Worship Is A Lifestyle

Worship isn't just something we do on Sunday mornings. Worship is an attitude of the heart we can choose to live in constantly. It is living every moment in relationship with God.

So many times we just react to the circumstances and events around us, as if God and his love for us didn't exist. So say the computer crashes or the car won't start. Is the first word out of our mouths, our very first thought, profanity or praise? Is it “bleepity bleep” or is it “God, I praise you in the middle of this. Please help.”

How about when something good happens? We got the promotion at work. We aced the test at school. What comes out first? Boasting or blessing the Lord?

Jesus calls it Abiding. “Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in me.” John 15:4 (NASB).

Paul calls it Living Sacrifice. “Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.” Romans 12:1 (NIV).

And Paul calls it Praying without Ceasing. “Rejoice always; pray without ceasing; in everything give thanks; for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.” 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18.

David describes it in detail in Psalm 139. It's too long to copy the whole thing here, but go read it yourself. Some highlights are “Where can I flee from your presence?” (verse 7) and “When I awake, I am still with you” (verse 18).

That's living worship. To live our lives every minute of every day conscious of him, talking with him, relating to him, while we go about our day.

Worship is a lifestyle.

Worship in Abandon

Nothing will change your life like learning to worship. Worship is the gateway into his presence. It's not something you just do on Sunday mornings. Worship is a lifestyle.

There are so many Christians that look forward to their salvation, and they live their life based on that hope. And that's good. That's a hope we Christians all share, and the reality of it does guide our life. But that's not what I go through my day thinking about or longing for.

I go through my day longing for the next time I can spend in private worship with my Lover-King. Without a time limit. Fellowshipping with him in reckless abandon. In intimacy. That's worship. And the best part – we can live in that place throughout our day – at work, at school, at the store, wherever we are. We can live mindful and conscious of him and his presence, out of our last moment of intimacy, whether we feel him at the moment or not. It changes the atmosphere around you – it really does.

If our Christianity is not more than an insurance policy, if it's not a real two-way relationship, we've missed the boat, and Christ's death was wasted on us. Contrary to popular opinion, Jesus didn't die to just give us salvation, although his death did give us that. Salvation is just the prerequisite. He died to give us relationship – lover-close intimacy – with himself. Woof! That gets me all excited and makes me want to go worship. How about you?

The Power of the Psalms

When I was in high school, the Lord spoke to me about reading through the Bible start to finish. So I did. When I got to the Psalms I thought, “This will be the most boring book – just song lyrics – like reading the album cover without the music. And there's 150 of them! Terrific; that's just ducky.”

I have never been so wrong. The depth of raw emotion expressed in the Psalms is at a level very few writers of songs, poetry, or prose dare to go. They cover the entire range of human experience, from the heights of euphoria to the utter, black depths of desperation.

Especially the Psalms of David. Do you know his story? He was anointed to be King of Israel as a young boy, in secret by the prophet Samuel. As he grew and did things he could only do because he knew God was with him, like killing Goliath and winning many other battles for the Israelites, everyone knew he would be the next king. Including the present king, King Saul. Which was the problem. Saul pursued David for years trying to kill him. David had to live in a cave in the desert for many years.

Out of this great unfairness in his life, he writes some of the most powerful psalms. Like Psalm 13, which starts out, “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?” I love the honesty of heart in the psalms! But David ends Psalm 13 with, “I will sing to the Lord, for he has been good to me.”

And that's what all the psalms have in common. Whether written from the highest height or from the deepest depth, they all end praising the Lord. Even when they express anger at him or frustration with life, they all end praising the Lord.

How about us? Do all of our conversations, internal and external, end praising the Lord, regardless of circumstance? Be careful, that'll change your life! :)

Living Out of Our Will, Part 2 of 2

We chatted Wednesday about what goes wrong when we live out of our emotions or out of our intellect (our mind); see http://www.davewernli.com/2014/08/living-out-of-our-will-part-1-of-2.html. Our emotions are there to enjoy life and to let us know when something's wrong. Our mind is there so we can figure out how to reach our goals. But neither should be setting those goals. Neither our emotions nor our will should be driving.

God wants us living out of our will. Think about it – the best acts in life come from our will.

Love is an act of the will. You can actually measure love – it's measured in units of sacrifice. Choosing to sacrifice for someone else is an act of the will. Love is not gooshy feelings. The gooshy feelings are a consequence of love – not its cause or definition.

Here's proof. The next time you're ticked off at somebody, choose to do something sacrificial for them, something significant that would bless them and that you get no fringe benefit from, expecting nothing in return. The side-effect will be positive emotions for you toward that person. I dare you – try it! It's fun!

Faith is an act of the will. We are barraged all day with the constant choice between responding in fear or responding in faith. In the middle of our fear, when we choose to believe God over the circumstances our eyes see, that's faith. It's a choice.

Bravery, a synonym for faith, is also an act of the will. A brave person is just as fearful as anyone else, but do not let their fear influence their decision, but rather they use their fear to heighten their awareness of the situation. Their decision is an act of their will, not their emotions or their mind. Then they use their mind to figure out how to implement that decision.

As Christians, we want our will to be aligned with God's will. We feel his prompting in our spirit. Sometimes it defies the logic of our mind and the desires of our emotions. But we choose it anyway because we're in love. After doing this a while, we start longing to live on the edge with him, leaping across the mountain tops, moving in the miraculous like he does (see Song of Songs 2:8).

Like the dwarfs who show up on Bilbo's doorstep, Jesus has awoken our inner hobbit. We choose to go on the adventure, thrilling our emotions, and using every mental faculty we possess. And he still surprises us when we least expect it. What a great life!

Living Out of Our Will, Part 1 of 2

We are three part beings – body, soul, and spirit. And our soul is three parts – mind, will, and emotions.

As Christians, our spirit is alive and connected with Christ (Romans 8:10). Our spirit gets it's direction from the Holy Spirit, which in turn directs our will, which directs our body; that is, how we live. In theory. At least that's how it's supposed to work.

But sin trips us up and instead of living out of our will, sometimes we live out of our emotions or our intellect.

Our emotions are there (1) so we can enjoy life – what a tremendous gift God has given us, and (2) to let us know something's wrong. Like the indicator lights on the dashboard of your car, emotions should not be ignored – but they shouldn't drive either. We take the indicator lights on our car seriously, but we still use the steering wheel to drive. When we live out of our emotions, our life is driven by how we feel at the moment with no thought to long term consequences. We continually make bad choices based on what we want or how we feel in the moment. Then we wonder why our life is spiraling downhill. You know people like this – they live from crisis to crisis.

Just like our emotions, our mind should never drive. It's the tires on the car, working out the practical day-to-day routes, not the steering wheel. Our mind is there to figure out how to get where our will wants to go. If we live out of our intellect, there's no room for faith. We don't do anything we haven't got all figured out in advance. You know people like this – they are the most boring people.

But God designed us to live out of our will. We'll talk about what this means on Friday.

God's Silence Speaks Volumes

There are times when everything's falling apart and we cry out to God and we listen. And we listen. And we listen. We say with Samuel, “Speak, Lord, for Your servant is listening” (1 Samuel 3:10). But we hear nothing but crickets.

We understand prayer's a two-way street. We worship Him and lay out our desperate need before Him. We say with Job, “Though He slay me, yet will I hope in Him” (Job 13:15). And yet sometimes when we listen, all we hear is absolutely nothing.

I've walked with God long enough to recognize His silence is speaking volumes. Maybe you have, too. In those dark times, the worst of the worst, when my family is falling apart and I can't hear Him, I know deep in my spirit that He's speaking two words. “Trust Me.”

See, even when He's not speaking, He's speaking. Even His silence speaks to me. “Trust Me.” So I'm never alone.

It's enough. It comforts me because I realize this as a banner winning opportunity (see http://www.davewernli.com/2014/07/i-like-winning-banners.html). How about you?

Putting Our Gifts on the Altar

Like Abraham, who put his promised son Isaac on the altar, we need to put the gifts, talents, hopes and dreams God has given us on the altar. It keeps them from becoming an idol in our lives and keeps our focus on Jesus.

God's gifts and calling are irrevocable (Romans 11:29, NIV). The King James version says “without repentance.” This verse means that God never repents of giving us our gifts and talents. He never takes them away and never regrets giving them to us. That's why you see some people living really ungodly life styles but still functioning in tremendous giftings and talents.

Just like Abraham, we need to put our spiritual giftings, natural talents, hopes and dreams on the altar by being willing to sacrifice them for a season. God gave them all to us, and they're all His anyway.

You see, sin messes up our relationship to, well, pretty much everything. So the giftings, talents, hopes and dreams God gave us can become idols to us – an end in themselves. But being willing to sacrifice them, to “fast” them, if you will, gets our perspective back on God. It forces us to trust God instead of the gift. And the degree of difficulty we face in doing this shows us how much that thing has already become an idol in our life.

The point is this. To heal our sinful relationship to our own calling, we have to die to it for a season. The sticky wicket is that God determines the duration – not us – and we usually don't know the duration up front. So we have to be prepared for forever. Our attitude needs to be, “Lord, you can give this back to me when you choose, if ever.”

When God gives it back to us, and He always will, just like Abraham got Isaac back, it will be sanctified and holy. We ourselves will be in a more mature place and able to handle it with more grace and wisdom. And our focus will be on God and building His Kingdom with our gifting and talent, not on building our personal empire.

Fasting for Intimacy

Fasting doesn't just mean not eating. That's dieting. And we can fast things other than food. Fasting is giving up something so that the time we would have spent on that thing we instead spend with God. It's a tangible way of putting God first. And God usually shows up in a more intimate way than we've yet experienced.

I think we should fast regularly. Fasting food is a fantastic experience – the time you would have spent preparing the food and eating is instead spent with the Lord. There's no better way to put your flesh down than deny it food. (NOTE: Do not fast food if you're diabetic, anorexic, are under 18, or have some other medical condition where skipping food would be bad. (“Hey, being under 18's not a medical condition!” Yes it is – just go ask your parents. :) )

But there are lots of things you can fast besides food. Fasting TV/media is excellent – most of it isn't good for us anyway. Time at the gym. Time doing whatever hobby. Basically anything about which your heart says, “oh, no not that.” You're not giving it up permanently, just giving the time over to the Lord for a pre-determined timeframe.

As a software engineer who does research, if I'm hungry I can't think straight, which is what I get paid for. So I can't fast food during the work week. But for some reason, I can fast sleep. I commute 1 – 2 hours one-way depending on traffic, so I get up at “oh-dark-thirty” to spend time with the Lord. Then drink lots of coffee at work. So I get 6 hours (or less) sleep each night and catch up on the weekends. Not a healthy lifestyle, but that's the season God has me in right now. I'm not patting myself on the back; this is just a personal example of a fasted lifestyle. And I can tell you it's totally worth it.

It's important for your Christian walk to fast something on a regular basis. I highly recommend a fasted lifestyle. It will greatly increase your intimacy with the Father.

Free but Not Free

Relationship with Jesus is free of anything we need to do, but it costs us everything we are.

Jesus paid it all on the cross, so there's nothing we need to do but accept Him as our Savior. We don't live godly lives to earn our way into Heaven; we live godly lives because we're already in Heaven. Nothing we do or don't do makes Him love us any more or any less. So in that sense relationship with Jesus is totally free.

But in another sense, it's not free. It costs us our false identity. We're so deceived into thinking that's our real identity that it seems like a big deal to us at the time. But looking back afterward, it's not really that big a cost because we really didn't want any of that stuff anyway.

We have to come to a place where we are willing to change anything in our lifestyle, nothing held back. Relationship with Jesus costs us everything we think we are. But it's there, in that place of surrender, that He brings us into who we really are.

My Yoke is Easy, My Burden is Light

There is a yoke, a burden, to bear in being a Christian. Jesus said in Luke 9:23, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” Relationship with Jesus is free from anything we need to do, but it costs us everything we are.

But sometimes we have such an entitlement mentality that the word “sacrifice” becomes a dirty word. God has blessed us with so much. But we get attached to His blessings and we forget Him. “What? Me give up anything? But it's my right!” And what we view as our right becomes our god. We make a big deal out of letting it go, when it should be easy.

Jesus said in Matthew 11:30, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.” If we would only trust Him, take the risk, and yield ourselves to Him, we'd find He only takes away the stuff we didn't want anyway – like our insecurity, fear, and out-of-control emotions. And He gives back everything in us that's good – and it's whole not all twisted up like we had it.

It's easy to change when we're yielded to Jesus and not hanging on to what He wants to take. But it costs us facing our fear and risking that loss of control. But if we yield, we look back later and hit the easy button, “That was easy”. His yoke really is easy and His burden light. And. So. Worth. It.

Love Based on Position, Not Actions

My kids grew up hearing me say, “I'm proud of you and I love you because you're my son (or daughter). Nothing you ever do or don't do can change that.” Those of us who are parents intrinsically understand this. I was there for the birth of all three of my kids, and from that moment on, before they'd done anything good or bad, I instantly loved them with a passionate intensity. From the second I first saw them, I'd have given my life for them if they needed it. And I still would.

Where do we get that from? What's true in the natural is true in the spirit. The Father loves us based on our position as His children. Nothing we do or don't do can make Him love us any more or any less. That is tremendous security!

That's our identity as His children and our destiny – why we were created and why we're here. To be loved by Him and to love Him back. That is our success. Once we understand His love for us at a heart level and accept that love-relationship with Him, holiness becomes easy. After all, what's sin but not trusting God for what we need? So we take it ourselves.

Trusting Him becomes easy when our heart understands His love for us. And we get love-blind. We don't even see that stuff that sin desires anymore. That's why living in holiness is so easy at that point. We are so intoxicated with His love for us that we're too deaf to hear sin's distracting call. It can take its lies and stuff them. We're looking straight at the most Beautiful One in the universe, overwhelmed by His love for us, and giving Him ours in return. Who we really are is found only in this place.

Hey, Sin, don't bother me. Come back later, say, in an eternity. I'm busy making love right now.

Getting to the Father

Everything the Holy Spirit does points to Jesus. As Jesus said in John 14:26, “But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.” (NIV) All over the book of Acts, the Holy Spirit is inspiring people to talk about Jesus. Peter in Acts 2, Stephen in Acts 7, Philip in Acts 8, and the list goes on and on. The Holy Spirit always points to Jesus.

Unfortunately, that's where so many Christians stop. But Jesus always points to the Father. Jesus was always talking about the Father. Check it out:

Matthew 6:4 “… then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”

Matthew 6:5 “… then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”

Matthew 6:8 “... your Father knows what you need before you ask Him.”

Matthew 6:14 “... your Heavenly Father will also forgive you.” (Or not, see verse 15)

Matthew 6:18 “… then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”

Matthew 6:32 “... your Heavenly Father knows that you need them.”

Matthew 7:11 “... your Father in Heaven will give good gifts to those who ask Him.”

Matthew 10:29 “... not one of them falls to the ground apart from your Father's will.”

Matthew 18:19 “... it will be done for them by my Father in Heaven.”

John 5:17 “... My Father is always at his work to this very day ...”

John 5:19 “... only what he sees the Father doing ...”

John 14:24 “... These words are not my own, they belong to the Father ...”

And this is only the short list. Our goal in Christianity is relationship with the Father. As Jesus said in John 14:23, “... Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.” It's only then – in the light of knowing our Father and seeing ourselves like He sees us – only then do we know who we really are and can pursue our true identity and walk out our true destiny.

I Know the End of the Story

My favorite verse in the whole Bible is Song of Songs 8:5a “Who is this coming up from the desert leaning on her lover?”

The Beloved (you and me) has had spiritual and life crisis after crisis. Crisis in her family of origin (1:5-9), crisis struggling over sin in her life (2:14-15), crisis missing her Lover (Jesus) because she hesitated distracted by the temporary comfort the world offers (5:2-6), crisis being abused by her church (5:7-16).

She answers each crisis by pursuing intimacy with her Lover-King Solomon (i.e., Jesus). And through each crisis – because she trusts in Him by searching for intimacy with Him through it all – she wins a banner every time (6:4).

And we know the end of the story. Our story. My story. Your story. If we only persevere pursuing intimacy with our Lover-King. “Who is this coming up from the desert leaning on her lover?” We come up out of the desert barely able to walk, but leaning on our Lover-King, having found Him – the reward of our relentless pursuit of intimacy – and are as majestic and beautiful to Him as an army with many banners (6:4). That works for me.