Creativity in the presence of our God
Hello everyone!
Thanks so much to all who commented to my last blog! (by the way, it's usually Jenn that's writing... but if you comment, paul sees it too!)
If you haven't read the comments on the last post, I encourage you to do so. There's some good stuff on there.
This post will be a little different this time. See here's the thing... I need some ideas. So this is what i want you to do...
Tell me how you connect with God. Both when we come together as the church and when you spend time with God privately. It can be crazy, or creative, or contemplative... whatever you do, let me know. Cuz' i think we're missing it when we only worship one certain way. Do you incorperate your senses? how?
Maybe you're not connecting with God... what do you think would help you do so...outside of what we already do when we meet together as a church.
Until next time...
Thanks so much to all who commented to my last blog! (by the way, it's usually Jenn that's writing... but if you comment, paul sees it too!)
If you haven't read the comments on the last post, I encourage you to do so. There's some good stuff on there.
This post will be a little different this time. See here's the thing... I need some ideas. So this is what i want you to do...
Tell me how you connect with God. Both when we come together as the church and when you spend time with God privately. It can be crazy, or creative, or contemplative... whatever you do, let me know. Cuz' i think we're missing it when we only worship one certain way. Do you incorperate your senses? how?
Maybe you're not connecting with God... what do you think would help you do so...outside of what we already do when we meet together as a church.
Until next time...
posted by Little Worshiper @ 10:59 AM
6 Comments:
At 5:32 PM,
Sarah said…
Hey Jenn,
How do I connect with God, lol well thats one hard question b/c there are so many ways.
sometimes its listing to the words that are being sung and reflecting on them,
sometimes its seeing myself in His Throne Room, or on His lap, or even in our meeting place, and in those times its just Him and I and everyone else seems to faid away,
Sometimes God connects with me through other people (thats been happening alot this year. WOW)
Sometimes its through His Creation... have you even just breathed God in as you see all the wonderful beatiful creation He made at His word?
Sometimes its been through watching tapes/dvd's of older sermons... man i tell you the other day wow it was like we where there and the pressence of God was so strong.
at my home chruch back in the 'peg, its deifferent, when i left i really felt like i was bring cut off... that oncewe have just entered into the Throne Room of God our worship time is over, there is no time to just wait in His pressences.
To fix that my chruch needs alot more prayer and the Holy Spirit to pour out on us so that all we can do is stand, kneel, lay in His pressence.
on other way is when He calls on me to speak to Him, its when and where ever.
But i'm not sure if this is what you fully wanted or not but ya its what i do.
Keep it real and total you. I think we get to "Religious" at times and do things stiffly.
like the qoute says "we are into Microwaving when God is into Maranating"
At 9:10 AM,
Courtney said…
I totally agree with Sarah - it seems that in corporate times of worship we are just begining to enter into God's presence when all of a sudden worship gets cut off. I'm not against preaching, but what's more important? Spending time with the Almighty, or...
Sorry for the tangent. I like to connect with God at home through music. I always have worship music during my prayer time. But not when I'm reading my Bible, it's too distracting. hmm sometimes I pick up books like "Words of Wisdom" by my favorite evangelist, Billy Graham, or "My Utmost for His Highest" by Chambers.
Blessings you two!
At 3:01 AM,
DanielB said…
I usually get way more out of personal Bible study. As I read, things stick out to me that concern me that I recognize need to change or that I lack understanding in, an asking for wisdom you could say. At church, usually through the worship, by meaning the words and not just singing them. I think the depth you reach on Sunday morning is directly influenced by how much your actions worship Him the other six days of the week. If you're missing that you're missing everything and your worship will be shallow. I hear from God through preaching sometimes, but at this point, I've kinda heard it all, ya know? Some preachers I always get something from, others I don't. Other than that, a very close second to Bible Study is connecting with other believers. We need that. -Daniel
At 6:17 PM,
DanielB said…
Speaking of connecting with other believers, the neatest thing I've seen at church is personal testimony. Our pastor left at the end of August for another position elsewhere. We've had a couple of services with no preacher just a few testimonies. It was so riveting and powerful. There's something about being preached to that is somewhat academic, but hearing these people talk about their lives and what God had done and was doing had a way of inspiring trust in God. If He can do that in their life, surely He can do it in mine.
- MC Daniel
At 2:54 PM,
Vicki said…
Hey Jenn and Paul!
I just stumbled across your blog again, it's been a while, and even though this post was written a long time ago, I figured, hey, why not answer anyway?
Lately I've been thinking and learning a lot about how people, and myself in particular worship.
The biggest thing for me lately has been to realise more and more that everytime that I worship at church or in chapel, it's not just about me and God, it's all of us and God. I've been getting a real sense of how when we come together at church it should have a different element then when I'm alone in my room singing a song to God, because, quite frankly, that's when I can do things by myself, in church, I get to worship with other people.
One of my FAVORITE things in church is to sing without music because it is totally awesome to be able to hear everyone else's voice, and know that's it's not me worshipping. Along the same lines, I like to listen to the person next to me when their is music... or, sometimes it's a blast to sit near someone who really can't sing at all, just because you can hear the passion in thier voice, despite their great difficulty at hitting notes.
Another thing I love to do in worship is to consider how awesome God is all the great things he's done... not just the stuff he's done for me personally but the amazing grand scheme of things that he's done. I always love it when their are songs in services that tell God how holy and awesome He is.
It's just natural to me to switch from singing lyrics with everyone else about how great God is and then switch to singing my own song, making it personal...
Also, when the congregation is involved, that's just awesome. You never want to ruin the flow or have an awkward silence waiting for people to come up and say something, but when the worship leader has asked certain people before hand to share something or a little bit of a testimony it's awesome. Not always a random "please share something" either, but something that is planned, but still genuine.
I'll paint a picture for you (sorry if I'm rambling too much, but I've had all these thoughts in my head for a while, and now it's like oh yes! an opportunity to share!).
As Pastors, you two know about the lives of some of the people in the church, ditto my Dad (though I'm assuming that you know more about the young 'uns and my Dad the old 'uns) but let's say you know that something completely awesome happened in someone's life, you know the situation... and someone else had a conversation with you and was talking about a passage that had been really speaking to them lately... USING that knowledge to get them to start ministering to the congregation would be awesome. So, you tell them where the mike is, how the order of the service is going, what song they can come up after, and then, in the musical interlude after a song about God's provision, you have someone come up and share about something God did for them... you sing the song again, then another song, and then that person with the scripture God's laid on their heart (who you have told the same thing) comes up, reads the scripture and what God's been teaching them about it.
It transforms the service to something I could do in my room with a CD to a community thing... but in having it fairly well planned and picking the people yourself, it ensures the flow will remain. It will also encourage them in their participation in the service, and then maybe people won't be so hesitant to volunteer!
Anyway, I just realised how long this comment it... don't hate me please!
C ya!
At 12:22 AM,
Sarah said…
Hey Jenn,
its me again, I was checking on your blog again and well ya, this past tuesday (nov 29th)we had some "Post Modern" worship
in class we did a thing kinda like the prayer labyrinth we did sometime the first few weeks of MC, but different too. it was awesome time of getting with God, we were to be in each station for 10 mins we did things like study, prayer, submission, service, confession, guidence, solitude, medatation, fasting (yes we fasted for 10 mins and it was hard at times we fasted our eye sight, celebration, simpliticty and worship. our teacher had tasks for us to do at each station and it was great, Brother Harder let us take longer then he had planned to cuz we where doing it with the right attitude and heart.
Then in chaple the 3rd year class who was taking the Post Modern Church, planned the worship chaple, we were to take our shoes off before going into the chaple, they had a slide show of pictures of Gods creation, candels everywhere, and we had stations type things to if you wanted to go to, the cross, communion, a place to draw, a place to wash someones feet, a place to dance with flags and pillows to sit on. and i tell you that something i think everyone will remember. we went past the time given for chaple and ya its a different way that allows everyone to worship in their own way.
Tonight (Dec 2) we had girls dorm devos and Jamie Rea had it on her heart to do something similar the only differance was we had a wailling wall - poster boards that we wrote down the name of people we would like saved we also had a place that if we had a word for someone we could write it on their paper which they later got. the last thing was we had a place to write prayers to God and hang them up (No one else would read them.
and it got me thinking of some of the different things we did for MC chaple, worship comes in so many different forms, it kinda sucks that when you think worship you think singing
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