I was thinking about worship today—Weird since I’m a worship leader right?!  Yeah, every once in a while I think about the topic instead of just singing it.  The biblical principal that I was considering was that we are to have no other God’s before him.  We Christians, if we have been believers for more than a day, probably are quite clear that Worship of God is the reason that we exist—The familiar Westminster Catechism: the chief end of man is to glorify God. 

However, I think we do a funny thing.  We think that we can demonstrate this “worshiping God first” idea in a list.  My life consists of:

Family

Friends

Work

School

countrywide home loans

Grande Vanilla Mocha’s

Hobbies

Entertainment

Etc.

And then we insert “GOD!!!” in an exclaimed fashion at the top of the list and say, “Done!  I have put God first.”  Pure silliness really!  That’s not how it works, come’ on.  God doesn’t even want to be on the list.  He is the list my friends!  We should scribble out the list and right “JESUS” right over the entire thing in huge letters, right? 

Remember the parables that Jesus taught?  A man finds a Pearl and sells everything to buy it.  A man finds a field with treasure and he sells everything and buys it.  That’s worship!  What you are willing to give up in order to gain something determines how much you value the thing you’re gaining.

We tend to think more in terms of spoken or asserted values and less in terms of demonstrated values.  Since I say that God is the most important thing in my life it doesn’t matter that I sin my brains out and don’t do anything for the Kingdom of God.  God is the most important thing to me and what I do doesn’t matter.  Craziness!!!

Instead of Loving the Lord completely with no other God’s before him we think, I will love all my other God’s less.  Friends, loving your idols less is not the idea.  True worship is taking every aspect of your life—each item on that list—and letting God purge it unless it can be devoted to the Glory of God.  That is worship!  Everything for him!  “And whatever you do, in word or in deed, do all for the Glory of God.”  It is a challenge. 

Here’s the thing to think about.  What thing in your life (and mine) would you not give up in order to live for Jesus?  Whatever that thing is or those things are, it is that which you actually worship most.

That is back breaking conviction in my life!  That is why we need the Grace of Jesus Christ, is it not?  Jesus modeled it first.  He came and gave everything to purchase us to himself by the cross.  It is only by having the power of his life in us that we stand a chance at surmounting the pull of the crazy amount of idols that vie for our worship. Hudson Taylor, the great missionary of the 1800’s in China, said, “He is no fool who gives up that which he cannot keep in order to gain that which he cannot loose.”

Anyway, that was my thought.  Any thoughts?                               

Chaddick-

Hi Again!  Where has the time gone since my last post?!  I hope you all had a good Memorial Day weekend.  Mine was pretty great—fun times with family and friends with a little tasty food and drink mixed in.  I am kinda swamped with stuff right now.  I have put some school stuff on the back burner and—apparently—now it’s burning me a little. 

It’s cool though; it’s coming along.  The recent addition of the Calvary Chapel Auburn Wednesday night service has been a nice mid-week addition to my worship leading schedule—good, God worshiping, Jesus loving people out there. 

I have been listening to a bunch of Reality LA messages, by Pastor Tim Chaddick via Podcast.  He yells a lot and teaches the Gospel in pretty much every breath—It’s awesome (similar to Mark South).  I am just about finished with all the messages that he has preached in the last 3 years.  I will write a summary if you would like—just kidding!  Actually I could summarize right now.  Every message is something to the extent of:

          You suck!  But Jesus is Awesome!!  You’ve De-Godded God, but he loves you anyway!  Can I please preach for 3 hours!  Quit worshiping stuff!!  It’s not about You!  It’s about Jesus!!!  Martin Loyd Jones says “…(insert really great quote here)”!  The Gospel!!!  Grace!!!  …But Stop Sinning!!!  REPENT!!!  Worship Jesus!!!  England, and preachers from England are Awesome!  Pray like Crazy!  Live a Gospel centered life by the Spirit.  (Sick of these !!! sorry, you can’t quote Chaddick without an exclamation after every line)  Transubstantiation… seriously!?!  Jesus died once for all time!  I suck and I know it!  But my wife is hot!!  Preach the WORD!!!  Get rid of your moralizm and live for Jesus!  World War II analogies are the best!  Get a Job, get married, and enjoy her naked!  Live a Spirit lead life… and do it while you’re washing the dishes too!!!  Don’t find time for your neighbor!  Make Time!  Did I mention You suck and need Jesus!!!

Yeah, that’s pretty much the idea.  If I were summarizing a typical pastor it would go something like: I love email forwards.  Email forwards are great.  God wants you to be happy.  

…And I’m sure I wouldn’t bother.  But like I mentioned, I have gotten a wee bit behind on some homework, so I’m going to get to that.  I hope that things are going well for you.  I will be posting more regularly this week so stay posted.  What did you do for Memorial Day?

I Guess I haven’t been to the Mall in a while but I just saw this today.  Pretty excited.  No more driving to Sacramento for the Genius Bar.  Hope they open soon!  We are totally anxious.  Any other Mac people in the house?

Something sad happened.  But something cool happened first.  But this post is sad.  

Last Friday, before Mother’s Day, at the Club Retro gig, there was a huge garage sale that was being set up for Saturday.  My wife found the coolest bookshelf-hutch-thingy that was all distressed and old and awesome.  It was pretty legit—even I thought it was pretty great, and I don’t usually get excited about furniture.  She wanted it!  They were selling it for $80.00, which seems like a ton for a garage sale but it was totally worth it.

The problem was, they wouldn’t sell it to her until Saturday.  We weren’t going to be around on Saturday so she was seriously bummed.  (That’s not the sad part.  It actually gets better before it get sad).  After she told me they wouldn’t sell it to her, I got excited because I like challenges and so I set off to try to talk someone into selling it to her. 

So!  I found out that the garage sale was in association with Club Retro and, I thought, sweet, I have an “in.”  I tracked down Steve and asked if he could pull some strings.  He said that he wasn’t sure but he would try.  Sure enough, he came through for me.  He talked to the guy that was running the sale and got him to agree to sell it to me.  I bought it for my wife for Mother’s Day and I was the biggest hero ever.  She jumped up and down and giggled and all that fun stuff.  It was a good moment. 

Are you ready for the sad part? 

I was driving down the road yesterday afternoon; my phone rang and there was some guy on the other end of the line:  

Some Guy:  Hi.  You bought a hutch from us the other day at the garage sale at Club Retro

Me:  Oh yeah.  What’s going on? 

Some Guy:  Well there was some sort of mix up.  The hutch that you bought belonged to a lady that was storing it in one of our rooms and it wasn’t supposed to be sold.  It’s a family piece and she was hoping we could track it down and get it back for her.

Me:  … (speechless)…

Some Guy:  Hello?

Me:  Serious?

Some Guy:  Yeah, if you want to talk to the lady I will give you her number so you can….

Me:  No, it’s cool.  I believe you. 

Some Guy:  we feel so bad but we would be happy to give you your money back plus 20 bucks.  And we could come pick it up too.

Me:  Listen, I understand, these things happen.  My wife is going to be devastated but… (Celestial calls on the other line)… hey can you give me a call back in 20 minutes and i will get you my information.

Some Guy:  OK… no problem.  Sorry again.

Now, there was a little more to the conversation than that—and obviously it’s not verbatim because I don’t record my phone conversations and I’m not a  savant—but that was the gist.  They came and picked it up last night.      

So that’s that.  Pretty lame huh?  What would you do?  You pretty much have to give it back right?  It was someone’s family piece.  Any thoughts?

My poor wife was so sad about it!  If anyone has a one-of-a-kind distressed hutch that’s really ridiculously amazing then… can I have it?  Please?  I need my “wonderful-husband” points back.

I keep running into a certain line that Christians keep using, “I really need to find time to serve my community.”  And yeah we do, but we need to ask a different question.

Lets just be honest, we don’t find time to do anything, we MAKE it.  Because it actually doesn’t exist!  If your life is anything like most then you won’t look through your schedule and all of a sudden find time.  “Oh my gosh!  Time!  I found it!  Thursday the fifth between 3:06 and 3:27 would be perfect for loving my neighbor!”  Nah-ah!  It’s just not going to happen that way because all of us are too busy for that.  We don’t have blank spots in our calendar.

The job that you and I have as the followers of Christ is to be on mission for the gospel wherever we are.  What that means is that we have to be intentional about making and creating opportunities to know and love the people around us.  We have to see the place that we live as the mission field that God has brought us to and then orient our lives around that. 

We usually do it the other way around.  We work and strive to build our lives with education, careers, families, and silly hobbies and stuff, and then we try to fit God into it.  We need to flip that don’t we?  When we make a desire to glorify God primary, we build our lives around that. 

So, the better question to ask is, how can I make time?  And lest you feel preached at, don’t.  I am pretty much talking straight to myself; but if you are feeling it too than great, we can work on it together.  

Sunday was a fine Mother’s Day.  Here’s what we sang:  (note…  I don’t know any Mother’s Day Songs)   

Bayside

Everlasting God—Brenton Brown

Cannons—Phil Wickham

Hosanna—Brooke Faser/Hillsong United

All Because of Jesus—Steve Fee

Mighty To Save—Reuben Morgan

Origin

Everlasting God—Brenton Brown

Cannons—Phil Wickham

Mighty To Save—Reuben Morgan

How Great is Our God—Chris Tomlin

I don’t know if you were able to make it out to the Club Retro gig on Friday, but I have to break the bad news: If you didn’t make it, you missed out.  And I’m not saying that because you missed my performance—that would be pretty arrogant and lame—it’s because it was a legit night, and the crowd was massive! 

The band line up was so great!  Now, I have to be honest, I only was able to catch 1 or 2 songs from each band, but that was enough to leave me pretty impressed.  Celestial had a photo shoot to get to after I got done with my set so I hung out with my babies for the remainder of the evening.

It was funny; I left to get food for Avonlea, Avery and myself, and when we got back to the show… they were asleep.  I wasn’t going to carry a 3 year old and a 6 year old through a venue, and even less likely to wake them—that is never good!  Luckily there was a door around back by the band entrance that I was able to keep open.  I listened to Josiah’s portion of the show from my car—with my kids asleep in the back seat.  Parenting requires that you get a little creative folks!  Someday I think I’m going to write a book:  1000 Ways To Still Do Stuff When You Have Kids.  Its kind of a survival guide of sorts.          

Good times right!?  And yes, the portion of the show when I played was good as well.  There were tons of people crammed into that little place (300-500) and they all seemed really excited.  My prayer is that Jesus was seen through my set that night more than me.

So, I know it was a while ago now but, what did you do Friday night?  Were you there or did you have other business to attend to?

I don’t know if you’ve checked out my wife’s photography in a while but if you haven’t you should.  She upgraded to a pretty rockin camera a little while back and it’s really showing up in her most recent work.  She is way to humble about it (…And it shows in her prices) but that’s probably a lot better than the alternative I guess.  So anyway, check it out.  Let me know what you Think.  Do you have a favorite pic?

So, as a celebration for getting my wife and baby girl back from the hot land of Arizona, Avery and I took them to a movie.  We decided on one called “Earth”—chosen based on rating, show time (2 of our party had to be in bed by 8:00PM), and multi-generational appeal.

It was a documentary on wild life with an emphasis on Polar Bears, but the whole time, I couldn’t stop imagining animals watching a documentary about humans.  Yeah, distracting right!?  I had to hold back laughter at every moment in the film because, even though it was not a funny part to everyone else, it was hilarious to me!

James Earl Jones narrated it.  He talked on the macro level about all Polar Bears and then he would talk on the micro level about the individual Bear that we were watching and why what it was doing was, or was not, normal compared to the rest.

I was imagining myself.  The narrator is describing the typical behavior of humans in general and how they take care of their habitats that they call “apartment.”  But then they zoom in on me!  The narrator continues, “but while most humans are tidy and neat, this human is somewhat less tidy and neat”.  They pan to a shot of my laundry habits or my wonderfully un-kept car with a stockpile of not-yet-disposed stuff.  

Or perhaps they would go on to discuss how the typical human goes about planning their day.  The narrator would most certainly point out the peculiar use of the day planner or iPhone Calendar that humans use.  They zoom in on my planner.  It is blank! 

The narrator points out, “This particular human is confused and going about his day in a panic because he doesn’t know what’s happening or where he is going next!  Notice the aggression that this causes in the other humans that he comes into contact with.  Clearly, this is an unusual behavior and is most certainly not very suitable for survival.” 

Whatever!  I’m sure your weird too.  

I think I need to watch the movie again so that I can get a better grasp on the plight of the Polar Bear in it’s ever changing Arctic habitat. 

O.K. I was transparent with you so now it’s your turn.  What are your quirks?  I know you’ve got them so spill.

P.S. The Polar Bear is, apparently, the largest land carnivore.  There you go.  Your day is better now. 

What a day!  I didn’t get to bed until 4:00A.M. on Saturday night (Sunday morning).  The awesome part was that I needed get ready for Sunday morning service at 5:30.  I’m terrible at math but I think the distance between 4:00AM and 5:30 equals lame. 

Not-the-less!  The Lord—faithful as he always is—multiplied that small allotment of slumber and we had a wonderful couple of services at Bayside.  I slept like you would not believe when I got home and woke up a few minutes before Origin started.  Again—by God’s grace—we had another awesome service that the Lord totally blessed.

On another note!  My girls (Celestial & Avonlea) flew back from Arizona tonight.  Whoohoo!  They were hanging out with Auntie Ronni, who just graduated with her masters degree.  Now they’re home!  I’m a pretty big fan of my girls; it makes me smile that they’re back. 

Here’s what we sang today:

Bayside:

Salvation is Here—Joel Houston/Hillsong United

Hosanna—Brooke Fasier/Hillsong United download star people mp3

Because of Your Love—Phil Wickham

Oh The Wonderful Cross—Chris Tomlin/Isaac Watts

Origin:

As We Gather—Mike Fay/Tom Coomes

The Stand—Joel Houston/Hillsong United

God of this City—Bluetree

Hungry—Kathryn Scott

Lord I Give You My Heart—Reuben Morgan

Savior Sonnet—Daniel Meeker