Johanna and Josh's wedding was an incredible time with family and friends. God's grace was very evident during the ceremony. Considering how much was going on with wedding preparations and the fact that I had never officiated a wedding before, things could have been awkward and crazy, but they weren't. God's peace covered the celebration completely.
This week I started the book, Worship Matters by Bob Kauflin. Every chapter is convicting to the core. Kauflin talks about how it is so easy to be a worship leader and yet have our affections set on something else. "I learned that I could lead others in worshiping God and be worshiping something else in my own heart" (Kauflin 25). I am discovering that worship is a response to a deeper realization of who God is. It is a response that is cultivated by our knowledge of God which then transforms our hearts and in turn, manifests itself in our hands as adoration, praise, and good works. In Matthew Jesus talks about loving God with all of our being:
And he said to him,“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment" Matthew 22:37-38.
This is articulated well by Kauflin in Worship Matters, "While it's simplistic to say that worship is love, it's a fact that what we love most will determine what we genuinely worship" (Kauflin 25).
The challenge is then that what we learn in our heads be in unity with our hearts and what we do with our hands. Too often I may believe something passionately but fail to put it into action. I may do something with my hands, but my heart not be engaged. It is important to learn more about the character of God; to discover new truths every day that will draw our hearts to his and empower our hands to action. In the same way we are compelled to compliment someone we love dearly or invest ourselves reading articles and commentary about an artist, athlete, or vacation destination, so should we seek to know the creator of the universe. Paul makes this clear in his prayer for the Ephesians:
"I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints," Ephesians 1:16-19
