created to love Him...

Where are the priests today? Not the pious men holding a position of power in a religious establishment. Where are the priests that are talked about in Numbers 1:49-53? The people, set apart by God, who are "appointed over the tabernacle of testimony (verse 50)." The PEOPLE...not the hierachical PERSON. God set apart an entire tribe of Israel to have one mission - to care for the tabernacle or the tent of meeting.  The tent of meeting was the place where a person could meet God. The Levites were entrusted with the care of this tabernacle, this tent, this housing place for the presence of God.  They were instructed to carry this tent of meeting on their shoulders wherever God led them. When the cloud moved, the tent of meeting moved with it and all of Israel followed. When the cloud stopped, the tent of meeting stopped and all of Israel camped around it. The tabernacle was the intersection between humanity and God and the priests were the guarders of this intersection.  Wh...

 I am in a constant state of being challenged by thankfulness. I'm challenged by my lack of it and I'm challenged by the raw power of it. I'm challenged by how quickly thankfulness humbles me and slaughters my pride and stubborn heart. I'm challenged by how God's love language is a thankful heart. It must be. Thankfulness is the only thing I find in Scripture that is the doorway to His presence, His nearness. Thankfulness makes RIGHT NOW a sanctuary for God. It's an invitation to the Almighty One to enter this present moment...wait for it...and now this present moment. It's a glorious intrigue that pulls Him to invade my very thoughts, circumstances, failures, blue skies and dreams. Thankfulness is powerful enough to stop despair in its tracks and replace it with peace and joy and newness. Too often I spend my thought-life thinking and chasing after the future. I'm driven to experience the next best thing or even at times to wish this season away for the...

 I find purpose in many of the roles my life holds but sometimes those roles also make me a feel a loss of identity. This week has felt like that. There are so many demands on my life as a wife, a mother, a friend, someone working in church ministry. I love all of these roles. I'm passionate about them. And yet I also at times find myself wondering if all of those roles were removed, would I still hold value if I wasn't producing or accomplishing? I know when my head goes down this rabbit trail of lies that I need more time in the face of the Father to be reminded of my truest identity. I need a reminder of the importance of worship.  It's too easy to think of ourselves as tools either for other people, or also in God's Kingdom. I've even prayed this at times: Lord, use me as a tool to ________________.  But today I was reading a book (posted below) that really challenged my heart and my mindset. The author asked these questions:  "Do you want to be used by you...

  (Taken from, "How to Worship a King," by Zach Neese) What is worship? The word itself - worship - is a smaller form of the Old English word, worthship , and it literally means to give something worth or value, especially to a deity or god. That's easy enough to remember. We " worthship " God by communicating and demonstrating His value.  Demonstrating value costs something. To value something, we have to put a price on it. That is why worship is so often partnered with sacrifice. We make a sacrifice only for something or someone that is important to us, something valuable.  Worship is sacrifice. The first mention of the worship in the Bible is in Genesis 22:5 when Abraham is bringing his son Isaac up to the mountain to offer him as a sacrifice to God. Abraham told his servants, "Stay here with the donkey. The boy and I will go over there and worship and then return to you."  WORSHIP??? What he really means is, "I will offer God the greatest sacr...

  Praise will be my breakthrough. My song will be my triumph. Worship is my warfare. My victory is in You, Jesus, my victory is in You.   This week I heard some news about a loved one that is really hard and has an unknown outcome. My mind feels wobbly, going back and forth between faith and fear. I've learned that right in the middle of the unknown, that uneasy, uncomfortable place is the best moment to worship. It's so simple and easy to worship when all is sunny. This is no sacrifice on my part. It's when my moments feel unsure, unsafe, disappointing, painful, etc. that worship becomes a sacrifice of praise.  I've been thinking about King David this morning. When he was a young boy, Samuel the prophet came to him and anointed him to be king of Israel. In between this moment and the actual coronation was the unknown process God used to prepare David for the palace. Many years passed before David was crowned. In fact, so many circumstances during this time of waiting l...

Exodus 33:18 And Moses said, “Please show me Your glory.” Show Me Your glory. We sing this phrase in multiple worship songs these days. We cry out for God's glory to fall in a room. What are we asking for, really? I always want to get past the language of Christianese, which the church is full of, and make sure I understand what I'm speaking or singing...like, when we pray for a "hedge of protection" around people. Tim Hawkins, a Christian comedian, has ruined this Christianese phrase for me. A hedge? Really? Is that the best we can pray for is a shrub??? Why not a stone wall or a mountain pass? What if the devil has hedge trimmers?? OH BOY! But, I digress! What is God's glory? AND, I find it interesting that Moses, who witnessed the most of God's amazing wonders in all of the Old Testament, is the one asking this. Hasn't Moses witnessed enough? What more is there? WHAT DID MOSES EXPERIENCE WITH GOD BEFORE ASKING TO SEE HIS GLORY??? *The audible voic...

 "Sing joyfully to the Lord, you righteous; it is beautiful for the upright to praise Him. Praise the Lord with the harp; make music to Him on the ten-stringed lyre. SING TO HIM A NEW SONG; play skillfully and shout for joy!"                            ~Psalm 33:1-3 For 33 years while King David ruled over Israel and Judah, he had a tent pitched to house the Ark of the Covenant, which represented God's presence in Israel. It was a place of worship, prayer, repentance, atonement, rejoicing and lamenting. David, being a musician himself, constructed the instruments that were to be used in the tent (1 Chronicles 23:5) by 4,000 musicians from the tribe of Levi. Under the instruction of 3 chief worship leaders (Asaph, Heman and Jeduthan), these musicians were to use these instruments and their voices to prophesy throughout the tent (1 Chronicles 25:1 & 6).  This was David's understanding of worship....

 Our object of worship is, of course, God. He's the Father, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. That is the One who we worship.  The One of whom it says in the Bible that He, "dwells in light unapproachable whom no man can see or has seen or can see and live" (1 Timothy 6:16, Exodus 33:20). It says that God is holy, eternal, omniscient, omnipotent and sovereign and that He has a thousand more sovereign characteristics. Any or all of these should regularly bring us to our knees in humility and awe. When writing about this sovereignty of God, A.W. Tozer says, "I cannot accept with sympathy the ideas that we go to church to soothe ourselves and calm our spirts. We do calm our spirits and there is a soothing effect in worship, but the primary object of church attendance is not to relax - it is to offer worship, which belongs to God."  David sees this God incarnated in Psalm 45 - a figure that is radiantly beautiful, romantic. Some of ...

 I rarely have time to read these days. The moment I sit down the children have radar that goes off in the core of their being telling them to come find me or wake up from their nap. That is THE moment they must have a snack..."Mom's reading??? That must mean I'm hungry!!!" Even the dog thinks that when I sit down, it MUST be because I want to play with her...and here she comes with her stuffed bunny, tail wagging with expectation. SO, I've taken up listening to audio books as an attempt to keep my brain working beyond the level of board books and Disney drama! Although, some of those board books can be pretty profound! This morning I was listening to 1 Kings while making breakfast and going about our morning routines. It was good for me to be reminded of these historical stories, some that I'd forgotten about and felt fresh. As I listened to chapter after chapter, over and over again I heard, "_________ did what was right to the Lord," or "____...

  "The surrendered heart has no more controversy with God." AW Tozer Tozer is one of my favorite worship theologians, hands down. When I read Tozer I feel like the Holy Spirit lovingly takes a 2X4 and continually whacks me in the face with it. For me, this is fun, healing, cleansing...is that weird?! Tozer brings me back to square one, the foundation. I feel like when I read his books on worship, any peripheral thoughts and tangents on worship that don't belong get swept away and I'm returned to a pure & simplistic understanding and practice of what it means to be a worshiper of Jesus.  I have long understood that worship cannot be separated from obedience to God. Our modern culture and sadly, much of the modern Western church does not teach this. Worship has become a time segment of ritual emotional song singing that leaves us unchanged, yet feeling pretty good about ourSELVES. It lacks reverence, awe and has created a current generation of people who casually ap...