figure of speech, but an actual occurrence. I think that this is the reason why the times of prayer at the end of the service have historically been accompanied by worship and praise because in and of itself, it has the power to break bonds, loose chains and bring about divine intervention in a physical/natural circumstance.
My hope is that it becomes more clear and plain to all of us that what we do has implications far beyond anything that we could even begin to fathom with our puny minds. Praise and worship is an essential and powerful weapon whose use we have the privilege of facilitating. Understanding this even more allows us to operate at a level that we may not have known before because it allows us to come to grips with the fact that we have not even scratched the surface of what is possible when we praise.
Monday, April 21, 2008
Monday, April 7, 2008
Understanding worship as Spiritual Warfare (1)
During last evening’s service, pastor Dorothy was given an opportunity to give a report about the alpha weekend that some of the alpha participants had been on. She made mention of the fact that leading up to the weekend a rather large number of the group faced various challenges – mostly physical.
It got me thinking about the numerous times I had been a table leader at the alpha course and how we always seemed to face such things leading up to the alpha weekend. For those of you that might be reading this blog and not be familiar with the “Alpha weekend”, it is a pivotal point in the course where the facilitators lead the participants deeper in their journey of knowing who God is and coming in touch with the Holy Spirit and the power that he has to touch and transform a life.
Most intriguing about this weekend was the fact that every time we returned from the retreat filled with joy and wonder at how God had touched his people, I found myself right in the middle of a firestorm. Something would always be wrong at work; random ugly fights would flare up between the people I lived with, worked with, served with and myself. There always seemed to be a tremendous amount of opposition to just about everything that I did or put my hand to as soon as I came back from the weekend.
The reason I was able to see a trend was because I was an alpha facilitator – table leader and eventual teacher – for six years and over those six years, I went to almost 18 alpha weekends because we ran the course all year round.
Three years ago I agreed to volunteer as one of the facilitators of worship at citywide worship and prayer and eventually had the privilege of serving on the servant leadership team. It was only last year when I realized that a similar trend – similar to the one I mentioned above - was happening around the weekends that I was scheduled to lead worship and prayer. It seemed that I would walk through a battle zone during the days leading up to the event and the days leading out of the event.
I am not one to read into spiritual things all the time because I have been in too many situations where there is an unhealthy fascination with the work and power of evil spirits…
More to that, many of you know that my personal experiences with people claiming to be “under the influence of the spirit” have been negative and so my tendency is to be skeptical about such things unless the evidence is undeniable.
So even though I noticed a trend in the events that were happening in my life, my first response was not to think about the happenings in a spiritual-physical sense, but in a rational, spirit-less sense. However, the more I thought about it, the more I began to face the truth of the fact that because I was putting myself in positions that made me a facilitator of people meeting with God, I was walking into territory that the enemy – the devil – fights the hardest.
The enemy’s agenda is really simple and we all know it from John 10: 10 – it is to steal, kill and destroy.
If you put yourself in a position to lead people to the will of Christ for their lives – that they might have life more abundantly – you put yourself up in direct opposition to the destroyer of all that God has created and called good – the enemy. This makes you a target and I think that this is why Pastor Mark’s first point to us during yesterday’s morning service sermon was that if you are walking under the anointing, you should naturally expect opposition because as much as God wants the best for you, there is an enemy that prowls like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour… and he wants to destroy you.
I have come to understand even more that there is a special vendetta against people like myself who make connecting people with God their highest priority. The enemy works doubly hard to put us under fire because we are right on the front line reclaiming what he has stolen from the kingdom of God. I believe that every worship leader and worship facilitator has to come to this realization and operate with this knowledge. You may think that you are just standing on stage singing a bunch of songs, or tweaking knobs in the sound booth area, but we all need to realize that because what you do leads people to connect with God, you are standing in dead center in a very volatile part of a spiritual battle between the advancement of the kingdom of God and the agenda of the devil. Whether you acknowledge it or not, by being on a worship team whose goal is to connect people with God, you put yourself in a war zone with no demilitarized area.
The battle is not heated and dangerous from the plush cushions of the church pews. It is hottest among the areas of service that bring people into a deeper relationship with Jesus and the knowledge of his transforming power.
The books of Samuel, Chronicles and Kings record the ascent to power of a shepherd boy who became both an incredible warrior and one of the most prolific poetry and songwriters of all history. Who says you cannot be an uber-macho jock and be into poetry and song writing at the same time? Heh!
The story of David is one of the best examples that I know of that helps us see the picture of an incredible worship leader under tremendous attack. His master, the king, tried to kill him… his sons tried to steal his kingdom… his family was majorly MESSED UP… and he had moral failure. David’s transparency with God is evident through his psalms and his psalms were definitely anointed; all you need to do is search through scripture and find all the times psalm 134 is sang and God shows up in battle, or in worship. But even in the face of all that transparency, and closeness with God, the agenda of the enemy to destroy him is always present in his story.
I am no theologian or spiritual guru, so I may be way off course here, but my take on his story is that after the enemy failed to destroy him through his moral failure, he decided to attack him through his family. If you track his story, you shall find that some pretty messed up stuff happened in his family.
If you have been on worship teams for a long time, you know that there is no end to tensions and dissention. There seems to be no end to backbiting and backstabbing and people on worship teams say some of the most hurtful things that I have ever heard in church to one another. I think it speaks to the fact that the enemy’s plans for the worship team are to destroy it and make it ineffective… make the worship team members focus on killing each other than on the more important task of facilitating an encounter between God and his people.
This is the reason why I said that I would not (and for future reference WILL NOT) tolerate negative politicking on any of my teams. I think that it is the single most widespread cancer in churches and communities of faith that follow Jesus. It causes us to be ineffective and useless – wasting sideways energy trying to kill each other or put out fires when we should be focused on the more important task of bringing people to God. Soldiers fighting in the same army – the army of God – cannot be caught striking at each other… that sort of thing is reserved for the armies that are against God (2 Chronicles 20, Judges 7, etc…).
What encourages me in my journey as a worship leader and facilitator is that this is not a battle I should be afraid of being a part of because I am on the winning side. The battle has already been won and all we need to do is claim that victory for ourselves and walk in the knowledge and conviction of this fact. Does this mean that the enemy is not going to try to get at us? No it does not, but we stand in the power and authority that Jesus gives to us through his triumph over sin, satan and death.
When I used to play rugby, I was on the same team as two of the most muscular men I have ever known – my buddy Michael and his brother Andrew. A few years back we were playing against a team that we were beating quite severely and one of the guys in frustration yelled out at me
“If you touch me again, I’ll kill you!”
Michael yelled back,
“If you touch him, I’ll kill you!”
And that was the end of that! I have never felt so powerful in my life! Heh! Michael’s presence on the field ensured that even though I received threats and sometimes hidden jabs, nothing could really happen to destroy me because I had a full-time protector.
Michael’s presence on the field is a fitting illustration to God’s presence and power at work in our lives. Even though we are standing in a battlefield, we can rest in the confidence that the battle has been won.
We must, though, always remember that we are not frolicking in a field of flowers, but we are down in the trenches of the Lord’s army reclaiming the territory that the enemy had previously claimed as his sovereign territory – the hearts and minds of people.
My friends, leading worship is serious spiritual warfare and grabbing a hold of this concept and incorporating it in our understanding of what we do is key to getting to places that we have not experienced before. We must be wise, therefore, and do all we can to prepare for battle through prayer, meditation on God’s word and sharpening one another through meaningful and healthy fellowship.
We shall continue with this theme of worship as warfare next week.
It got me thinking about the numerous times I had been a table leader at the alpha course and how we always seemed to face such things leading up to the alpha weekend. For those of you that might be reading this blog and not be familiar with the “Alpha weekend”, it is a pivotal point in the course where the facilitators lead the participants deeper in their journey of knowing who God is and coming in touch with the Holy Spirit and the power that he has to touch and transform a life.
Most intriguing about this weekend was the fact that every time we returned from the retreat filled with joy and wonder at how God had touched his people, I found myself right in the middle of a firestorm. Something would always be wrong at work; random ugly fights would flare up between the people I lived with, worked with, served with and myself. There always seemed to be a tremendous amount of opposition to just about everything that I did or put my hand to as soon as I came back from the weekend.
The reason I was able to see a trend was because I was an alpha facilitator – table leader and eventual teacher – for six years and over those six years, I went to almost 18 alpha weekends because we ran the course all year round.
Three years ago I agreed to volunteer as one of the facilitators of worship at citywide worship and prayer and eventually had the privilege of serving on the servant leadership team. It was only last year when I realized that a similar trend – similar to the one I mentioned above - was happening around the weekends that I was scheduled to lead worship and prayer. It seemed that I would walk through a battle zone during the days leading up to the event and the days leading out of the event.
I am not one to read into spiritual things all the time because I have been in too many situations where there is an unhealthy fascination with the work and power of evil spirits…
More to that, many of you know that my personal experiences with people claiming to be “under the influence of the spirit” have been negative and so my tendency is to be skeptical about such things unless the evidence is undeniable.
So even though I noticed a trend in the events that were happening in my life, my first response was not to think about the happenings in a spiritual-physical sense, but in a rational, spirit-less sense. However, the more I thought about it, the more I began to face the truth of the fact that because I was putting myself in positions that made me a facilitator of people meeting with God, I was walking into territory that the enemy – the devil – fights the hardest.
The enemy’s agenda is really simple and we all know it from John 10: 10 – it is to steal, kill and destroy.
If you put yourself in a position to lead people to the will of Christ for their lives – that they might have life more abundantly – you put yourself up in direct opposition to the destroyer of all that God has created and called good – the enemy. This makes you a target and I think that this is why Pastor Mark’s first point to us during yesterday’s morning service sermon was that if you are walking under the anointing, you should naturally expect opposition because as much as God wants the best for you, there is an enemy that prowls like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour… and he wants to destroy you.
I have come to understand even more that there is a special vendetta against people like myself who make connecting people with God their highest priority. The enemy works doubly hard to put us under fire because we are right on the front line reclaiming what he has stolen from the kingdom of God. I believe that every worship leader and worship facilitator has to come to this realization and operate with this knowledge. You may think that you are just standing on stage singing a bunch of songs, or tweaking knobs in the sound booth area, but we all need to realize that because what you do leads people to connect with God, you are standing in dead center in a very volatile part of a spiritual battle between the advancement of the kingdom of God and the agenda of the devil. Whether you acknowledge it or not, by being on a worship team whose goal is to connect people with God, you put yourself in a war zone with no demilitarized area.
The battle is not heated and dangerous from the plush cushions of the church pews. It is hottest among the areas of service that bring people into a deeper relationship with Jesus and the knowledge of his transforming power.
The books of Samuel, Chronicles and Kings record the ascent to power of a shepherd boy who became both an incredible warrior and one of the most prolific poetry and songwriters of all history. Who says you cannot be an uber-macho jock and be into poetry and song writing at the same time? Heh!
The story of David is one of the best examples that I know of that helps us see the picture of an incredible worship leader under tremendous attack. His master, the king, tried to kill him… his sons tried to steal his kingdom… his family was majorly MESSED UP… and he had moral failure. David’s transparency with God is evident through his psalms and his psalms were definitely anointed; all you need to do is search through scripture and find all the times psalm 134 is sang and God shows up in battle, or in worship. But even in the face of all that transparency, and closeness with God, the agenda of the enemy to destroy him is always present in his story.
I am no theologian or spiritual guru, so I may be way off course here, but my take on his story is that after the enemy failed to destroy him through his moral failure, he decided to attack him through his family. If you track his story, you shall find that some pretty messed up stuff happened in his family.
If you have been on worship teams for a long time, you know that there is no end to tensions and dissention. There seems to be no end to backbiting and backstabbing and people on worship teams say some of the most hurtful things that I have ever heard in church to one another. I think it speaks to the fact that the enemy’s plans for the worship team are to destroy it and make it ineffective… make the worship team members focus on killing each other than on the more important task of facilitating an encounter between God and his people.
This is the reason why I said that I would not (and for future reference WILL NOT) tolerate negative politicking on any of my teams. I think that it is the single most widespread cancer in churches and communities of faith that follow Jesus. It causes us to be ineffective and useless – wasting sideways energy trying to kill each other or put out fires when we should be focused on the more important task of bringing people to God. Soldiers fighting in the same army – the army of God – cannot be caught striking at each other… that sort of thing is reserved for the armies that are against God (2 Chronicles 20, Judges 7, etc…).
What encourages me in my journey as a worship leader and facilitator is that this is not a battle I should be afraid of being a part of because I am on the winning side. The battle has already been won and all we need to do is claim that victory for ourselves and walk in the knowledge and conviction of this fact. Does this mean that the enemy is not going to try to get at us? No it does not, but we stand in the power and authority that Jesus gives to us through his triumph over sin, satan and death.
When I used to play rugby, I was on the same team as two of the most muscular men I have ever known – my buddy Michael and his brother Andrew. A few years back we were playing against a team that we were beating quite severely and one of the guys in frustration yelled out at me
“If you touch me again, I’ll kill you!”
Michael yelled back,
“If you touch him, I’ll kill you!”
And that was the end of that! I have never felt so powerful in my life! Heh! Michael’s presence on the field ensured that even though I received threats and sometimes hidden jabs, nothing could really happen to destroy me because I had a full-time protector.
Michael’s presence on the field is a fitting illustration to God’s presence and power at work in our lives. Even though we are standing in a battlefield, we can rest in the confidence that the battle has been won.
We must, though, always remember that we are not frolicking in a field of flowers, but we are down in the trenches of the Lord’s army reclaiming the territory that the enemy had previously claimed as his sovereign territory – the hearts and minds of people.
My friends, leading worship is serious spiritual warfare and grabbing a hold of this concept and incorporating it in our understanding of what we do is key to getting to places that we have not experienced before. We must be wise, therefore, and do all we can to prepare for battle through prayer, meditation on God’s word and sharpening one another through meaningful and healthy fellowship.
We shall continue with this theme of worship as warfare next week.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Not anything too profound...
Several of you have written personally or on this blog stating your sympathies for me during this difficult time which I shared about in last week's blog. I thank you for your kind words.
There are also some in our team that are currently walking through the difficult time of losing somebody that they deeply care about and I would challenge us all to rise to support, and encourage them as well. I know that we are very good at doing this, but I would still like to encourage us to not grow weary in doing good to each other and supporting each other through tough times.
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I love the Holy Week and Easter part of the church calendar much more than the Christmas part of the church calendar. I especially like it because we do not have the empty festivities, and misplaced attention that is so obviously present around the Christmas/Holiday season. Easter is a church celebration that has not yet completely lost it's meaning and even though it is threatened by the presence of the eggs and the bunny, it is relatively easier to find meaning in this season without the fluff, pomp and commercialization of Christmas.
Jesus' life, death and resurrection are the reason for the existence of Christianity and it is through him that we gain access to our almighty father. Writing this to the worship team at woodvale is pretty much stating the obvious.
Because I have been asking all of us on the team to place much emphasis on the role that we have to play - to connect people with God - I am particularly happy to be walking through this season with you all. It is a time in which we throw light on the immense sacrifice, the satisfaction of Justice against sin and the mercy and relationship that is extended to us by Jesus on the cross. It is a time through which we can better illuminate Jesus' victory over death and the grave by his resurrection and most encouraging of all, it is a time for us to focus on the hope that he shall return again JUST AS HE SAID HE WOULD!
The role that we are called to fulfill as facilitators of worship on a week-by-week basis is to take people on a journey that leads them from ALIENATION from God to INTIMACY with him. This is the journey that we have simply called "Connecting People With God"
Those of you that know me a little better than most know that I have a weekly date with my wife that we try extremely hard to never miss. Normally we are busy getting by from day to day with our busy jobs, and numerous commitments that pull us in every direction and so our dates are a way for us to create uninterrupted time where our focus is us and not anything else. Our dates usually start with the two of us passing the time with small talk about work and the people that we are mad with, etc.. Our body language is very telling at this point in the date because we are sort of leaning away from each other and focused more on the menu than on eye contact and intimacy. However as we become more relaxed and less stressed about what we needed to vent about, the conversation moves to more intimate conversation. If there was a difficult situation in our relationship that we had to discuss at the beginning of the date, by the end of our date (after we have fought about it), it is quite remarkable how I am able to cease to see her as my adversary through the fog of my annoyance and in forgiveness, restoration of intimacy, and humility start to see the beautiful, lovely, sexy woman that I married. By the end of our date evening we really do resemble a pair of giddy, giggly teenagers who (PG moment coming up!) cannot keep their hands off each other.
It is at times like these (the easter season we are in) that I think of God's letter to the church in Ephesus found at the beginning of the second chapter of the book of Revelation of John. God's charge against the church is that they have forsaken their first love. His instructions to the church are really simple: in order to return to their first love, they need to resume the things that brought about intimacy between God and his church. Just like my weekly routine that I have candidly shared that helps to restore intimacy between my wife and myself, I think that we are at one such significant moment in the church calendar where we need to realize our need to constantly restore our intimacy with Jesus.
How I pray that this Easter season shall be a chance for each one of us to fall in love again with Jesus who spared no expense to show us how much he loves us. How I pray that our worship shall be energized even more this weekend as we stand in his presence and thank him for the numerous times he has stepped in between us and certain danger and kept us safe. I sincerely pray that our recognition of God as our sustainer, provider, healer, redeemer and savior shall lead us back to the place of our first fearless and expressive love for him. My prayer is that in realizing again what an awesome Lord we serve, we shall be part of a journey (participating and facilitating) from alienation to a place of intimacy with God that we never experienced prior to this week.
There are also some in our team that are currently walking through the difficult time of losing somebody that they deeply care about and I would challenge us all to rise to support, and encourage them as well. I know that we are very good at doing this, but I would still like to encourage us to not grow weary in doing good to each other and supporting each other through tough times.
--------------------------------------------------------------
I love the Holy Week and Easter part of the church calendar much more than the Christmas part of the church calendar. I especially like it because we do not have the empty festivities, and misplaced attention that is so obviously present around the Christmas/Holiday season. Easter is a church celebration that has not yet completely lost it's meaning and even though it is threatened by the presence of the eggs and the bunny, it is relatively easier to find meaning in this season without the fluff, pomp and commercialization of Christmas.
Jesus' life, death and resurrection are the reason for the existence of Christianity and it is through him that we gain access to our almighty father. Writing this to the worship team at woodvale is pretty much stating the obvious.
Because I have been asking all of us on the team to place much emphasis on the role that we have to play - to connect people with God - I am particularly happy to be walking through this season with you all. It is a time in which we throw light on the immense sacrifice, the satisfaction of Justice against sin and the mercy and relationship that is extended to us by Jesus on the cross. It is a time through which we can better illuminate Jesus' victory over death and the grave by his resurrection and most encouraging of all, it is a time for us to focus on the hope that he shall return again JUST AS HE SAID HE WOULD!
The role that we are called to fulfill as facilitators of worship on a week-by-week basis is to take people on a journey that leads them from ALIENATION from God to INTIMACY with him. This is the journey that we have simply called "Connecting People With God"
Those of you that know me a little better than most know that I have a weekly date with my wife that we try extremely hard to never miss. Normally we are busy getting by from day to day with our busy jobs, and numerous commitments that pull us in every direction and so our dates are a way for us to create uninterrupted time where our focus is us and not anything else. Our dates usually start with the two of us passing the time with small talk about work and the people that we are mad with, etc.. Our body language is very telling at this point in the date because we are sort of leaning away from each other and focused more on the menu than on eye contact and intimacy. However as we become more relaxed and less stressed about what we needed to vent about, the conversation moves to more intimate conversation. If there was a difficult situation in our relationship that we had to discuss at the beginning of the date, by the end of our date (after we have fought about it), it is quite remarkable how I am able to cease to see her as my adversary through the fog of my annoyance and in forgiveness, restoration of intimacy, and humility start to see the beautiful, lovely, sexy woman that I married. By the end of our date evening we really do resemble a pair of giddy, giggly teenagers who (PG moment coming up!) cannot keep their hands off each other.
It is at times like these (the easter season we are in) that I think of God's letter to the church in Ephesus found at the beginning of the second chapter of the book of Revelation of John. God's charge against the church is that they have forsaken their first love. His instructions to the church are really simple: in order to return to their first love, they need to resume the things that brought about intimacy between God and his church. Just like my weekly routine that I have candidly shared that helps to restore intimacy between my wife and myself, I think that we are at one such significant moment in the church calendar where we need to realize our need to constantly restore our intimacy with Jesus.
How I pray that this Easter season shall be a chance for each one of us to fall in love again with Jesus who spared no expense to show us how much he loves us. How I pray that our worship shall be energized even more this weekend as we stand in his presence and thank him for the numerous times he has stepped in between us and certain danger and kept us safe. I sincerely pray that our recognition of God as our sustainer, provider, healer, redeemer and savior shall lead us back to the place of our first fearless and expressive love for him. My prayer is that in realizing again what an awesome Lord we serve, we shall be part of a journey (participating and facilitating) from alienation to a place of intimacy with God that we never experienced prior to this week.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
A man after God's heart
I apologize in advance for the weight of this week’s entry.
If you are a frequent reader of this blog, you know that I talk about personal circumstances and this week’s entry is no different.
Last week my cousin who incidentally was also my first boss after I completed my undergraduate studies passed away. He had been living in Johannesburg, South Africa for the past couple of years and had been battling leukemia. Because he was more than just a blood relation and a workmate, I have been really deeply affected by his passing.
I remember that early on in my journey as his assistant, a missions group in a secondary city in Uganda took a chance on us and asked us to help them set up an Internet Service Provider to help them raise a sustainable source of income for their missions. Because neither of us wanted to live in that city, we decided that we would commute to and from the city and this would take anywhere from an hour to several hours depending on the traffic. It was during those times sitting in our little company car that he challenged me about my understanding of how God works, how he communicates with his people, the charge he has for his people to advance the kingdom of God on this earth… but mostly about my intimacy with God.
These talks in the car about intimacy with God really spurred me into a time of accelerated growth in my relationship with Jesus because prior to our talks, I had not realized that I had made myself so busy ministering, evangelizing and serving that I had substituted my relationship with God with the things that I did in his service.
Since moving to Canada a few years ago, I did not have the chance to visit him at all or talk with him as much as I would have liked, but he always held a special place in my heart and mind as a mentor and good friend that had come alongside me and helped me to grow immensely in my walk with the Lord.
Even though I have been deeply saddened by the news of his death, I know that he is where he truly wanted to be – at the feet of Jesus. More to that, I am once again challenged about my intimacy with God…
I know that it is slightly morbid to speak like this in our sheltered society, but I’ll say it anyway: I would like that when my time comes, it shall be said about me as I say about Andrew that he was a man after God’s heart. I would like my story to be that I passionately pursued an intimate relationship with God and held absolutely nothing back from him. I can say confidently that my cousin, Andrew, was a man that worshipped not just through a bunch of songs on Sunday morning, but through the life that he led day-to-day… I hope that I can live up to his standard.
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I feel I should digress a little bit right here and say this:
I know that some of us in the choir have recently lost loved ones or there are people (family and friends) that we deeply care about who are going through difficult health situations. I would like you to know that my heart and prayers go out to you during these times and that I feel WITH you because I myself have walked through such difficulty several times. My prayer is that peace and joy that can only be explained by an intimate relationship with Jesus shall guard your heart and mind in these times and that the strength of the Lord shall carry you.
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My constant prayer lately is that what we do in service for the kingdom of God on this earth in these days that we live shall be more than just routine. My prayer is that we shall transcend the limits and boundaries of what we have ever thought or imagined in our walk with God – as individuals and as a congregation – as we obey him and put our lives in his hand. My desire is that people will look back at us one day and know without a shadow of doubt that we were a people that hungered and thirsted for God and refused to let anything stand in the way of us and the experience of his glory, power and work among us.
If you are a frequent reader of this blog, you know that I talk about personal circumstances and this week’s entry is no different.
Last week my cousin who incidentally was also my first boss after I completed my undergraduate studies passed away. He had been living in Johannesburg, South Africa for the past couple of years and had been battling leukemia. Because he was more than just a blood relation and a workmate, I have been really deeply affected by his passing.
I remember that early on in my journey as his assistant, a missions group in a secondary city in Uganda took a chance on us and asked us to help them set up an Internet Service Provider to help them raise a sustainable source of income for their missions. Because neither of us wanted to live in that city, we decided that we would commute to and from the city and this would take anywhere from an hour to several hours depending on the traffic. It was during those times sitting in our little company car that he challenged me about my understanding of how God works, how he communicates with his people, the charge he has for his people to advance the kingdom of God on this earth… but mostly about my intimacy with God.
These talks in the car about intimacy with God really spurred me into a time of accelerated growth in my relationship with Jesus because prior to our talks, I had not realized that I had made myself so busy ministering, evangelizing and serving that I had substituted my relationship with God with the things that I did in his service.
Since moving to Canada a few years ago, I did not have the chance to visit him at all or talk with him as much as I would have liked, but he always held a special place in my heart and mind as a mentor and good friend that had come alongside me and helped me to grow immensely in my walk with the Lord.
Even though I have been deeply saddened by the news of his death, I know that he is where he truly wanted to be – at the feet of Jesus. More to that, I am once again challenged about my intimacy with God…
I know that it is slightly morbid to speak like this in our sheltered society, but I’ll say it anyway: I would like that when my time comes, it shall be said about me as I say about Andrew that he was a man after God’s heart. I would like my story to be that I passionately pursued an intimate relationship with God and held absolutely nothing back from him. I can say confidently that my cousin, Andrew, was a man that worshipped not just through a bunch of songs on Sunday morning, but through the life that he led day-to-day… I hope that I can live up to his standard.
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I feel I should digress a little bit right here and say this:
I know that some of us in the choir have recently lost loved ones or there are people (family and friends) that we deeply care about who are going through difficult health situations. I would like you to know that my heart and prayers go out to you during these times and that I feel WITH you because I myself have walked through such difficulty several times. My prayer is that peace and joy that can only be explained by an intimate relationship with Jesus shall guard your heart and mind in these times and that the strength of the Lord shall carry you.
------------------------
My constant prayer lately is that what we do in service for the kingdom of God on this earth in these days that we live shall be more than just routine. My prayer is that we shall transcend the limits and boundaries of what we have ever thought or imagined in our walk with God – as individuals and as a congregation – as we obey him and put our lives in his hand. My desire is that people will look back at us one day and know without a shadow of doubt that we were a people that hungered and thirsted for God and refused to let anything stand in the way of us and the experience of his glory, power and work among us.
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