I recently went for a Wesley counsellors' retreat, and I really liked what one of the counsellors said about experiencing God with our five senses.
Most of the time, we use only two senses - sight and hearing.
I was in my hotel room alone during one of the days and so gave myself some time to experience God through my five senses.
I prayed before I started and these were what I wrote on my journal:
Sight
- An eagle soaring in the sky
- A shining sword
- Two big caring hands supporting me
- Huge white feathers providing me with full cover
Taste
- Sweeter than honey
- Snowflakes landing on the tongue
- Softness of a feather
- Warm and comforting
Smell
- The morning air in a dense forest
- Fresh and invigorating
- Familiar
- An apple orchard
Touch
- Protective and loving
- Very gentle like a breath on my skin
- Always a hug
- Fully enveloped in his love
Hearing
- Through the Word
- Through the Holy Spirit
- Through other people
- Through incidents and events
- Through creation
- Through a soft still voice
- From my right ear
- In my head
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Song onto the Lord
Ended work at 6.30pm recently and rushed to church quite ill-prepared for the cellgroup worship training session. However, God is far bigger and wonderfully gracious.
I took away so much from the session. It was also then that I received an sms that filled me with so much joy. A friend smsed me to let me know that another friend was very much on fire for God.
What I took away from the training session:
1. What is worship all about?
William Temple (Archbishop of Canterbury from 1942-1944) wrote:
Worship is the submission of all of our nature to God.
It is the quickening of conscience by His holiness,
nourishment of mind by His truth,
purifying of imagination by His beauty,
opening of the heart to His love, and
submission of will to His purpose.
And all this gathered up in adoration is the greatest of human expressions of which we are capable.
Pastor Benny Ho said:
"Worship is the human response to the touch of God. Forms and rituals - whether traditional or charismatic - do not produce true worship. Worship does not happen until Spirit touches spirit."
2. What constitutes acceptable sacrifices?
Psalm 19:14
14 Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
be acceptable in your sight,
O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.
3. What does rejoicing in the Lord mean?
Habakkuk 3:17-19
17 Though the fig tree should not blossom,
nor fruit be on the vines,
the produce of the olive fail
and the fields yield no food,
the flock be cut off from the fold
and there be no herd in the stalls,
18 yet I will rejoice in the Lord;
I will take joy in the God of my salvation.
19 God, the Lord, is my strength;
he makes my feet like the deer's;
he makes me tread on my high places.
Amen.
I took away so much from the session. It was also then that I received an sms that filled me with so much joy. A friend smsed me to let me know that another friend was very much on fire for God.
What I took away from the training session:
1. What is worship all about?
William Temple (Archbishop of Canterbury from 1942-1944) wrote:
Worship is the submission of all of our nature to God.
It is the quickening of conscience by His holiness,
nourishment of mind by His truth,
purifying of imagination by His beauty,
opening of the heart to His love, and
submission of will to His purpose.
And all this gathered up in adoration is the greatest of human expressions of which we are capable.
Pastor Benny Ho said:
"Worship is the human response to the touch of God. Forms and rituals - whether traditional or charismatic - do not produce true worship. Worship does not happen until Spirit touches spirit."
2. What constitutes acceptable sacrifices?
Psalm 19:14
14 Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
be acceptable in your sight,
O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.
3. What does rejoicing in the Lord mean?
Habakkuk 3:17-19
17 Though the fig tree should not blossom,
nor fruit be on the vines,
the produce of the olive fail
and the fields yield no food,
the flock be cut off from the fold
and there be no herd in the stalls,
18 yet I will rejoice in the Lord;
I will take joy in the God of my salvation.
19 God, the Lord, is my strength;
he makes my feet like the deer's;
he makes me tread on my high places.
Amen.
Monday, September 7, 2009
Ministry onto the Lord
These four words "ministry onto the Lord" caught my attention today during a House of Prayer session because they seemed so simple and yet at a certain level, they were a mystery to me. So I went online and did a google of the words and this was one of the top results.
Ministry to the Lord
By Watchman Nee
Let us note at the outset that there is little apparent difference between ministry to the House of the Lord and ministry to the Lord Himself. Many of you are doing your utmost to help your brethren, and you are labouring to save sinners and administer the affairs of the church. But let me ask you: Have you been seeking to meet the need around you, or have you been seeking to serve the Lord? Is it your fellow men you have in view, or is it Him?
Let us be quite frank. Work for the Lord undoubtedly has its attractions for the flesh. You may be thrilled when crowds gather to hear you preach, and when numbers of souls are saved. If you have to stay at home, occupied from morning to night with mundane matters, then you think: How meaningless life as! How grand at would be if I could go out and serve the Lord! If only I were free to go around ministering! But that is not spirituality. That is merely a matter of natural preference. Oh, if only we could see that much of the work done for God is not really ministry at all! He, Himself, has told us chat there was a class of Levites who busily served in the Temple, and yet they were not serving Him; they were merely serving the House. However, service to the Lord and service to the House appear so much alike that it is often difficult to differentiate between the two.
If an Israelite came along to the Temple and wanted to worship God, those Levites would come to his aid and help him offer his peace offering and his burnt offering. They would help him drag the sacrifice to the altar, and they would slay it. Surely that was a grand work to be engaged in, reclaiming sinners and leading believers closer to the Lord! And God took account of the service of those Levites who helped men bring their peace offerings and their burnt offerings to the altar. Yet He said it was not ministry to Himself.
Brothers and sisters, there is a heavy burden on my heart that you might realise what God is after. He wants ministers who will minister to Him. "They shall come near to me to minister unto me; and they shall stand before me to offer unto me the fat and the blood. They shall minister unto me" (Ezekiel 44:15).
The thing I fear most is that many of you will go out and win sinners to the Lord and build up believers, without ministering to the Lord Himself. Much so-called service for Him is simply following our natural inclinations. We have such active dispositions that we cannot bear to stay at home, so we run around for our own relief. We may appear to be serving sinners, or serving believers, but all the while we are serving our own flesh.
I have a dear friend who is now with the Lord. One day, after we had a time of prayer together, we read this passage in Ezekiel (44:9-26, 28, 31 ). She was very much older than I, and she addressed me like this: "My young brother, it was twenty years ago that I first studied this passage of Scripture."
"How did you react to it?" I asked.
She replied: "As soon as I had finished reading it, I closed my Bible, and kneeling down before the Lord, I prayed: 'Lord, make me to be one who shall minister to You, not to the Temple."' Can we also pray that prayer?
But what do we really mean when we talk of serving God or serving the Temple? Here is what the Word says:
But the priests, the Levites, the sons of Zadok, that kept the charge of my sanctuary when the children of Israel went astray from me, they shall come near to me to minister unto me; and they shall stand before me to offer unto me the fat and the blood, saith the LORD God (Ezekiel 44:15).
The conditions basic to all ministry that can truly be called ministry to the Lord are drawing near to Him and standing before Him. But how hard we often find it to drag ourselves into His presence! We shrink from the solitude, and even when we do detach ourselves physically, our thoughts still keep wandering outside. Many of us can enjoy working among people, but how many of us can draw near to (God in the Holy of Holies? Yet it is only as we draw near to Him that we can minister to Him.
Ministry to the Lord
By Watchman Nee
Let us note at the outset that there is little apparent difference between ministry to the House of the Lord and ministry to the Lord Himself. Many of you are doing your utmost to help your brethren, and you are labouring to save sinners and administer the affairs of the church. But let me ask you: Have you been seeking to meet the need around you, or have you been seeking to serve the Lord? Is it your fellow men you have in view, or is it Him?
Let us be quite frank. Work for the Lord undoubtedly has its attractions for the flesh. You may be thrilled when crowds gather to hear you preach, and when numbers of souls are saved. If you have to stay at home, occupied from morning to night with mundane matters, then you think: How meaningless life as! How grand at would be if I could go out and serve the Lord! If only I were free to go around ministering! But that is not spirituality. That is merely a matter of natural preference. Oh, if only we could see that much of the work done for God is not really ministry at all! He, Himself, has told us chat there was a class of Levites who busily served in the Temple, and yet they were not serving Him; they were merely serving the House. However, service to the Lord and service to the House appear so much alike that it is often difficult to differentiate between the two.
If an Israelite came along to the Temple and wanted to worship God, those Levites would come to his aid and help him offer his peace offering and his burnt offering. They would help him drag the sacrifice to the altar, and they would slay it. Surely that was a grand work to be engaged in, reclaiming sinners and leading believers closer to the Lord! And God took account of the service of those Levites who helped men bring their peace offerings and their burnt offerings to the altar. Yet He said it was not ministry to Himself.
Brothers and sisters, there is a heavy burden on my heart that you might realise what God is after. He wants ministers who will minister to Him. "They shall come near to me to minister unto me; and they shall stand before me to offer unto me the fat and the blood. They shall minister unto me" (Ezekiel 44:15).
The thing I fear most is that many of you will go out and win sinners to the Lord and build up believers, without ministering to the Lord Himself. Much so-called service for Him is simply following our natural inclinations. We have such active dispositions that we cannot bear to stay at home, so we run around for our own relief. We may appear to be serving sinners, or serving believers, but all the while we are serving our own flesh.
I have a dear friend who is now with the Lord. One day, after we had a time of prayer together, we read this passage in Ezekiel (44:9-26, 28, 31 ). She was very much older than I, and she addressed me like this: "My young brother, it was twenty years ago that I first studied this passage of Scripture."
"How did you react to it?" I asked.
She replied: "As soon as I had finished reading it, I closed my Bible, and kneeling down before the Lord, I prayed: 'Lord, make me to be one who shall minister to You, not to the Temple."' Can we also pray that prayer?
But what do we really mean when we talk of serving God or serving the Temple? Here is what the Word says:
But the priests, the Levites, the sons of Zadok, that kept the charge of my sanctuary when the children of Israel went astray from me, they shall come near to me to minister unto me; and they shall stand before me to offer unto me the fat and the blood, saith the LORD God (Ezekiel 44:15).
The conditions basic to all ministry that can truly be called ministry to the Lord are drawing near to Him and standing before Him. But how hard we often find it to drag ourselves into His presence! We shrink from the solitude, and even when we do detach ourselves physically, our thoughts still keep wandering outside. Many of us can enjoy working among people, but how many of us can draw near to (God in the Holy of Holies? Yet it is only as we draw near to Him that we can minister to Him.
Created for worship
I went for a meeting in church recently to learn about worship leading and took away so many things I just had to list them down here in a note:
* A beautiful Saviour calls forth a beautiful sound.
* God says that if we build the house, He will come. He will inhabit. We want His habitation, not just a visitation.
* Do we worship for His love and approval or from His love and approval?
* When we see what God sees, we will do what God wants to do.
* We cannot bring someone where we have not been ourselves.
* The worship pastor said that in a dream, she was asking God "How do get the people to really worship you?" And the answer was: "When they have a correct perspective of Me."
* How you worship will affect the way you lead others in worship.
* Always ask: "Why do I do what I do, and when?"
* A beautiful Saviour calls forth a beautiful sound.
* God says that if we build the house, He will come. He will inhabit. We want His habitation, not just a visitation.
* Do we worship for His love and approval or from His love and approval?
* When we see what God sees, we will do what God wants to do.
* We cannot bring someone where we have not been ourselves.
* The worship pastor said that in a dream, she was asking God "How do get the people to really worship you?" And the answer was: "When they have a correct perspective of Me."
* How you worship will affect the way you lead others in worship.
* Always ask: "Why do I do what I do, and when?"
Time enough
Leisure (W.H.Davies)
WHAT is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare?—
No time to stand beneath the boughs,
And stare as long as sheep and cows:
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass:
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night:
No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance:
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began?
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
WHAT is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare?—
No time to stand beneath the boughs,
And stare as long as sheep and cows:
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass:
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night:
No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance:
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began?
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
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