The Intimacy of Worship

Guys give love to get sex.
Girls give sex to get love.

These are basic relational truths. Hear me out before you behead me for heresy, but we enact this in our worship.

God created us for worship. He does not need us; we hardly benefit Him by our lives, but when, in our free will, we seek his heart - we fulfill our purpose. He longs for our love. And when we worship, we offer intimacy. We come vulnerable, uncovering all we are, laying all at his feet in an expression of passionate love. One of the most stunning accounts of this is the anointing of Jesus:

 "Then Mary took a pound of ointment of spikenard, very precious, and poured it at Jesus's feet, and wiped his feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the ointment." The onlookers protested, saying the extravagant gift was a waste and should have been sold to provide money to the poor. "But Jesus said to them, "Why do you trouble the woman? For she has done a beautiful thing to me." (John 12:3, Matt. 26:10)

True worship is a breathtaking act of intimacy with God, and "the Father seeketh such to worship Him." (John 4:23). God enters this act with a foundation of committed love. In the hand he extends there is a scar that testifies to his passion. His grace. His sacrifice. He offers everything and then asks for our intimacy.

How often do we struggle through the week, fail on the weekend, and rush to church to make it barely in time for the last couple of songs? We find our seats and whisper hushed helloes, then snap to attention in "worship" mode. We sing and we raise our hands, and we wonder why God doesn't meet with us.
We just withheld our affection but rushed into the bedroom and demanded sex. And it is revolting to God.

"When you come to appear before Me, who asks this of you - this trampling of my courts? Stop bringing useless offerings. Your incense is detestable to me...I hate your New Moons and prescribed festivals [traditions and shows], they have become a burden to me; I am tired of putting up with them. When you lift up your hands in prayer, I will refuse to look at you; even if you offer countless prayers, I will not listen." (Isaiah 1:12-15).

Like a man forcing himself on a woman, pushing for the sex he wants without regard to the love she craves, we ask God to meet with us in intimacy but we do not offer our committed love. To his glory, He is gracious. But such "worship" makes Him sick.

How much more precious to bring Him our pound of ointment, our two small coins - an offering that bears the scar of our passion, the marks of sacrifice - and to have Jesus say of us, "She has done a beautiful thing to me," "she out of her poverty hath done all that she can." And it is there, surrounded by love, that He meets us.

Dream a Little Dream

A dream is a fragile thing. Its first feelers are tentative, searching for solidity. Then the taproots go down, and it starts to reach further for water and grow taller toward the warmth of the sun. A little sprout bursts out of the earth in fervent hope, and as the rain falls it grows, stronger and sturdier. And finally, it blooms--a beautiful thing to behold.

Why are we scared to dream?
Is it the fear of failure?
Or the fear of success?

I was born dreaming. My mind was the safest place I knew--an immediate retreat from embarassment, boredom, or fear. An unwelcome worry would push its way into my thoughts, and as a little girl I knew simply to push back. A worry would pop in and I would slip into another world, a world where I already was who I wanted to be.
Then one day, I heard an enlightened grown-up say that socially inhibited or lonely children were more apt to daydream (and talk to themselves, go figure. I didn't do that, except when I was writing stories in my mind and acting out all the parts myself). Daydreaming, they said, was escapism: a way to put off reality.

"Well, of course it is," I thought. "Silly grown-ups. I figured that out all by myself."

I liked my escape. But the words nettled, and I didn't want to be "socially inhibited" when I grew up (it sounded like some awful illness). And so we all learn not to dream, to plant our feet firmly on reality.

Reality in itself is not so bad. The only problem with living there is that eventually you will hit a wall, and it is the wall called "impossible." Reality's limits and boundaries are there to be explored, but they pen in the adventurous soul. The dreamer wants to get up higher, to mount the impossible wall and use it to gain a better view. The limits are there not to show him where the road ends, but where it begins.

In the end, perhaps Reality is safer. One need not fear falling if he never tries to climb. He will be accepted by his fellow man, content to brush shoulders with all instead of looking down on any. He might even gain the sweeping compliment of being a "well-grounded individual." His life will be "safe--expedient--and thin." The dreamer certainly has risk. He might not reach his goal, and the disappointment then is certainly deep.Emerson says he can expect to be misunderstood. His friends may term him "moonstruck" while his enemies use "mad." But then there's the chance--the slim, vibrant, fighting chance--that he might end up where he wanted to be. A tamer of his lions, a catcher of his stars. A dreamer.

So don't be afraid, friend. Reach deep. Climb high. Start again. And always, always, DREAM.

The Regular Plan

I have not seen Sony's new movie, How do You Know, but I was drawn in by the trailer. Reese Witherspoon's character; Lisa, finds her career at its end and her heart unignited as she reaches her thirties, and she pensively reflects that "Most girls plan to meet a guy, fall in love, have a baby...but I don't know if I have what it takes for everybody's regular plan."
I wanted to curl up on the couch next to Lisa, squeeze her shoulder, and say, "I know how you feel, honey."

"I don't know if I have what it takes for everybody's regular plan."

As I add another page of broken relationships to my dossier, I wonder if I have what it takes for everybody's regular plan. One well-intentioned friend told me that easy, shallow relationships seemed inherent to my personality. Another told me I was "created to love and be loved," and couldn't go for long without. I remember one of my guy friends nicknaming me "heartbreaker." I laughed at the time, but now the memory stings. Do I really not have what it takes for the love of a lifetime?
Perhaps I don't. But I believe with all of my heart in a love that "alters not with its brief hours and weeks, but bears it out--even to the edge of doom" (Shakespeare). A love built of two lives pointing toward God, "forsaking all others, as long as they both shall live." And I'm waiting for it...and dreaming...and learning from the one who perfected it. And "in this is his love made perfect, that a man lay down his life for another."

They say that the best way to detect a counterfeit is to know the real thing...so until my perfect love shows up, I will be memorizing His example.

 And then--even if I don't have what it takes for everybody's regular plan--I'll be okay. Thank God He has his own plans...plans to give me a future and a hope.

Refining Fire

You know when a long string of messages and passages all seem to say the same thing? It crosses your mind that maybe God is trying to get your attention on something. It had been a month like that for me, when message after message seemed to repeat the same refrain:

trust His purposes.

In sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer, Blessed be the name of the Lord. In many aspects of my life I felt surrounded by a loving sovereign God. But I had been grappling with the question, “why?” Why would God ask me to walk through the hurt and the disappointed hopes of a painful, incurable disease? I looked for meaning but I knew only confusion and a lingering sense of betrayal. Didn’t His promises say that He would work all things together for good to those that loved Him? His grace was sufficient, as He promised, but the ongoing battles were grueling and I searched for meaning in a situation that felt senseless.

And then, there it was…that long string of messages and passages that all seemed to repeat: trust His purposes. One message rebuked my heart for the assumption that God owed me anything, even a healthy body. Job expresses a true humility in Job 1:21 “And said, Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” I’m privileged just to be here; God owes me nothing and everything from his hand is a gift of grace.

There is one thing that I have clung to and fervently believed through the most desperate moments…and that is that God never, ever wastes a hurt. The heat that overwhelms us, purifies us…refining fire. God knows in our arrogance we think we can walk in our own strength, but only in our weakness is his strength made perfect. When we are emptied of our resources and our last-ditch efforts have failed, then God moves: that the world may see and know that

“by his hand He hath done this.”

But even as I trust God to use my pain to make much of Him, I struggle to keep hope. Tonight the pain, and the fear, and the hurt of dashed dreams seeks to consume me. I cry His promises back to Him in desperation, “Hide me under the shadow of your wings,” “you will never leave me, nor forsake me,” “your grace is sufficient for me,” “when my heart is overwhelmed, lead me to the Rock that is higher than I…” and as I reach for his Word He silences my storm. Paul’s pen scratches across the first chapter of I Peter, and tonight he is writing only to me.
…Now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations: That the trial of your faith, being much more than gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ: Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory: Receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls.

And Job whispers through the peace after his pain, “I had heard of You with my ears, Lord…but now…now my eyes have seen You.”


God, if the only purpose in my pain is to draw me to your heart, then give me more. I need you more than I need anything else. You alone are hope and the promise for tomorrow. I will rest in you, and you will carry me. Pull me to your side, and let me know you in the fellowship of your sufferings and the compassion of your heart. I will trust you through the fire.