There’s something about those good foundations.

“For: The Essentials Red Online Course in Worship History with Dan Wilt.”

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been studying a little bit about the various languages of worship throughout history. So far we’ve touched on the languages of time, space, prayer and scripture.

It’s been a journey of looking back on history and seeing how it impacts us today in the way we worship.
It’s also been a beautiful journey of looking back on my own life and seeing how my history has shaped me.

I’m blessed to say that I have an extremely rich heritage.

Last night I was at housechurch and we had a little Bible quiz with a lovely slab of Cadbury’s chocolate as a prize. We had to name the first 14 books of the New Testament and give the number of books in the Bible, in the Old Testament and in the New testament. Thanks to my good foundations growing up I was able to answer everything correctly and was happy to win the chocolate in the end.

It’s amazing that one little song I had learnt in Sunday School years ago would have an effect on my life today.

Has anyone ever taken their childhood for granted? I sure have. I grew up attending a Salvation Army church which was extremely impactful in the formation of my relationship with God, my knowledge of God, my morals and my general Bible knowledge. I attended a more traditional Sunday School where we dug into the Bible. I was blessed with amazing Sunday School teachers who loved sharing God with us.

My parents were (and still are) good role models and instilled great values in me from a young age.

What a gift!?!?

I see so many people my age who weren’t as blessed in their childhood foundation-building as I was. The things which I took for granted weren’t the norm for everyone else.

I feel very rich, very blessed and forever thankful to God for placing good parents and teachers in my life.

It all comes down to You

“For: The Essentials Blue Online Worship Course with Dan Wilt.”

The story behind the song: “It all comes down to You”.

Within the first week of reading the course material I was stirred to write a song about the story of grace. I wanted to sum up, in a song, the story of the gospel from creation to salvation and how it is all held together by God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

The ideas about God as Creator, King, Trinity and Saviour (1) really birthed this song for me. The song is a progression and story which starts off by speaking about how God created the world and human beings; how we turned away from God and how He then chose to make a plan and fight for our salvation. The last verse speaks about how now God loves by giving us free will, but still pursues us relentlessly. The chorus holds it all together by the fact that it’s all about God. Everything in this world is about Him. The following scriptures were key in the forming of these ideas to create this song; Colossians 1:15-23, Genesis 1-3.

I chose not to refer to God specifically as Father, Son and Holy Spirit in this song. One of the reasons was because of the scriptures in Colossians (which speaks about Jesus being at creation) and in Genesis (where it speaks about the Spirit being there too). Another reason was that I was already cramming so many concepts into one song that I didn’t want to “overload” it in a sense.

I loved writing this song. I explored co-writing with my friend, Jean, who helped me put some of my thoughts into words. I learnt so much in the process and I sincerely hope that whoever hears this will be blessed.

(1)   Dan Wilt, Essentials in Worship Theology PDF, The Nature of God

To download the chord chart click here

To listen to the very rough recording click here

I’d love to hear your feedback.

love*sha

There’s something about those new words

“I found this journal entry which I had written about two months back. I thought I’d share them on my blog.”

GIVE US NEW WORDS, JESUS.
I feel like over the last 4 months or so God has pulled me out of an incredibly tiresome and hopeless season.
My personal worship and in turn my worship leading had hit a plateau.

It reminded me of an adventure I had about 3 years ago. I had been blessed to be able to go on a holiday adventure with about 50 other people from our church fellowship. We did a two and a half week road trip holiday to and in Namibia. What an amazing experience that was.
At one point on our trip we went on a white-water rafting trip on the Orange River.
My friend Julie and I were paired up in our raft and were nervous, but excited to start the adventure. Everyone had been prepped on what to expect and given instructions on what to do and how to best avoid getting injured.
We set out on our raft, struggling quite a bit to get the hang of it, and finally felt okay to continue.
We could see our first rapid in the distance and were ready to give it a go. As we hit the rapid, we struggled, and Julie was thrown from the raft. Yikes! Finally, after what felt like an incredibly long time, she resurfaced and was rescued. I, on the other hand, was stuck in the raft in the middle of a rapid having lost one oar in the process. After struggling to get out of the rapid I was eventually thrown from the boat. The water was flipping cold. After hitting the water and being pulled under I began to struggle to get to the surface, which would have been fine, but I had ended up under my raft. So every attempt made to resurface was met by nothing but the hard surface of the raft above. I honestly had thoughts of drowning and death, thankfully I managed to resurface and was rescued. Although the whole event probably spanned about a minute and a half it felt like an age. It was quite traumatic for Julie and I, and we wanted to give up right then and there, but it was all just part of the journey.
We were then partnered with other people… Julie was then teamed with her Dad and I was partnered with another dad from our congregation. He had been an SA rower in his day which made me feel completely secure.
By the end of the trip we had made it through much bigger rapids than the first (which in terms of rapids wasn’t even that big, but at the time seemed ENORMOUS) without falling out again and felt greatly chuffed with ourselves.

This reminds me so much of my time in the hopelessness. I started out on my journey with Jesus in worship with an eagerness to serve and anticipation of an adventure. But at some point I was thrown out of the boat. I mean, what did I expect? Smooth sailing? When I kept trying to resurface after being flung out I was met with a hard surface, a blockage… I had hit a plateau. But God brought me out of that and restored my confidence. His promise is to always be with us.

Coming out of that season wasn’t very easy… it was a painful process, but God pulled me out and got me through those rapids.

One of the things which had irritated me was that I had run out of words to sing. The “well” of words had dried up. I was tired of the songs we’d been singing in church. I felt like I had no words to even write my own songs. I needed something new and fresh. Something with fresh revelation and something which was different to what I had heard before.

In the past few months I’ve finally started to see new buds of hope and life in what seemed like a desert place. Listening to music from people like Phil Wickham, Jason Upton and Kim Walker has given me new words. This music has pointed me to God and taken me into his presence. It’s changed my life. Seeing God has made the words come more easily. Even in my own songwriting I feel like new words are flowing from new revelation of who God is. It’s all about the overflow of who God is.

Thank You, Holy Spirit, for fresh revelation and new words.

My Christian Worldview

For: The Essentials  Blue Online Worship Course with Dan Wilt“

God, the triune God, is the creator of the universe (Genesis 1:1-2, Colossians 1:1-16). He is a God who relates, a “three-in-one”. He is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. He is the Saviour of the world. God is King. (1)
God is one (Deut 6:4). He created all things, sustains all things and reigns over all things.

When God created the world; His final creation was mankind. Human beings were created to reflect God, to be His image in the world. We were created to have relationship with God. In the midst of intimate relationship we chose sin, we chose independence from God. As a consequence for our sin we were separated from Him. In love God banished us from the Garden so that we wouldn’t be condemned to that state of life forever. In love God made another plan, a plan to redeem us and restore us to right relationship with Him.

God sent His son as the ultimate sacrifice to atone the sins of the past, present and future, to redeem all that was lost in Eden. Jesus lived a blameless life as a human being on this earth (John 1:14). He was crucified on the cross for our sins (Romans 5:8-10). Three days later He rose from the dead, winning the victory and making a way for us to be in relationship with God again.

Jesus taught a lot about the Kingdom of God whilst here on earth. In Matthew chapter 6 He taught us how to pray. Verse 10 says, “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” When Jesus came to earth He brought the Kingdom with Him. This verse is asking that God’s Kingdom would come more and more completely until its full and final consummation. The Kingdom of God is evident when and where God reigns, it is here right now, but yet it is still coming more and more each day and will finally come in full when Jesus returns. The putting right of the earth, the bringing of all things into perfect alignment with God, expresses the Kingdom. When God reigns: the echoes (1) of God’s justice, beauty, spirituality and relationship should become louder and louder and clearer and clearer until they become our reality.

Luke 4:18-19
18 “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”

These things stated in these verses are evidence of God’s Kingdom rule and reign.

All of history is leading up to the complete and fulfilled restoration of the world to God; and to a renewed, ultimate and unhindered relationship with God for eternity.

1) Essentials Blue Online Course Text (The nature of God)
2) Tom Wright, Simply Christian (Part 1:Echoes of a voice)

The thing about all girl road trips…

I’ve been on many roadtrips… and by many I mean MANY.
Whether long or short distance I love roadtrips.
I think one of the main reasons I love them is because I’m a person who is honestly more concerned with the journey than the destination. I embrace the journey.

This past weekend I was blessed to be able to roadtrip to Cape Town and back with a bunch of women. What fun that was.

There were loo stops when needed without a hesitation. None of the 2minute loo breaks we get on hard core Malawi mission trips. A loo break would turn into a coffee stop which would result in someone needing the loo again.
I must admit that although I am all about embracing the journey I did get a wee bit irritated (excuse the pun) with what sometimes seemed like unneccessary stopping. Because as a driver there comes a point where you actually do just wanna get there already. ha ha. Contradictions. Ha ha. Good times.

The conversation was a mosaic of muddled thoughts and opinions. I love that as women we never stay on one topic of conversation for too long… our conversation is alive… it evolves and by the end of it we think “How did we end up with this result?”

But I think, the thing I love most about roadtrips is that you really get to know people. You rediscover your old relationships and you build new relationships.

Community is evident in a car full of people with the same destination in mind.

Isn’t life like that too?

I just love road trips.

Pointless?

I can’t help but marvel at the gift of life God has so generously given us. The beauty of this earth, the people in our lives, our senses, our experiences…these are all gifts from an awesome God and yet they all lack meaning without him.

I heard a quote once (while watching Smallville no less) which said, “The one thing I’ve learnt about science is the value of faith.”
This is so true. The whole point of science and the world around us is to point us to an amazing creator; to give us reason to have faith. None of the things around us are the product of an accident; instead they are all created and designed by an insanely creative engineer.
Everything begins and ends in Him (Revelation 21:6). Jesus is the center of it all. The world revolves around Him. In Him we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28).

If we believe these things then we have to believe that life without Jesus at the centre has no point.

When we take God out of the equation life suddenly becomes random…meaningless and pointless.

I would not be satisfied living a life without meaning, yet we live in a world where millions of people do just that every single day of their lives.

What a sad state of existence that must be.

Jesus is the hope of the nations… now to take Him to the nations.

Teach me how to do that, Lord.

there’s something about that music

One of my favourite quotes is by Plato which says,
“Music is a moral law, it gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.”
I LOVE that. It gives us the picture of music being a tangible gift to the world.
Another quote I love is by E.Y. Harburg which says,
“Words make you think a thought. Music makes you feel a feeling. A song makes you feel a thought.”
TRUE STORY

I’ve just been so overwhelmed by the gift of music lately. It moves us in incredible ways. The power it contains astounds me.

One of my favourite movies is “The Holiday” and I’m absolutely fascinated by Jack Black’s character in the movie. He plays a composer who composes scores for movies. it’s amazing. What a legendary job to have. Such a vital part of any movie, but such a “behind the scenes” type of role.
The soundtrack of a movie adds so much emotion to the words and characters portrayed on that screen. I mean, come on, I’ve been moved to tears by music too many times to count because of the emotions I have felt in the music. Even in watching Oprah (FOR GOODNESS SAKE) the music brings to the surface, and adds emotion to, the thoughts I’ve had through out each episode. It adds so much life and dimension to any circumstance.
Music leaves such an imprint on our lives.
The power music holds is actually quite scary if you think about it. And even more scary when not submitted to God.

This is something I often think of in terms of worship even…
As my team and I lead worship we want people to engage with God and obviously we use our music as a tool to facilitate that. Singing our worship is one of the ways we can enter in to the presence of God…and it’s completely biblical. But it’s so vital for us to keep submitting the gift of music to God. Otherwise it could become so easy to use the very same music of worship to manipulate and hype people up.
This is why we need to keep pursuing integrity and authenticity in our worship.

…hoping this makes sense…

Blogging ?

And so the new adventure of blogging begins.

Let’s see if I can begin to get these muddled thoughts to make some sense to the rest of the world.