Here are some that I mastered:

The Sitting Slouch with Elevated Foot – this effectively communicates that I’m a chill individual with an authoritative presence seeing the world as my footstool

The Wall Lean w/ a touch of Shoulder Shrug and Pocketed Hands – this communicates that the building will fall if I move, shrugged shoulders boost the size of my upper body, and hidden hands most inconspicuously keep me from accidentally picking my nose in front of a pretty girl

The Two-Handed Thinker – this is a sitting position as inspired by “the Thinker” with slight modification of elbows on knees and hands folded with chin resting on double thumbs giving off a sense of intense focus and potential ability to pounce if it, for some emergency, needed to happen.

Many of us spend much of our lives communicating our thoughts and attitudes through our posture. Sometimes, our posture actually dictates the way we desire ourselves to respond. If I get pulled over by a police officer because I ran a stop sign, my initial response is to give him “The Sitting Slouch with Elevated Foot.” But because I know this attitude is not appropriate, I do the “Sit up Straight w/ Hands on the Wheel” posture. My attitude changes, and my exchange with the officer ends up glorifying God much more than it would have.

Our posture before God is no different other than the fact that God knows our hearts. Sometimes for me, my posture is that much more important because God knows my heart, and my posture often guides my heart into the place it should be. Let’s look at one posture that pops up again and again in Scripture and some of the different contexts in which it occurs: the “Hand Raise.”

Nehemiah 8:6 – “And Ezra blessed the LORD, the great God, and all the people answered, “Amen, Amen,” lifting up their hands. And they bowed their heads and worshiped the LORD with their faces to the ground.”

Psalm 28:2 – “Hear the voice of my pleas for mercy, when I cry to you for help, when I lift up my hands toward your most holy sanctuary”

Lamentations 2:19 – “Arise, cry out in the night, at the beginning of the night watches! Pour out your heart like water before the presence of the Lord! Lift your hands to him for the lives of your children, who faint for hunger at the head of every street.”

Hebrews 12:11-12 – “For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees…”

“Hands Raised” is a posture that can show our desire for the one who saves us much like my one year old daughter Selah raises her hands to me when she desires to escape the torment of her big brother Roman. It is also a posture of strength and comfort knowing that God is with us like when I arrive home and Selah’s first response is to raise her hands and say, “Daddy!”

When we gather to worship God (typically a small percentage of the week), I want to encourage us to take our posture seriously as it will often guide our hearts and minds (even basic yoga classes have figured this out). A friend told me this week that within the context of our relationship with Christ, we ought to be taking more risks. I agree, and I think our posture during our worship gatherings is a small, biblical risk that we can take which will draw our hearts closer to his.

I encourage you to spend some time asking God what he desires from your posture this week during both your personal and our corporate times of worship.

restorationmusic.wordpress.com

When Chris Tomlin wrote “Come Let us Worship” he may have been thinking the same thing.  Sheep?  In transferring some of Psalm 95 into a modern song, he avoided the “sheep” part.  It is true that few of us can literally relate to a shepherding culture, but in taking the image out, I realized something major was missing.   He had replaced the metaphor with “We will never be forsaken,” but the metaphor goes deeper.

A few other sheep metaphors from Scripture:

“ ‘Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture!’ declares the Lord.” – Jeremiah 23:1

 “I will rescue my flock; they shall no longer be a prey. “ – Ezekiel 34:22a

 “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.” – John 10:27

 “Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” – Matthew 10:16

I especially love the passage from John.  “They know my voice, and they follow me.”  Wow!  I want to be a sheep!  I want to know his voice, I want to be protected, I want to be sent!

A mentor of mine recently mentioned that we shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss Scripture’s images for ones that “I can relate to.”  If we take the time to attempt to understand and digest the images within Scripture, metaphors like “sheep” can bring us to a more glorious understanding of God’s intended relationship with us while allowing for the mystery of the many things surrounding this image which we have yet to grasp.  Wow… Sheep!

For more, feel free to go to www.biblegateway.com and type in “sheep.”  Browse through the different passages that use the sheep metaphor.  If you want a preview to Sunday’s set of music go to restorationmusic.wordpress.com .  You’ll notice that I put the “sheep” part back in the song.

What metaphors have impacted you in understanding yet still beholding the mystery of God?

Art is such an honor to receive/experience.  We can see the world through the eyes of others so that one of two things could possibly happen: either we connect with the art because there is something in our experience that we have in common with the artist, or if we struggle connecting with it we can ask God to give us insight into the mind of the artist thereby opening up our eyes to something newer, broader, and possibly more beautiful than we could have originally see.

With this in mind, I invite you to experience some of the art created by Wendell Kimbrough at the Atlas Theater in DC on Nov. 18th.  Wendell is a gifted musician and artist who has led music at Restoration in the past and will be leading again at the eleven o’clock service on New Year’s Day.  Two songs (Home and Little Birds) are available for downloading on hisFacebook page.  He will have two other talented performers from NOVA joining him, and he has worked hard to make this something that families can attend.

Since Erin gave us an incredible visual resource that uses beauty to point us to our Father in Heaven, I thought I’d extend to you Wendell’s invitation to join him in doing the same through music.  All the information is below:

Wendell Kimbrough CD Release w/Andy Zipf & Justin Trawick
Atlas Performing ARts Center, 1333 H St. NE, DC
Friday, Nov. 18, 7:30 pm
Tickets & more info: http://tinyurl.com/6gkzljb 

I hope to see you there!

If you would like the music preview for Sunday, check out restorationmusic.wordpress.com .

“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you, Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.  You are my friends if you do what I command you.  No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.” – Jesus (John 15:12-15)

We have lost this ideal of friendship.  The way we use words is so important…and can anyone think of the most common way “friend” is used today?  (pause to consider)  Many of you may have come to the same conclusion as I have – go to Facebook and press a few buttons: Friend Requests, Find Friends, 30 Mutual Friends, See What Your Friends are up to Right Now, Close Friends, Friends on Chat…the list goes on.  Beyond this we hear phrases like “friends with benefits” pumping through the media or people who use the word sarcastically in place of an expletive: “Thanks for cutting me off, f#r@i*e%n#d!”  What kind of usage is that?  Are these examples of mutual submission?

I’ve realized that, based upon the Jesus ideal, I make a pretty terrible friend.  Love, submission, and awareness are not the first words that come to mind when I think of my role in my friendships.  Yet Jesus is the perfect example of someone who lives out what true friendship means.  After some reflection on Jesus’ example, I was resinging the last verse of “O Sacred Head Now Wounded” and the song “I love you, I need you, though my world may fall I’ll never let You go.  My Savior, my closest friend, I will worship you until the very end” flooded into my heart and mind.

He is not my closest friend by anything that I could have done to impress him, yet he has chosen to be my closest friend on his part.  His actions and character make him the one most suited to be my closest friend.  We need him.  And it is my prayer that even when my world falls that I will never let him go.  If I do, I have given up the best friend that I could ever have.

For a preview of the music for Sunday, feel free to go to restorationmusic.wordpress.com.

Our Savior is Lord of all, and he has great things in store for his cities, his countries, his people. “He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap.” (Psalm 113:7) He desires for his people to follow him to hold his Kingdom above all others. It is in this place that true justice and mercy are not seen as conflicting ideals. When Jesus came he said, “the time is fulfilled, the Kingdom of God is at hand! Repent and believe in the gospel!” (Mark 1:15) And what followed was miracle upon miracle upon miracle. Read it! Sickness healed. Demons cast out. Lives turned to beauty (on Kingdom terms). When Jesus is Lord of a city, things are different.

At Restoration, we believe that the gospel changes everything, and I hunger to see Jesus’s people forsaking what is considered proper and appropriate in this world and turn to live into the beautiful Kingdom that Jesus has designed us for. “Lord, I want more of You. Living water rain down on me. Lord, I need more of You. Living breath of life come fill me up.” We are so hungry for Jesus. But much like smoking stifles the appetite and anorexia replaces sustenance with vain appearance, we are truly a people (a city) starving for God. Jesus says, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.” (John 6:35) “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28) For there is no one like our God. There is no one like You, God.

(If you desire to see the rest of the set list to help prep yourself for Sunday feel free to visit http://restorationmusic.wordpress.com/ .)

“God made men and women in His own image to be the priests of creation and to express on behalf of all creatures the praises of God, so that through human lips the heavens might declare the glory of God.”

Whoa!!  James B. Torrance paints a really cool picture of our humanly purpose.  Similar to the Westminster Confession, Torrance’s theology holds broad and high our expression of worship…and I love the way Torrance responds to our inability to worship God:

“Jesus comes to be the priest of creation to do for us, men and women, what we failed to do, to offer to the Father the worship and the praise we failed to offer, to glorify God by a life of perfect love and obedience, to be the one true servant of the Lord.  In him and through him we are renewed by the Spirit in the image of God and in the worship of God in a life of shared communion.”

Be encouraged today that the Spirit groans on our behalf – that our communion with the Father and each other is in the hands of Jesus.  Let the grace that has been given to us by the power of the Spirit move us toward perfect love and obedience – things that God desires even more than sacrifices.

This stuff is blowing my mind…

(excerpts from Worship, Community and the Triune God of Grace by James B. Torrance)

A university friend of mine named Jeremy ran into a problem while pastoring a few college students: “We were all hanging around the bonfire, and one of the guys pulled out a guitar because people wanted to sing praise songs, but nobody could think of any songs they knew the words to, so we started singing DC Talk, which eventually led to Taylor Swift.”

While I definitely have no issue with singing pop songs around a bonfire, I sympathize with my friend’s dilemma.  His church sang beautiful, theologically robust songs on Sunday; but the Church had a difficult time bringing those songs with them outside the church doors.

My friend asked, “What things are we trying to accomplish in music that don’t get fully accomplished through preaching, prayer, offering, etc.?”  Implicitly he was asking why we aren’t singing songs that contain singable tunes, theological truths, and memorable lyrics that can sustain us through the week.

While I believe that music has many purposes for the church, I believe that one of them is to take God’s truth with us so that at a moment’s notice when we are feeling hostility at home or in our work environment or if we are gathered around a bonfire, we can be sustained by truth and united in our worship through song.

This Sunday we will be singing “A Shield About Me” from Psalm 3.  I would consider it an ideal “bonfire song.”  What other songs would you recommend as simple songs that are beautiful to sing, full of truth, and simple enough to remember at a moment’s notice?

- Matthew Hoppe

Last Thursday, some friends invited me to attend a Halaqua, essentially a Muslim small group. Watching the six eloquently clothed professionals begin our time with the call to prayer, the adhan, was profound.  They stood, bowed at the waist, kneeled, and finally bowed prostrate. Throughout these various postures, they quietly prayed allah o -aqubar (God is the greatest) or reciting texts from the Qur’an, or silently added their own requests. Many Muslims, I’m told, pray in this fashion five times a day. As I watched, I thought, that’s devotion.

Listening to Dr. Hollinger’s sermon on Mary Magdalene’s act of devotion, one woman pouring out perfume on Jesus feet, made me think more on what devotion looks like. Sitting on one of Restoration luxurious pews -packed next to Reade Bush- I began to wonder how do can I tell what I’m devoted to? How do you get your hands around what my heart is poured out for, like the alabaster perfume? Devotion is more than a preference, more than choosing to order a half-caff coffee. If I’m devoted to you, I’m fully engaged, fully committed, I fully believe in you, and I’m willing to demonstrate that through words, actions, time, money – anything I possibly can to show you the extent of my emotion.

Who are you devoted to? As I listened to a podcast by Tim Keller on the Prodigal Sons, I realized I’m really devoted and focused mostly on, well, me. Oh I think I’m devoted to my parents.  I’m not married, but I’m devoted to my friends, when it suits. But when I use the metric of this woman who breaks her treasure over Jesus feet, and wastes, wastes a year of her time, sweat, and money of a few minutes for Jesus, I wonder how devoted I am to God. I mean, a year?! That’s devotion.

If I could flip a switch and have my heart fully devoted to Jesus, I would. But that’s not how the heart works. There’s something the daily decisions to follow Jesus, to kneel sometimes, or choose to give up 30 minutes to walk alone, or writing a letter to Jesus that slowly puts my desire for devotion into physical reality. Martin Luther wrote about his difficulty in prayer, in practicing his devotions to God, which I found comforting. In a letter to his barber in 1581, Luther suggested a period of “warming up the heart” before reading scripture. Evidently bodily posture was helpful in achieving this end, “Kneel down or stand up with folded hands and eyes toward the sky…. A good prayer need not be long or drawn out, but rather it should be frequent and ardent.” Placing myself in the posture that I want my heart to feel, kneeling, or arms outstretch, slowly shifts my heart in that same direction too.

So what are you devoted to?

What does your devotion look like?

Close your eyes for a minute and think about Advent … What do you see? Hear? Smell?

Did images flash into your mind of a stable, a baby…. laughing, parties, gifts, cinnamon, candles, singing… carols… neighbors…. joy… community … a message of peace and hope and life and love and grace incarnate?

Those are all right answers — so hooray! You have hereby been selected to be part of the Restoration Carolers! This Sunday, December 12, turn up at the church at 3:15 pm and you will be personally allocated to one of two caroling teams. (See there is even a sporting, competitive edge to all of this!)

• Team R will go to Sunrise Assisted Living Home where they will sing and make merry with the 40 elderly residents. Young, old, children, babies and anyone who may also love to be involved in a developing relationship in 2011 with these dear people will be in this team, which will be led by our very own Matthew Hoppe on guitar.
• Team C will sing in the streets around the church. These are the people whose homes we have prayed over and whose driveways we have shoveled (and blocked from time to time).  A small group of industrious kitchen elves are going to be making delicious sugar cookies on Saturday (email liz@restorationarlington.org if you want to help) that we will then give to the neighbors as we sing the Good News over their streets. This team is going to be led by the great and glorious Brent Cochran – also on guitar. This team needs LOTS of people.

PLEASE come – we want to make a joyful noise that will be heard all over Arlington. Bring your kids, neighbors, grandmothers and friends. Bring warm hearts and loud voices (tunefulness not essential). If you have instruments which can handle the cold, bring those. Let’s make a LOUD and JOYFUL NOISE! Don’t think, ‘Oh, others will do it.’ Come and be part of the Restoration Community getting out there. It will be great fun!

ANY questions? Email Liz on liz@restorationarlington.org