Thomas Kelly writes: “A quickening Presence pervades us, breaking down some part of the special privacy and isolation of our individual lives and blending our spirits within a superindividual Life and Power.  An objective, dynamic Presence enfolds us all, nourishes our souls, speaks glad, unutterable comfort with us, and quickens us in depths that had before been slumbering.”

As we reflect on David’s rejoicing with the congregation at the return of the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem, we too will engage in praising the LORD our God with combined voices.  We’ll be starting our service with a new song called “The Lord Almighty Reigns.”  It may cause some people to act “undignified” (i.e. clap : ) ).  Here are the lyrics and a link to the site where you can preview all the Scripture readings and music that we’ll be singing this Sunday.

Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah
The Lord Reigns
Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah
The Lord Almighty Reigns

He has shown His awesome power
He has triumphed mightily
He’s the victor over darkness and the grave
He has broken chains that bound us
He has set the prisoner free
And by His own great mercy we are saved!

restorationmusic.wordpress.com

I have added a continuous “rough sketch” playlist of the nine songs we will be singing to the site if you would like to take a listen and engage more fully with the music for tomorrow.

Our goals were straightforward—introduce the girls to the love of Christ, give them a safe, familial environment where they could develop meaningful relationships, and provide them with valuable skills that would enable them to be self-sufficient. God has been very faithful to these girls. They have all come to know the Lord. Each has developed confidence and a relational aptitude that will serve as a valuable foundation for the rest of their lives. And each girl is either developing vocational skills or pursuing higher education! Praise God for their personal and spiritual growth and for their promising futures!

To support these girls, Restoration worked with World Orphans and two local Moldovan partners. As a congregation, we set out to partner with this ministry for three years, and then scale back as our Moldovan partners developed the ability to sustain the project on their own. They have recently managed to get funding from other sources (mainly their denomination) and so we are no longer going to be supporting the home financially.

Please continue to pray for the girls regularly and we will post updates as we hear from them from time to time. Restoration will remain open to supporting the project on an as-needed basis. Thank you all for your interest and ongoing care for the project and the girls. As mentioned in the beginning, God has done a great work in the lives of these girls, and for that we can celebrate. We are content to know that care for the girls will continue – and are grateful to be part of a global body of Christ!

Jesse Blaine

Here is a practical handle to put on this idea.  Live throughout the week as an heir of the kingdom, listening for his voice, obeying his word.  Since you have heard his voice throughout the week, you know that you will hear his voice as you gather for public worship.  Enter the service ten minutes early.  Lift your heart in adoration to the King of glory.  Contemplate his majesty, glory, and tenderness as revealed in Jesus Christ.  Picture the marvelous vision that Isaiah had of the Lord “high and lifted up” or the magnificent revelation that John had of Christ with eyes “like a flame of fire” and voice “like the sound of many waters” (Isa. 6; Rev. 1).  Invite the real Presence to be manifest.

Next, lift into the light of Christ the pastor and other worship leaders.  Picture the Shekinah of God’s radiance surrounding them.  Inwardly release them to speak the truth boldly in the power of the Lord.

When people begin to enter the room, glance around until you see someone who needs your intercessory work.  Perhaps their shoulders are drooped or they seem a bit sad.  Lift them into the glorious, refreshing light of his Presence.  See the burden tumbling from their shoulders as it did from Pilgrim’s in Bunyan’s allegory.  Hold them as a special intention throughout the service.  If only a few in any given congregation will do this, it will deepen the worship experience of all.

My encouragement to you is to take the spirit of this concept and make it your own.  What is God calling you to do?  It might not look exactly like Foster wrote it.  It might look friendlier.  You may even go over to the sad person, introduce yourself, and tell them that you are happy they are there.  This is a time when people in the body of Christ fulfill more of what makes them who they are.  Both exercising and receiving this practice can help David to be more fully David, Cindy more fully Cindy, and Adam more fully Adam.

I’m looking forward to spending time with you this Sunday as we focus on what it might look like to abide in the Lord as wait on and in him.  Check out the readings and the music at restorationmusic.wordpress.com .

We decided it was important to let Roman know what he looked like – that he was using his anger to hide something very serious.  His brain started to churn, his whole face softened, and our little boy started to cry – not his typical whiny attention-getting cry.  But his face transformed beautifully into this humble and contrite sorrow.  Tears trickled down his face, and he let himself experience the grief of his own sin.  He finally saw his sin for what it really was.

“To see who the Lord is brings us to confession.  When Isaiah caught sight of the glory of God he cried, ‘Woe is me!  For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!’ (Isa. 6:5).  The pervasive sinfulness of human beings becomes evident when contrasted with the radiant holiness of God.  Our fickleness becomes apparent once we see God’s faithfulness.  To understand his grace is to understand our guilt…(in worship) we see the Lord of hosts ‘high and lifted up,’ ponder his infinite wisdom and knowledge, wonder at his unfathomable mercy and love.” – (Richard Foster from Spirit of the Disciplines)

This week we will sing:

Thy mercy is more than a match for my heart
Which wonders to feel its own hardness depart
Dissolved by Thy goodness I fall to the ground
And weep to the praise of the mercy I’ve found

I encourage you to make time sometime between now and Sunday morning service to have some extended confession.  I use Psalm 51.  I read the first three verses, take a long time to reflect and ask God to reveal my sinfulness, and continue with “For I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me.”  But then we reach the part in verse 8 when David writes, “May the bones that you have broken rejoice!”  His mercy is so good and worth rejoicing about; and we can only experience it when we look at who God is, look at our sin, and realize how far we are from perfection.  Our God has “steadfast love” and “abundant mercy.”  Hallelujah!

Feel free to use http://restorationmusic.wordpress.com/ to help you prep for Sunday.  I have been receiving a lot of good feedback from those who are engaging with this site.  Take a look!

Worship is our response to the overtures of love from the heart of the Father. Its central reality is found “in spirit and truth.”  It is kindled within us only when the Spirit of God touches our human spirit.  Forms and rituals do not produce worship, nor does the disuse of forms and rituals.  We can use all the right techniques and methods, we can have the best possible liturgy, but we have not worshiped the Lord until Spirit touches spirit…Until God touches and frees our spirit we cannot enter this realm.  Singing, praying, praising all may lead to worship, but worship is more than any of them.  Our spirit must be ignited by the divine fire.

To say that forms are secondary is not to say that they are irrelevant.  As long as we are finite human beings we must have forms.  We must have “wineskins” that will embody our experience of worship .  But the forms are not the worship; they only lead us into the worship.  We are free in Christ to use whatever forms will enhance our worship, and if any form hinders us from experiencing the living Christ – too bad for them.

It is my prayer and my hope that we at Restoration use the tools (as Foster says – forms and liturgies) around us to engage with the reigning Christ that our sights may be Kingdom oriented thus God-glorifying.  This Sunday we will sing “Jesus Shall Reign Where’er the Sun” with a chorus added by the band Enfield.  Here is one of the verses we will sing followed by the new chorus:

Where He displays His healing power,
Death and the curse are known no more.
In Him the tribes of Adam boast
More blessings than their father lost.

He shall reign in glory, crowned in grace and might.
Bless His name and praise our sov’reign King
He shall reign forever with His chosen Bride,
And all the Earth shall sing that Jesus is the King!

Amen!  For the sake of the body, spend some time before Sunday’s service to reflect on what it means for Arlington that our risen Christ Reigns.

The other Scriptures and songs can be found at the restorationmusic website.  Prepare yourselves to gather and proclaim his Kingdom together this Sunday!

We all have much to learn concerning the worship of our Lord, so fortunately God gave us some incredible people who have walked before us.  So without further ado, Richard Foster:

To worship is to experience Reality, to touch Life.  It is to know, to feel, to experience the resurrected Christ in the midst of the gathered community.  It is a breaking into the Shekinah of God, or better yet, being invaded by the Shekinah of God.*

Brother Lawrence knew the same reality.  Because he experienced the presence of God in the kitchen, he knew he would meet God in the Mass as well.  He writes, “I cannot imagine how religious persons can live satisfied without the practice of the Presence of God”  Those who have once tasted the Shekinah of God in daily experience can never again live satisfied without “the practice of the presence of God.”

Catching the vision from Brother Lawrence and Frank Laubach, I dedicated one whole year to learning how to live with a perpetual openness to Jesus as my present Teacher.  I determined to learn his vocabulary: is he addressing me through those singing birds or that sad face?  I sought to allow him to move through every action: my fingers while writing, my voice while speaking.  My desire was to punctuate each minute with inward whisperings of adoration, praise, and thanksgiving.  Often I failed for hours, even days at a time.  But each time I cam back and tried again.  That year did many things for me, but it especially heightened my sense of expectancy in public worship.  After all, he had graciously spoken to me in dozens of little ways throughout the week; he will certainly speak to me here as well.  In addition, I found it increasingly easier to distinguish his voice from the blare of everyday life.”

My hope for you, my friends at Restoration, is that the practice of the presence of God will stir your hearts like it did with the travelers on the road to Emmaeus so that on Sunday when we join together at the Lord’s table to celebrate his death and resurrection (Luke 24:13-35), we can join in one voice proclaiming, “O! Happy Day…Jesus washed my sins away!”  The link below has the Scripture readings and the music for Sunday to help you prepare your hearts.  Well, I’m off to go look at a tree to see what God wants to teach me through it (Thanks, Ramsey).

restorationmusic.wordpress.com

*” ‘ Shekinah’ means the glory or the radiance of God dwelling in the midst of his people.  It denotes the immediate Presence of God as opposed to a God who is abstract or aloof.”

(Excerpts from the chapter on worship in “Celebration of Discipline”)

An intervarsity group at the University of Marlyand has been inviting speakers to come to their large group and speak on the different disciplines found in Richard Foster’s book Celebration of Disciplines.  A friend asked me if I would come and speak on the discipline of worship, so I reread the chapter on worship.  And I was blown away by how Richard Foster managed to pack these seventeen pages with the most incredible, practical, Biblical information on worship that I have read from any author written within the past 50 years.  As I read, I was comforted in two ways: 1. I haven’t been making this stuff up.  2. I was graciously and Biblically corrected concerning some of my mistaken perceptions concerning worship.  Thanks, Foster.

I hope over the next months to regularly share a snippet or two from this chapter of Foster’s book in order to help us grow in our journey to understand what it means in Romans 12:1 to “offer your bodies as living and holy sacrifices to the Lord, this is your spiritual worship.”  This time, I am going to share one important perspective and one practical tool to help you prepare for corporate worship.

“A striking feature of worship in the Bible is that people gathered in what we could only call a ‘ holy expectancy.’  They believed they would actually hear the Kol Yahweh, the voice of God.”

“Find ways to really prepare for the gathered experience of worship.  Prepare on Saturday night by going to bed early, by having an inward experience of examination and confession, by going over the hymns and Scripture passages that will be used on Sunday, by gathering early before the actual worship service and filling the room with the presence of God, by letting go of inner distractions so that you can really participate.”

I desire to give you the tools to practice this each week.  I will have the Scriptures and songs posted at restorationmusic.wordpress.com by the Thursday before we actually use them for corporate worship.  Click on the link and bookmark it.  I will send out weekly reminders via the blog with more thoughts from Richard Foster and other worshippers of Jesus.  If you use this tool to prep yourselves individually for corporate worship, join the congregation at the Sunday service with your heart prepared and expectant, and review/study what was talked about with your small group, your relationship with Jesus will grow more than you may ever have expected was possible.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

“Roxanne”

Context: Hosea was ordered to marry a prostitute as a symbol of God’s relationship with Israel (Hosea 1:1).  Yahweh uses writers in both the old and new testaments to constantly call us (the adulterers) back to him.

Roxanne
You don’t have to put on the red light
Those days are over
You don’t have to sell your body to the night
Roxanne
You don’t have to wear that dress tonight
Walk the streets for money
You don’t care if it’s wrong or if it’s right

Roxanne
You don’t have to put on the red light

I loved you since I knew you
I wouldn’t talk down to you
I have to tell you just how I feel
I won’t share you with another boy
I know my mind is made up
So put away your makeup
Told you once I won’t tell you again
It’s a bad way

Tim Keller says in his book The Meaning of Marriage that the gospel is this: “We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope.” His desires for us are so much better than our own (Jeremiah 29:11).

“All Creatures”

I believe Josh Garrels to be prophetic in many of his lyrics. This song is especially powerful, and it reminds us that we don’t have to settle for anything less than God’s plans for us through his Son Jesus Christ our Lord.  Be blessed by this.  (It goes quickly, you’ll probably need to read along.)

All creatures of our God and King
Lift up your voice and let us sing
O praise Him! O praise Him!
Alleluia.

Creation sent to me the centipede
To witness the complexity
Of one hundred legs that were moving unexpectedly
Ironically, just as they were meant to be
They’re fearfully and wonderfully made
An organism prays in circadian rhythms
The sun will rise, and the sun will set
The sun will rise again so lift up your head
This is life, not a static object preserved and displayed
Like a relic of the dead
You are not a fruitless tree with a rootless disease
Growin’ in a bucket in a rich man’s home
Next to the TV, tamed and alone
Learnin’ to lust for the things you don’t own
Like an armchair warrior who’s been dethroned
Declawed and fixed
Fightin’ for your life with unattended slit wrists

Don’t let your name get intermingled with a number
Cause it’s time to awaken from the devilish slumber
And freely follow the forerunner to the Fatherland
And rally ‘round the Renaissance man
And the wisdom of His ways
And all the work of His hands
Catch come as catch can
Concentrating on the good words of the Son of Man
The plan is to withstand the demands of a confused oppressor
A wolf in sheep’s clothes with monotonous lectures
And questionable gestures
Unequal measures
Cultural pressures
And synthetic textures
Force fed instead of the most beautiful architecture
Of our long lost, forgotten origins
Earth, seed, fiber and the blood of my kin
And that old rock where we confessed our sins

Oh, my God, fellow man, and this great land
They all cry out for full restoration
And this will take patience
And this will take the tribes and tongues of all the nations
And all of creation groans in anticipation
Waitin’ for the Son of God to be manifest
And I can feel it burnin’ in my chest
The liberation for the oppressed
And it’s beautiful like the feet that bring good news
It’s beautiful like this freedom tune
It’s beautiful like the power to choose, to change
Beautiful like the long awaited rain
Beautiful like the healing pains
Beautiful like to holy flames
Coming down

All creatures of our God and King
Lift up your voice and let us sing
O praise Him! O Praise Him!
Alleluia

This song is literally my alarm clock every morning, and I pray that its truths can stir our hearts to the worship of God day in and day out.

Shalom

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