Divine Prompts
The stilling of “creaturely activity,” as the patriarchs of the inner life called it, is not something to be confined to formal worship services, but is a life-style. It is to permeate the daily fabric of our lives. We are to live in a perpetual, inward, listening silence so that God is the source of our words and actions.
If we are accustomed to carrying out the business of our lives in human strength and wisdom, we will do the same in gathered worship. If, however, we have cultivated the habit of allowing every conversation, every business transaction to be divinely prompted, that same sensitivity will flow into public worship. Francois Fenelon writes, “Happy the soul which by a sincere self-renunciation, holds itself ceaselessly in the hands of its Creator, ready to do everything which he wishes; which never stops saying to itself a hundred times a day ‘Lord, what wouldst thou that I should do?'”
Does that sound impossible? The only reason we believe it to be far beyond us is that we do not understand Jesus as our present Teacher…(more on this next week). – Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline
We sing songs that can help us on our journeys to proclaim our God as merciful Master of our lives. Our service will start with asking God to help us to “tune my heart to sing Thy grace.” This applies to both our corporate and personal times of worship through the week.
In the middle we will spend some time recognizing our weakness and our Lord’s strength: “If Thou iniquities dost mark, our secret sins and misdeeds dark, oh who could stand before Thee?” This song helps us to come before the Lord with humble and contrite hearts which our Lord does not despise.
Our last song will be “How Great Thou Art” which is my all time favorite hymn in the sense that it walks us through different aspects of our life teaching us to say, “Oh Lord, my God, when I in awesome wonder…” If we can use that as a prompt into whatever we do, then we will begin to learn what it means to live into the worship of our Lord.
Check out the rest of the music and Scriptures at restorationmusic.wordpress.com, and take some time to listen to the playlist to meditate on the things that we will join in proclaiming corporately. See you soon!
