Me Amaste Primero

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Conferencia Fiel Hasta el Final

Viaje parte 2

Viaje a Columbus, Indianapolis y Evansville

Worship Night in Indy

Worship Night in Indy

Rock Of My Salvation (Song)

rock-of-my-salvation This song is based on The Nature of God as savior and redeemer, and what our natural response can and should be. It starts with a call to rejoice, to worship and to bow down to God, based on Ps 95 (The Message).

The song intends to remind us why He deserves such adoration, to remember that Jesus showed his love for us by giving his life so that we can live, so that our sins can be forgiven through Jesus sacrifice at the cross.

Then it focuses our attention in some of God’s attributes: God as a solid rock, as savior, as creator, as redeemer; showing that his love and mercy were freely given by God, even when he knew that we didn’t and don’t deserve them. So our response is one of surrender, one of giving our hearts and lives back to him, understanding that this is the way we should respond to God’s love, by giving ourselves back to him.

When our response is that of surrender, we become fully alive, we recognize the meaning of Jesus’ work at the cross. The song talks about the dimension of God’s love as described in Ef 3:18 (NIV) and then goes back to the chorus where we talk again about God’s nature as savior and redeemer, with a phrase from Ps 103:3-5 (The Message)

As we become more aware of the reality of worship leaders as theologians, I believe we should focus our attention in communicating who God really is, to show the truth about God in creative ways. Been crowned with love and mercy, even when we don’t deserve it is a powerful message, one that I believe we should present more often.

Love and Obedience

There are words that we don’t usually associate to obedience. Words like love, passion, truth… There is a radical connection between love and obedience:

“I’ve loved you the way my Father has loved me. Make yourselves at home in my love. If you keep my commands, you’ll remain intimately at home in my love. That’s what I’ve done—kept my Father’s commands and made myself at home in his love. Jn 15:9-10 (The Message)

In our world today words like submission and obedience tend to have a bad connotation, partly because of all the abuses we experience from all kind of authorities, sometimes including authorities in the church. Partly because of the spirit of independence that rules our world today, that gets filtered to our life in church as well.

All of our time and relationships gravitate around my own needs and what I can get from it. That is a spirit of independence. Even helping others is seeing as a way of fulfilling my selfish needs. That affects directly the church as well.

It is interesting to think that we are made to worship. We end up been submitted and obedient to the object of our worship.

“Worship means, literally, acknowledging the worth of something or someone. It means recognizing and saying that something or someone is worthy of praise.
It means celebrating the worth of something or someone far superior to oneself.” (NT Wright, Simply Christian, p.144)

We believe that the object of our worship is what will fill our needs, so we grant our rights to that object. We become submitted obedient servants of all kinds of things: codependent relationships, alcohol, sports, gambling, work, money, religiousness, etc.

That’s where our battle takes place, the enemy does a great job at marketing all kinds of addictions and lower gods as the source of inner satisfaction and fulfillment. Our spirit of independence fuels this ideas. So our lives gravitate in worship toward this things, the things that I decide will fill my needs. We become slaves, and we live lives based on the lies of the enemy.

So we become passionate, we believe they’re true, we love our addictions. We obey them. They become our gods, the object of our worship. It’s sad, but we get deceived, and our lives start to die slowly.

Our biggest challenge as Christians is to present God as he really is. As the real source, as the one who can satisfy our need, as the one who help us to be Fully alive, we are called to something beautiful to be part of his family, to be a part of his story.

In John 4, Jesus has the famous conversation with the Samaritan woman. Jesus approaches her, he wants her to find what she is really looking for, Himself! He starts a conversation and offers the woman a kind of water that will take away her real thirst.

She is trying to quench her thirst with men, the woman had 4 husbands, and the one she has right now is not her husband. Jesus brings this up, not to condemn her, not to judge her, but to redeem her, to set her free. To help her realize that relationships or perhaps sex, are not working, and He has what she is really longing for. She knew the religious drill, but she didn’t know who God really was, until that day that Jesus found her, and she let Jesus find her!

Jesus offered her the real water, He loved her first! He showed her his amazing love and mercy, but she needed to obey Jesus in order to receive Him, she had lo leave the source she was drinking from, and she did, and her life was changed forever!

She started a life of worship with Jesus, she realized how amazingly beautiful was Jesus’ love and mercy, his restoration, redemption, his invitation to real relationship with the source of life.

She realized Jesus is good, she realized who He really is, and started a relationship of worship with the source of life. She passionately and truthfully obeyed because she realized who Jesus really was, and how could she not obey the One who gave it all for her, who loved her correctly, expecting nothing in return?

“This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn’t go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again. Anyone who trusts in him is acquitted; anyone who refuses to trust him has long since been under the death sentence without knowing it. And why? Because of that person’s failure to believe in the one-of-a-kind Son of God when introduced to him.” Jn 3:16-17

Theology Of Worship

We humans are made to worship. We humans can not define our identities by ourselves, we define who we are as to who or what it is that we worship. We become like the object of our worship.

How can I not worship God when I have realized and received the unstoppable power of His healing, unending, unselfish, ever-forgiving, ever-restoring, everlasting love?

“Come, let’s shout praises to God, raise the roof for the Rock who saved us! Let’s march into his presence singing praises, lifting the rafters with our hymns!
And why? Because God is the best, High King over all the gods. In one hand he holds deep caves and caverns, in the other hand grasps the high mountains. He made Ocean—he owns it! His hands sculpted Earth!
So come, let us worship: bow before him, on your knees before God, who made us!” Ps 95:1-7 (The Message)

He is the Greatest, the Biggest, the King of Kings, Lord of lords, the Humble King, the One and Only, the Creator In Exihilo (who creates something out of nothing), and we humans are the crown of His Creation.

As we discover the true Nature of God, who He really is, the only proper response we can possibly have is one of absolute surrender in worship, and as we worship God we discover who we really are as sub-creators, imagebearers, community builders and salvific story tellers (1).

God is singing a song over and through his creation. We can mostly hear the echoes of that voice (2). “God, brilliant Lord, your name echoes around the world.” Ps 8:9 (The Message) His voice is so powerful that all things were created through His voice, His Word, including us humans.

God created humans with unique characteristics: His breath and His image. He has given us a voice we need to discover, and often re-discover. That is a voice to tell His story as well as a voice to sing in worship, in loving response to His unending love.

The Kingdom of God becomes real, present, here and now through our bodies, that work as the Temple where heaven and earth meet or interlock; and then healing, restoration, salvation, relationship happens.

His Kingdom gets established wherever His word gets proclaimed, through music or any other form of communication.

When we step out to bring the love of God as imagebearers to others in right-relatedness, our story tells that of the Kingdom, and His beauty, justice and mercy becomes real to this world. To worship is to right-relate to God, others and ourselves.

The world must hear the songs of beauty, the songs of justice, the songs of redemption, the songs of belonging, and our voices must engage as story tellers in that the amazing story of our Humble King.

Worship living

There are words spoken and sung through our physical bodies, through our actions and thoughts in our everyday lives; that is what it means to live a life of worship, as it is stated in Rom 12:1-2.

We cannot take someone else to a place we haven’t gone ourselves. Our lives should be the ones leading worship. To lead worship is not only to prepare a song list for a Sunday service. We are called to live in our everyday life what we are singing. We are called to have our sacred time with God. Daily time, weekly time, yearly time and life time. (3)

The entrustment and enticement are serious reminders of our need to be accountable and have our lives open to God and others constantly. This helps us remember who God is and who we are!

Songwriting as a lifestyle

Out of our sacred time, our intimate relationship with God, new songs should be flowing from. Even if we haven’t written a song that God has used to impact many, we should continue to write the songs of our hearts in our personal expression of worship to God. It doesn’t matter if the song is for you and God, for your local church, or for a broader audience, our songwriting should be a lifestyle as well.

Those new songs as well as the songs we lead, must be theologically correct, specially in a time where church theology is more defined by the songs they sing.

Sometimes your songlist and/or songwriting can be a way to know how intimate is your relationship with God.

The Vehicles where songs travel

It is important in a postmodern society to use the vehicles (music styles, arrangements) that are relevant to the emerging church where we are called to serve. The vehicle must serve the worship experience and not the other way around. This will keep our expressions of worship focused on God, alive, fresh, relevant in a heart level, not forgetting that all we do as worship artisans should be with a heart to serve in right-relatedness, to serve God and to serve others.

To worship is to respond to God’s amazing love for us, to surrender, to bow down to Him, to give everything back to Him, to be a mirror that reflects his glory to the world and then reflect the glory back to God.

1-Wilt, Essentials In Worship Theology: The Nature of Worship
2-NT Wright, Simply Christian, Part One
3-Wilt, Essential Worship Theology: A Theological Synthesis For Worship Leaders

Who is the center of our Worship?

When I saw the movie “The Passion of the Christ” for the first time, I was so surprised by how little it showed about Jesus’ Resurrection. Wasn’t that the whole point of the movie? What is amazing about Jesus is not that he died, but that he demonstrated he is God by conquering death! He really is God, He is alive, there’s an empty tomb! Jesus proved that all he said and did is true; he really is the Son of God! And that is the central point of our faith: Jesus’ Resurrection.

So many of the songs we lead in worship settings are self-centered, instead of God-centered songs. NT Wright says that many songs talk about me and how I feel instead of about God and his greatness and the power of the Gospel. (God-Centered songs-ICEWS video)

NT Wright also talks about the Christian world and our secular world been a place where “The individual is what matters, we see ourselves as the center of the universe.” (The Road to New Creation, IW 63) This is one of the greatest problems we have as Christians.

I remember visiting a church in the US, the building was amazing, it comfortably sat about 1000 people, the worship band was impeccable, they had everything you could ask for: grand piano, keyboard, 2 electric guitars, bass, acoustic, female and male amazing lead singers, drums… After the first 3 minutes of them leading worship, everyone in the building sat down, most of them without even singing, and where pretty much enjoying a performance of a professional band. They even lead the same songs, but there was something so wrong, it seemed like the whole focus of the worship were the people… Everything was so organized and packaged that God could show up or not and it didn’t really seem to matter… Needless to say it was very sad.

I believe that’s what happens when we go for a long time with people or ourselves been the center of our worship.

“Everything connected with getting our own way and mindlessly responding to what everyone else calls the necessities of life is killed off for good – crucified.”
(Luke 5.24, The Message)

Let’s focus on the power of Resurrection, let’s forget about our needs and bow down our lives as a living sacrifice before Jesus.

If we think of ourselves as imagebearers, the mirror in our soul can become dirty, and it can distort the real image of God when we are focused in our own needs.

As worship artisans we have a higher call, it is the call to die, to revert the ways of the world, to focus on God and say, break my heart again, make me new again, bring me out of my comfort zone once again. Help me to radically depend on you once again.

A good question to ask may be: “What is it that I do that if God doesn’t show up, I’ll just land flat on my face?”

Or maybe as John Wimber said, “I’m a fool for Christ, whose fool are you?”

Who is God, who are human beings, and why are we here?

Who is God, who are human beings, and why are we here?

God has always existed, He is the Eternal King, infinite, perfect, unchangeable, almighty, glorious, everlasting. Who was, and is, and is to come. He is the Creator (1), He creates something out of nothing. God began to speak and through his Word (Jesus) all things were created. We as human beings are made in his image, (2) his ImageBearers, the crown of his creation. We were made to rule over all the earth, to be stewards, caretakers. We are called to live in right-relatedness to God, with each other, with ourselves and with creation. (3) God saw his creation was good. God and human beings walked together in the garden of Eden.

And then came the Fall of Adam and Eve, they were deceived by the serpent, Eve responded to the serpent and Adam remained silent. Sin and sickness came into the world, guilt, shame and death came along with sin. Through the Fall, Satan and his demonic hosts gained access to God’s good creation (4). They were taken out of the garden of Eden so they couldn’t eat from the tree of life and live forever. The relationship with God was broken and something needed to be done so human beings could relate to God again.

Immediately after the Fall, God already had his plan of salvation. He made a covenant with Abraham and then Moses and gave His people the Law to bring order and show us our responsibilities. The Law is made to bring us to Christ alone, since no one can fulfill the Law, only Jesus did, it is through Christ that we have salvation, grace and mercy to restore our relationship with God. It is only through the death and Resurrection of Jesus that we have the forgiveness of sins and access to the Father. “For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive” (5)

The Kingdom of God came with Jesus, and is the place where God meets with his people in forgiveness and fellowship, where God sets the world to rights and rescues his people. (6) The temple was the place where this happened before Jesus; it was a shadow of what was to come. Through Jesus now our own hearts are the temple where heaven and earth overlap, the Holy Spirit lives in us and we can interact with the Kingdom of God, it can be manifest through our hearts at any given moment, the glory and beauty, the justice and relationship, the restoration, forgiveness, become not only an echo but the source of the voice itself.

We human beings are image bearers, we are mirrors that reflect the beauty of Jesus to the community we live in and then reflect the glory back surrendered in worship to God, to bring Him all the glory always, forever.

Everyone gets to play; we are all called to respond to the amazing relationship of love that God is calling us to be a part of every day of our lives. Fully alive, fully humans.

Where is human history going?

We who placed our faith in Jesus are going to the place where God and the world are not different from each other anymore; we will be in constant relationship with our Creator, worshipping Him forever. (7) Jesus will come to earth and be established as King. He will defeat Satan and all of his armies and work, the resurrection of the dead will happen, final judgment and the new heaven and new earth will be established where He will be worshipped forever.

‘Therefore, “they are before the throne of God and serve him day and night in his temple; and he who sits on the throne will spread his tent over them. Never again will they hunger; never again will they thirst. The sun will not beat upon them, nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd; he will lead them to springs of living water. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”’ Rev 7:15-17

1- Gen 1:1
2- Gen 1:27
3- D. Wilt video, Essential Worhip Theoplogy: God as Creator, King, Trinity and Savior
4- Vineyard Church Statement of Faith, p. 2
5- 1 Cor 15:22
6- NT Wright, Simply Christian, p. 78
7- 1 Tim 1:17