Praise and Worship

After Jesus was baptized in the Jordan by John, it says in Luke 4:1 that he left “full of the Holy Spirit” and entered the wilderness.  After his time fasting and being tempted in the wilderness, it says He returned in the “power of the spirit” to Galilee (Luke 4:14).  His time in the wilderness, alone with God and dealing with the temptation produced a Jesus that was not just full of the spirit, but powerful in the spirit. Cool? Yep.  But what’s even cooler is that Jesus returned to that same place (figuratively, not literally) time and time again in his ministry. 

Luke 5:16 says that Jesus would often “withdraw to desolate places to pray.”  The word for “desolate places”(Eremos) is same word used for the wilderness in Luke 4.  He was returning to place of power and instruction.  And even more interesting is that most times when He slipped away to those secret places with the Father, it was in the midst of incredible ministry (Mark 1:33-37; Luke 4:42; 5:15-16; Matthew 14:13).  If Jesus made this a priority, we should too.  

But what happens so often is that we see how a person like Aaron Keyes leads worship or how Francis Chan teaches and we immediately try to emulate what we see.  So we grow cool hair, get an acoustic guitar, expand our vocab, talk with conviction, become asian.  We try to imitate the things we see in them because we admire and respect them. This in itself is great.  The problem is, you generally won’t see the hours upon hours that Aaron spends in the presence worshipping, or the countless hours Francis Chan spends praying and listening for God’s voice.  But those times that we DON’T see are the keys to their power and wisdom.

Let me put it this way.  In high school I played baseball.  I wanted to so badly to be Mike Piaza.  I wanted to drive the ball to right and to have a throw to second base in under 2 seconds.  But I couldn’t just walk out onto the field at Grayson High school and do it. Nope, I would fail miserably.  If I wanted to be like Mike Piaza, I needed to do the things I DIDN’T see him doing on TV.  I needed to spend years perfecting my eye, my timing, and my strength.  I needed to spend countless hours working on hitting outside pitches in soft-toss drills.

The same is true with those of us who so desperately want to be Jesus:  who want to heal and love and teach the way He did.  If we are going to be like Him, or even be like those we admire, we have to be diligent in spending time in the presence: praying, listening, worshipping.  When that is in line, THEN we will begin to see public success.(Matthew 6:6)

I love what Kris Valleton of Bethel Church says (loosely quoted):

“You have to have personal victories with the Lord before you have public ones.”

Blessings,
Cole