So we stayed at the church all day today and that means that I was not able to split today into part one and part two. What this means is that I have to synthesize all of the information from today and put it to words in a length that people will want to read.

Here goes.

The morning began with a worship set led by a young worship pastor and his team from Sovereign Fellowship Church in Pennsylvania. They were excellent in musicianship and theology, but ultimately human. The worship leader started a song in the wrong key and had to start over, after having realized that playing a F# over a G is not conducive to corporate worship (or much of anything else). He was humble about the whole thing and started the song over, but only after Bob Kauflin got up to use this as a demonstration of the Spirit’s power in our worship services even when we do not maintain the elusive “flow” that worship leaders crave. It was a great reminder that God is sovereign over our chord changes, and that we must take our mistakes lightly and God seriously.

The speaker for the morning was Christian Counselor and Author David Powlison, who is one of the most Biblically insightful people I have ever encountered. The title of his message was “Enduring Trials with the Psalmist”, in which, he brought our attention to the fact that when Jesus said that the Psalms were about Himself, He was, in part, identifying with all of the sufferings and hardships that are found there. This means that whenever the Psalms talk about suffering, Jesus experienced that very thing so that we could identify with him, and when the Psalmist asks of God “Why have you forsaken me?” Jesus bore those words to the full so that we would not have to experience God’s perfect wrath. He led us through Psalm 28, reminding worship leaders to remember the “minor key” topics of suffering and trials, as well as to embrace the rich complexity of human emotions within the corporate context.

I was able to attend two great seminars today. The first of which was entitled “growing your team for the glory of God”. In this seminar we were challenged from the book of Philippians to model, teach, require and honor three things with our teams: Humility, Servanthood, and a Passion for the Savior. This was such an encouragement as well as a great challenge to develop these things in not only my team, but myself as well. This was a sure highlight of the whole week.

The second seminar was one entitled “Pursuing and Embracing Spontaneity in Corporate Worship”. This was very helpful in outlining some foundational principles for being led by the Spirit in a Biblical and responsible way. Biblical because they emphasized the need for sound Doctrine when evaluating any spontaneous element in a worship service, and responsible because they, likewise, stressed the fact that God honors our careful planning and laziness is not the same as faith that God will move.

If you ever find yourself at Il Biscotti Italian restaurant, don’t eat the salmon. It’s terrible.

It is going to be extremely hard to describe tonight’s main session. The night was titled “Praising God with the Psalmist but there was no formal sermon, instead there was a combination of corporate singing and principles by which we are to evaluate our worship experience. The principles or questions were:

What do we do with our bodies?

Here we explored the different ways that the Psalms describe our outward expressions such as bowing down, lifting hands, dancing and shouting. It was not done rigidly, like “okay everybody time for the raise your hands songs.” instead we were encouraged to sacrifice our comfort to explore the ways that we are encouraged to worship God physically in scripture.

What do we do with our minds?

We must engage our minds in the truths of scripture as we sing, if not we are simply going through the motions, which God hates. This time included a call and response in which Bob would sing the sections of Psalm 100 and we would the respond to these words with our own song to God. It was amazing and effective in drawing our attention to God and His saving work in our lives

What do we do with our trials?

We then explored the theme of trials within the Psalms and how we must recognize these realities and cast our cares upon the Lord. We also, as a group, took part in prayers for healing over those with chronic physical afflictions. This a little odd for me, but I spent the time reflecting on God’s promise to heal, in this life or the next, and I trust that He answered these prayers in His steadfast love.

What do we do with evil?

We were joined once again by David Powlison during this section to explain to us the nature of “imprecatory Psalms” (or Psalms that in which the writer asks the Lord to destroy evil and those who practice it). He taught us how to engage these Psalms with a right attitude, and with the understanding that God will destroy all evil in the day of Judgement. May that day come swiftly.

As a side note, during my time in the word this evening I was moved to tears in John 16:21 when Jesus says this:

When a woman is giving birth, she has sorrow because her hour has come, but when she has delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world.

God brought me to think of all those who have not seen the light of day because of the evil of the selfish pride that is carried out in abortion. He gave me a chance to pray for the destruction of all evil and the return of His Son quickly.

He who testifies to these things says, “Surely I am coming soon.”Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!

Revelation 22:20

May He come quickly!

the wrap up approaches

Grace and Peace