True Liberty

Author: Robert Cleveland

  • Moving Toward Truer Worship

    Coming back to worshipping in Spirit and in Truth, I’ve been reflecting on how I find it difficult to worship corporately, unless I’m playing an instrument or singing hymns. While I’ve joined the praise team at my church, outside of playing the guitar, I wouldn’t attend our contemporary service unless I was needed in the tech booth.

    Playing the guitar, I can focus on the chords and the rhythm, and sometimes when I’m ‘in the zone,’ it may actually feel like real praise & worship. It’s not really about my emotions and feelings, but how do I differentiate that (emotions & feelings) from the Holy Spirit moving?

    Years ago, when I was younger & more foolish, I was feeling out what “being a Christian” was all about. Through friends and family, I was exposed to a variety of worship styles via various denominations: Presbyterian, Catholic, Methodist, Baptist, non-denominational. These carried with them not only a variety of praise & worship styles, but different ways of praying, different liturgies in services, and different sermon styles.

    Taking all of this in, I started to copy the styles I liked the best. These usually ended up being the ones that played best with peoples’ emotions.

    Prayers that were dramatic, wordy, and delivered enthusiastically were smiled upon, sometimes even congratulated with a comment of “good prayer!”

    I started turning into that thing that Jesus warned against: “When you pray, don’t be like the hypocrites who love to pray publicly on street corners and in the synagogues where everyone can see them. I tell you the truth, that is all the reward they will ever get,” (Matt. 6:5).

    When I was in college and was working with the youth group at my church, our youth minister had a worship leader come to work with our praise band.

    As he described how to craft a set to start off upbeat, then settle, then build up in such a was as to stir peoples’ emotions, the whole experience seemed less like worship and more like emotional manipulation.

    This led me to wonder: how many times that I’d felt that I was worshipping in Spirit and Truth had just been a response to emotional manipulation by a savvy worship leader? If I feel the Spirit is moving me, is He truly, regardless of whether my emotions are being manipulated by a well-crafted worship set?

    Since being convicted of my manipulative ways, I’ve changed how I do things. I don’t like to pray publicly, and if I do, I try to keep it sincere, brief, and to the point. My most passionate prayers stay inside my own head or, if said aloud, are spoken when no one else is around.

    When I’m playing with the praise team, I’m not crafting the worship sets. My focus is on doing my best for the congregation, so they might experience something that feels beyond my grasp.

    These days, the times when I feel closest to worshipping in Spirit and in Truth happen when I’m by myself, practicing songs and becoming familiar enough with them that I can get comfortable enough to open my heart to Him.

    When I’m in front of the congregation, I’m there to serve. I take my cues from the worship director, and hope I play well enough that my mistakes don’t throw the congregation off.

    Recently, at a church retreat, I was playing for the first couple of our sessions, but not for all of them. Standing and singing would have felt wrong and fake to me, but sitting and silently praying for the congregation felt right.

    For me, worshipping in Spirit and Truth is a journey: finding ways to serve others, pushing myself to feel compassion, hoping and praying that God will continue to turn my heart of stone into a heart of flesh.

  • In Spirit And In Truth

    How do we “worship the Father in spirit and in truth?” According to Jesus’ words to the Samaritan woman at the well, “The Father is looking for those who will worship Him in that way,” (John 4:21-24 NLT).

    Perhaps the ultimate (earthly) example comes from 2 Samuel 6, when David dances as they bring the Ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem, yet David’s dancing is just the culmination of what is an interesting, and a bit bizarre, chain of events.

    David had just secured his kingdom, built his palace in Jerusalem, and won a major victory over the Philistines. David then brought his elite troops to get the Ark and take it to Jerusalem.

    2 Samuel 6:5 states that “David and all the people of Israel were celebrating before the Lord, singing songs and playing all kinds of musical instruments…” What isn’t totally clear here is whether the people were “celebrating before the Lord” in that the Ark is built to be God’s earthly throne, and they were literally celebrating in front of it, or if they were celebrating the Lord before His earthly throne.

    For the previous twenty years, the Ark had been kept in the home of Abinadab. Not much is said about Abinadab in the Biblical text (at least not this one, there are several Abinadabs in the Old Testament), other than that he lived on a hill in Kiriath Jearim, thought to be a town 8 to 10 miles from Jerusalem. Josephus said that he was a Levite by birth, and a righteous man, which is why the Ark was entrusted to him.

    It was Abinadab’s sons, Uzzah and Ahio, who escort the Ark, which leads to a tough incident.

    “But when they arrived at the threshing floor of Nacon, the oxen stumbled, and Uzzah reached out his hand and steadied the Ark of God. Then the Lord’s anger was aroused against Uzzah, and God struck him dead because of this. So Uzzah died right there beside the Ark of God,” (2 Samuel 6:6-7 NLT)

    A threshing floor likely would have had some grain left around, a distraction for oxen pulling any cart, but this cart was carrying the Ark of God. Uzzah, with good intentions, touched the Ark to prevent it from falling, and died for it.

    David reacts with anger and fear, and understandably so: he thought he was doing the right thing, and a man died.

    Perhaps David was convicted, having one of Abinadab’s sons die from God’s wrath because he was moving the Ark while celebrating his own victories.

    Perhaps it was guilt, having put those so familiar with the Ark, having helped their father care for it for the past 20 years, in charge of escorting it. Those most familiar with the Ark are the ones more likely to have made such a mistake, even (or especially) if well-intentioned.

    Regardless, David, in his fear, takes the Ark to the home of Obed-edom, and returns to Jerusalem.

    At this point, 1 Chronicles 15 takes up a more detailed account. David prepares, building a tabernacle (a special tent) for it. He commands that only the Levites (priests) may carry the Ark, and he ordered the priests to purify themselves in preparation to move the Ark.

    Then, David and the people celebrated God, dancing, playing music, and offering sacrifices.

    In David’s first attempt to move the Ark, he brought soldiers, not priests. While Uzzah and Ahio may have been of the Levitical line, they had not gone through the rituals to purify themselves before guiding the Ark…and according to the account in 1 Chronicles, David didn’t have a place to put the Ark, except in the palace he had just built for himself.

    In the second attempt, David brought priests who were fully prepared, with a tent prepared to receive the Ark (likely built to the specifications defined in Old Testament law), and the celebrations were undoubtedly about God, not the king and his victories.

    So what does this mean for us, and how do we worship “in spirit and in truth?”

    First, prepare yourself.

    While modern Christians don’t follow Old Testament rules or rituals for purification, we should at least be prepared before going into worship.

    While the services at my church include a prayer of confession, true confession and repentance should come well before mid-way through the church service. We should be confessing and asking for forgiveness before we even leave for church.

    We need to make ourselves right with God in order to engage in true worship – it’s not optional, it’s a requirement so we can enter worship with the Spirit of the living God, not our own guilt and shame.

    Second, keep God as the main thing.

    Worshipping in spirit and in truth isn’t about who sings the loudest or the best, who holds their hands up the highest, moves the most, or even who feels it most deeply.

    True worship isn’t about us. Even if we look foolish in the eyes of others sometimes, we should offer our worship to God as the Spirit leads us. I’m not endorsing nudity at church, but we shouldn’t be so self-conscious that we don’t let the Spirit lead us for fear of embarrassment.

    Worship isn’t about us, it’s about God.

  • Fusing Politics and Faith

    Over the past week, I’ve seen and listened to various responses to the murder of Charlie Kirk. What happened was and is horrific, and there is a lot about the way Americans are responding that is concerning.

    I didn’t follow his work, but most of what I’d heard about Mr. Kirk cast him as a good person, a man of faith, and primarily as someone who promoted and engaged in civil political discussions & debate. Usually when I would hear something from Charlie Kirk, it was a particularly (or seemingly) divisive or bombastic sound bite, which is never a good basis upon which to measure someone’s character or opinions. The impression I get looking at his positions now in hindsight, he seems to have been a rather mainstream Republican, of the “religious Right” stripe.

    Many times over the past few days, I’ve heard commentators, usually on the religious Right, describe Charlie Kirk as a “martyr,” and I have to wonder: a martyr to what?

    This is where I think that many American Christians need to step back and take stock: In too many ways, politics has become the majority religion in the United States, even among Christians.

    When American evangelical Christianity was co-opted into “the Religious Right” (and perhaps before, though for practical purposes this is an effective starting point), well-meaning American Christians have increasingly wrapped up their political beliefs with their religious beliefs, and vice-versa.

    Over time, this has led to what is commonly called the “culture war,” the ongoing Christian vs. Secular battle over how government laws and policies reinforce or discourage our society’s increasingly different social norms. This is compounded by the fact that so many parts of our society that used to be ministries of the Church, such as health care, education, and charity, are now regulated by, or just taken over by the government. Under this religion of politics, differing political opinions aren’t just opinions, they’re blasphemy. This is why we feel more divided than ever before.

    But while some of the specific issues are new, this is an age-old struggle that Christians should have some familiarity with, provided they’ve studied the Old Testament.

    Ancient Israel, wanting to be like the nations surrounding them (which was exactly counter to what God intended for them), decided that they wanted a king. While the kingdom brought them material prosperity for a time, it also led to their eventual downfall – the kingdom split, and the sin that had previously been a matter of individual people soon became government policy, first infecting one kingdom, then the other.

    Both kingdoms eventually became so inundated with their sins that God sent heathen kings to destroy their kingdoms and scatter the people.

    The problem that we, as Christians, face by enmeshing our religious and political beliefs is in putting political victories ahead of spiritual victories. We make the government into our idol, while convincing ourselves that we’re doing the Lord’s work. As every election feels more important than the last, the more American Christians seem to be looking for political saviors, drawing focus away from our True Savior.

    Which would God value more: a public policy win that brings the laws of the U.S. more into line with his laws, or winning the hearts of the lost to Him?

    One thing that Charlie Kirk did well was engaging with people on a personal level, but his organization, Turning Points USA, is primarily political. Even the ‘faith’ element of the organization is about getting churches to engage in politics. So what was he martyred for?

    I will use myself as an example: in my youth, I voted for George W. Bush for president because I believed he would be a more moral leader than President Clinton – a more Christ-like figurehead for our nation. And yet, under his leadership, his administration lied to start a war in Iraq, leading to the deaths of somewhere around a million people, and set up an off-shore torture prison, where they held and tortured multiple innocent people. He may not have been engaging in extramarital affairs, but that didn’t make him an example of Christ-like leadership.

    Was it his faith, or his political positions? Was he martyred for God, or for his political affiliation?

    My fear is that the Republican elephant is becoming our modern iteration of the golden calf.

    Politics breeds divisiveness, and the world is increasingly obsessed with politics. Modern Christians have the same calling as the ancient Israelites: to be different, set apart.

    “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will.” (Romans 12:2)

    “Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.” (Colossians 3:1-2)

    The murder of Charlie Kirk was a tragedy, and I pray for his family, especially his daughters who will now have to grow up without their father. I pray also for the church, that we would keep God as our priority, and not let political battles mar our witness to a world that needs Christ now more than ever.

  • Live With Boldness

    Recently, I’ve been reading through the book of Luke. In Chapter 9 of Luke, Jesus starts to shift his ministry – or, at least, he tries to. He’s trying to move away from direct ministry – himself leading the show, teaching and performing miracles – and he tries to push his disciples to take more of a leadership role. This is a struggle. While he sends his disciples out on a ‘mission trip’ to teach and perform miracles in the surrounding towns, the passage doesn’t really say how successful the disciples are – just that they went out, and then returned.

    Where they struggle shows up more concretely after they come back. Jesus empowered them to perform miracles, such as healing diseases and casting out demons. But when they get back to Jesus and they’re telling Him about what happened on their journeys, a crowd of people finds them. Jesus teaches the people for some time, and as evening comes the disciples tell Jesus it might be time to send them away, so they can find food and lodging in the surrounding towns.

    Late in the afternoon the twelve disciples came to him and said, “Send the crowds away to the nearby villages and farms, so they can find food and lodging for the night. There is nothing to eat here in this remote place.”

    But Jesus said, “You feed them.”
    -Luke 9:12-13

    The disciples’ reaction is interesting, condidering that they have just come back from journeys where they’ve presumably been healing the sick, casting out demons, and preaching the Kingdom of God to the people:

     

    “But we have only five loaves of bread and two fish,” they answered. “Or are you expecting us to go and buy enough food for this whole crowd?” For there were about 5,000 men there.

    -Luke 9:13-14 (NLT)

    The disciples have the power to perform miracles, and Jesus clearly expects them to step up and show Him what they have learned.

    This is a moment of Truth for the twelve.

    And they fail.

    Looking at the crowd, they likely were overwhelmed. There were around 5,000 men in this crowd of people, along with who knows how many women and children. This is a huge crowd; who knows if the surrounding towns could have even supported feeding all of these people!

    Maybe they were intimidated by such a situation. The prospect of feeding that many people would have been intimidating, to say the least, and under these circumstances the disciples take a worldly approach, rather than factoring in the divine power Jesus had just handed over to them mere days ago.

    How often do we see this in our own lives? Do we even know? Jesus commanded his disciples to go out and make more disciples, and we, as part of that chain of discipleship, are empowered through the Holy Spirit to, at the very least, reach out and teach others about the Kingdom of God. Do we do this effectively? Do we do it at all?

    Or do we, like the disciples, allow circumstances to intimidate us into timidity?

    Jesus called his disciples to boldness, not timidity.

    “For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline.”

    2 Timothy 1:7 (NLT)