Posts Tagged ‘humility’

Humble Confidence and the Bottomless Pit

// September 20th, 2009 // 3 Comments » // Christian Living

A pastor’s life is a trip from extreme to extreme, from glowing praise to vitriolic criticism with very little in between.  I thought I didn’t care what people thought of me.  If God is for me, right?

Come to find out, I do care what people think.  I want people to like me, I like how it makes me feel.

Nobody sets out to care more about what people think than what God thinks.  Nobody wakes up one morning and says, “Hey, I think I’ll let other people define me today.”  Yet, one of the most difficult things to avoid in life is the gaping pitfall of living for the approval of others instead of the approval of Jesus.  It’s deeply satisfying to be appreciated.  It’s also deeply painful being misunderstood.  It touches a need in all of us to be known.  Not only to be known, but to be known and approved of.

The problem is, this need is bottomless.  Fathomless.  You can plumb the depths of it all your life and still never feel as though you’ve been filled.  You can please everyone, perform impeccably, never let anyone down, yet still you will feel the need to gather just one more enamored fan to yourself.

Recently I’ve lost some fans.  In the process of trying to please God, I displeased others.  Amazingly enough, I’ve survived it.

This need in all of us is a bottomless pit that only Jesus can fill.  Only your Creator can tell you what you’re worth.  No one else gets to vote.  Not you.  Not anyone.  The One that made you, determined your shape and your future, also determines your value.  Your value is dependent on Him, not on you.

I think once we see this, once we learn to love Him and fear Him , we can begin to live freely.  Only then can we cut away the shackles of futile attempts to fill the bottomless pit.

We can take risks without fearing the mess it always makes.

We can speak without fearing the inevitable pain of being misunderstood.

We can commit to change without fearing the blowback.

We can be both humble and confident at the same time.

Worship, Brokenness and the Roar of Church Mice

// May 6th, 2009 // 4 Comments » // Christian Living

I had a peculiar experience today in a worship service.  First, there was a normal worship set with music played by a competent band with a competent worship leader through a more than competent audio system into a room with competent acoustics.  The music was “right”.  The sound was “right”.  The lighting was “right”.  The worship leader led strongly without getting in the way.  Nobody in the band seemed overly concerned with performing but genuinely wanted to help aid us in worshiping Jesus.  I have no criticisms at all.

What was peculiar to me was what happened at the end.  The set ended, the lights went out, the band mostly left the stage, and a large group of men came up on the stage.  It was a choir made up of about 15 or so men from a local Teen Challenge camp.  In case you don’t know, Teen Challenge is a Christ-centered drug rehab program begun by David Wilkerson many years ago.  This choir was primarily made up of men who are former drug addicts.

It doesn't have to be loud to be fierce.

They sang one song.  I don’t remember the song.  I do remember the worship. And that one song, sung by those broken men, blew me away.  Spiritually speaking, there is a peculiar “sound” to the worship that comes from people who know what it means to be broken.  People who have a deep sense of the magnitude of the debt that was paid for them.  It’s the sound of worship that is not self-seeking, self-exalting or self-aware.  It is Christ-seeking, Christ-exalting, and Christ-aware.  It’s raw and it’s real.

This moment today took me back to the days when I was volunteering years ago in a similar ministry in Britain.  I remember the first time I worshiped while standing in the middle of a crowd of broken men singing to Jesus at the top of their lungs.  It sounded different than any worship I had heard up until that moment and my concept of what worship is changed right there.

I knew right in that moment that the quality of worship for me would never again be measured by what it looks like, how competent it seems, how bold or strong it is, or how loud it is sung (if sung at all).

I spoke to a young man this week who worships much the same way, only he’s quiet and often overlooked by the competent people.  I felt inspired by God to tell him,

“You may think your life and worship is like the squeaking of a church mouse, but in heaven it is like the roaring of a lion.”

I don’t hear the “lion’s roar” often enough.  Either it’s not there like it should be, or I’m not listening. I think the Church needs to make room for the squeaking church mice, and the broken ones.  I think if we don’t, we will soon forget what unsynthesized and unsanitized worship sounds like.