30 July: Tuesday Refocus

“Christians feed on Scripture. Holy Scripture nurtures the holy community as food nurtures the human body. Christians don't simply learn or study or use Scripture; we assimilate it, take it into our lives in such a way that it gets metabolized into acts of love, cups of cold water, missions into all the world, healing and evangelism and justice in Jesus' name, hands raised in adoration of the Father, feet washed in company with the Son.” - Eugene Peterson

God has spoken and is speaking. He spoke all things into existence and sustains the universe by the word of His power (Genesis 1:3, Hebrews 1:3). His voice brings forth life, and melts the earth (Psalm 29:9, Psalm 46:6). His Word became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:15). His word is ‘living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of heart.’ Hebrews 4:12

The Word of God, the voice of God is not an accessory to a decent, moral, Christian life, but the reshaping reality of all life for followers of Jesus. ‘But he answered, “It is written, “‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”’ Matthew 4:4

God, You alone have the words of eternal life, may we be nurtured and mobilized by Your Word, for Your glory and for our good, amen.

Amen,

AB

October 25: Tuesday Refocus

“There is an end to God’s disciplines, but there is no end to His comforts.” - Ray Ortlund

Sanctification is painful work. It disassembles and destroys those pieces of the flesh we have worked hard to build, keep, and grow. But ‘…the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives (Hebrews 12:6).” Sanctification and discipline are painful, but they flow from and to Love. And there is perhaps nothing more comforting than the reality that we are loved by God.

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.” 2 Corinthians 1:3-5

God may your anger last a moment, and Your favor a lifetime. Amen 

Comforted,

AB

October 4: Tuesday Refocus

“…suffering can never be solved. It can only be shared in compassion, shared in community, and every effort to put ourselves in charge of the relief effort weakens the very sharing in which our hope resides.” - Parker Palmer

Sorrow, suffering, pain, and death are normal and common living in a world after the Fall of Genesis 3. But we know this is not the world God intended for humanity. Perhaps this is why we resist the reality of brokenness with such force - because we know it is not supposed to be this way. As followers of Jesus, we can rest in the truth that, ‘The last enemy to be destroyed is death.’ Because Jesus died a death to sin ‘…once for all, but the life He lives He lives to God.’ (1 Corinthians 15:26, Romans 6:10).

Knowing that death has died frees us from the need to fix its sway over this already and not yet world. The death of death enables us to suffer with and to weep with those who weep, rather than attempt to fix something Christ will make new (Romans 12:15, Revelation 21:5).

Jesus, as you wept over the grave of your friend Lazarus, knowing full well that you would raise him to life, may we weep with those who weep, knowing that you will one day make all things new once more. Amen.

With,

AB

Worship As Pastoral Care

I once heard Bob Kauflin comment that if worship leaders were to do any kind of continued education, he would encourage them to study Biblical Counseling. Isn’t that interesting? Not necessarily theology, or music theory, not necessarily Greek, Hebrew, or composition, conducting, or sight-reading. No, Biblical Counseling. The longer I lead worship the more I am convinced that leading worship is primarily a pastoral function before it is a musical one. It is pastoral because we are dealing with real human souls. Souls in all of their brokenness and joy, souls in all of their immaturity and experience, souls in all of their comfort and distress, and we are seeking to guide, instruct, teach, and care for them through liturgy, song, Scripture, prayer, and preparation.

Worship As Pastoral Care by William H. Willimon, was one of the books that helped me continue to put language to the pastoral aspect of leading worship. Willimon says,

The history of pastoral care shows two dimensions of the care of our souls: (1) the preservation of spiritual health through preventive or protective care as well as daily guiding and sustaining care and (2) the restoration of spiritual and emotional health if and when dysfunction occurs…

Liturgy is education.  The question before us… is not whether our people will learn when they worship.  The question is, what will they learn when we lead them in worship?  We sometimes forget that we are engaged in education every time we lead the congregation in prayer or in the Lord’s Supper or in any other occasion of public worship.  Unfortunately, people often learn things when they worship that we may not have intended - but they still learn.

Public worship is always an invitation to the individual to risk communion, to move out from oneself into the larger body…

We are not simply choosing songs, we are forming people. Conviction and comfort is the work of the Holy Spirit, but the Holy Spirit will often work through the people of God to voice that conviction or comfort. We must be attentive to the voice of the Spirit in our preparation as well as in our leading. We must choose songs that enable…

The line between work and worship, between the everyday, pedestrian details of the workaday world and the world within the liturgy should be a thin and frequently broken line.

When we see the liturgy and gathering as the people of God as more than something we do once a week, but something we inhabit - something which inhabits us - we are beginning to invite the conviction and comfort of the Holy Spirit more fully into the rhythms of our lives.

Karl Barth says: ‘It is not only in worship that the community is edified and edifies itself.  But it is here first that this continuously takes place.  And if it does not take place here, it does not take place anywhere.’ If the community does not worship, it is not a Christian community.  If worship does not upbuild and sustain the community, it is not Christian worship.

The liturgy is ‘the work of the people,’ it is the action, the yearning, the heartbreak, and the outstretched hands of those who are gathered around the Table and the action, the yearning, the heartbreak, and outstretched hands of the God who deems to meet them in the flesh.