Attending a church body simply to worship.

Since before I was saved, I have been a committed church member. 

More than that, I can not help but serve the body in some way (read: worship band). But I've come to the conclusion that if the church is not on a rotation of musicians (which I've never served somewhere that was able to), I am unable to truly be fed during worship. My mind is captured by the act of playing music. 

I know that my concentrated, skilled performance brings glory to God, but it doesn't allow me to meditate on the humungous Love that God is expressing through the lyrics and melodies during worship. 

So I've decided to attend a second church on Sunday and not serve the worship ministry until my church  has enough musician to have me on a rotation schedule. 

But, after serving so long, I will feel selfish simply taking from a congregation without giving back. 

Any thoughts on the selfishness of this decision? I think I feel God leading me this way, but never hurts to get a second opinion. 

Love,

A Pilgrim Song

Help, God —the bottom has fallen out of my life! Master, hear my cry for help! Listen hard! Open your ears! Listen to my cries for mercy. If you, God, kept records on wrongdoings, who would stand a chance? As it turns out, forgiveness is your habit, and that's why you're worshiped. I pray to God —my life a prayer— and wait for what he'll say and do. My life's on the line before God, my Lord, waiting and watching till morning, waiting and watching till morning. O Israel, wait and watch for God — with God 's arrival comes love, with God 's arrival comes generous redemption. No doubt about it—he'll redeem Israel, buy back Israel from captivity to sin. (Psalm 130:1-8 MSG)

The five convictions of Christian Hedonism

Although controversially named, Piper's philosophies are engaging and, so far, Biblical.

Here are the 5 convictions that are behind the tenets of Christian Hedonism:

1) The longing to be happy is a universal human experience, and it is good, not sinful.

2) We should never try to deny or resist our longing to be happy, as though it were a bad impulse. Instead, we should seek to intensify this longing and nourish it with whatever will provide the deepest and most enduring satisfaction.

3) The deepest and most enduring happiness is found only in God. Not from God, but in God.

4) The happiness we find in God reaches its consummation when it is shared with others in the manifold ways of love.

5) To the extent that we try to abandon the pursuit of our own pleasure, we fail to honor God and love people. Or, to put it positively: The pursuit of pleasure is a necessary part of all worship and virtue. That is...

The chief end of man is to glorify God BY enjoying Him forever.

-Desiring God, p.28

Lent and my prayer

Lent

    The Lenten calendar is most closely associated with its tradition of fasting from animal products as the days lengthen leading up to Easter. However, any fast can help reach the true purposes of Lent, to turn our hearts towards the Lord. 

Here, Isaiah instructs the Hebrew people on the kind of fasat that is pleasing to the Lord:

"Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps  of the yoke, to let the oppressed  go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not  to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh? Then shall your light break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up speedily; your righteousness shall go before you; the glory of the  Lord  shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the  Lord  will answer; you shall cry, and he will say, "Here I am."

- Isaiah 58:6-9

However, Lent is a not just a time of fasting but a time for repentance, meditation, and reflection. Lent is a time to expose subtle idols. Throughout this time, I am hoping to lay down idols in my own life in order to more fully experience satisfaction in the Lord. 

If I could have anything, it would be satisfaction in the Lord alone. That's my prayer. 

By His stripes (not ours) we are healed

But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed. 

-Isaiah 53:5 

I struggle, like many perhaps, with believing that I can add to what Christ did on the cross by serving "penance" for my sin. This idea, created in the Middle Ages, takes shape in my life when I berate myself for mistakes and even try to do things to make up for my evil deeds - as if I could give God anything more valuable that what his only Son did on my behalf.

The dangers of this are two-fold:
1. I forget Christ's perfect and complete gift of salvation and decide that my pain is more worthy of God's grace.
2. I don't focus on the heart-change of Biblical repentance but instead focus on my behavior — putting myself "back in the black" in God's ledger.

Christ came to take on the sins of the world, that we may freely receive the gift of salvation - it is by Him, and Him alone, that we are saved, that no man may boast.

It is by HIS stripes we are healed, not ours.

-T

Beginning to read "Desiring God" by John Piper.

The Chief End

The chief end of man is to glorify God

BY

enjoying him forever

Piper's well-known Christian Hedonist creed, "God is most glorified when we are most satisfied in Him", pours out of every word of Desiring God from the first page. I am excited to see what God will show me through this work of theology and what practical implication it will have on my life. 

His first chapter touches on something that I believe most could relate to and I certainly did: the guilt of being motivated by pleasure instead of selflessness. Piper describes the feeling that if he did something good for others, it felt lessened if he realized that he was getting something out of it personally - This doesn't feel like being selfless. 

But perhaps, as Piper suggests when he quotes the Weight of Glory by C.S. Lewis, being selfless isn't the end goal. The end goal is God's glory. 

And when pleasure is found in Him, this is the only motivator that can sustain us. 

More to come

-T

Serving God = be filled with thrill and joy. A devotion from John Piper

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO SERVE GOD

“As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:15). What does that mean?

• - It means to do what he says in a way that makes him look supremely valuable in himself.
• - It means to submit to him in a way that makes him look thrilling.

       There are ways to submit to God that only make him look threatening, not thrilling. There are ways to do what he says that only call attention to the fact that he is an authority not a treasure.

That kind of service is not the service God commands.

What’s the difference?

The difference is that God has told us not to serve him as though he needed anything.

“He is not served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything” (Acts 17:25).

“The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).

Both these texts put all the emphasis on God’s giving to us when we serve.

So the kind of service that makes God look valuable and thrilling is the kind that serves God by constantly receiving from God. The key text to describe this is 1 Peter 4:11 —

“Whoever serves, let it be as one who serves by the strength that God supplies—in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ.”

 God is seen as glorious when all our serving is moment-by-moment receiving from God’s supply.

   We receive this supply by faith. That is, we trust moment-by-moment that what we need, in serving him, he will supply (“life, breath, and everything”). This is the opposite of being anxious. Such serving is happy. And it makes God look no less authoritative, but infinitely more desirable. This is the glory he means to have. The giver gets the glory.

Therefore, “serve the Lord with gladness” (Psalm 100:2).