Jesus: The Lord Saves

“Grace and peace to you from…Jesus Christ…” Revelation 1:4, 5 

The Lord Saves
So, for my first post in my series on “The Revelation of Jesus Christ”, I want to share some thoughts on the Son of God’s given name – Jesus.  As it says in Matthew 1:21, “She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.“  In the footnote for this verse, it informs us that Jesus is the Greek form of the Hebrew name Joshua, which means “The Lord Saves”.  Although Jesus was sent to the earth for many reasons, it would appear that his primary reason was to declare and provide the salvation of the Lord.  In John 3:17, Jesus says this of himself, “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.“  I think most Christians understand this about Jesus in his first coming, but I believe that this will be a dynamic motive in his second return as well!  Even though Jesus will be coming to release judgment upon sin, we see in Isaiah 63:2, that in the midst of slaying the wicked, he still declares of himself, “It is I, speaking in righteousness, mighty to save.“  When he is unleashing the end-time judgments and when he ultimately returns to the earth, I believe that salvation for the lost and especially for his beloved people, the Jews, will be foremost on his mind and heart.

His Name Forever
As I was meditating on his name and what this meant for me, I was struck by the fact that before he became a human, he was simply the Son of God, perhaps manifesting in the Old Testament as the Angel of the Lord, but without a human name.  Of course he knew that this would one day be his name and how humanity would come to call him, but for thousands of years in human history and for eternity past, he was just the Son.  Yet, the Father ordained it and chose this specific name for His Son and told Joseph and Mary to name him, “The Lord Saves”.  He decided that it was going to be at the name of Jesus that every knee would bow and that every tongue would confess that Jesus is Lord!  (Philippians 2:10-11)  And from the moment he was born, for all of eternity, this will be his name forever!  While he has many names and titles, Jesus is his human name – the name that connects him with all of humanity, and he will forever be identified with the fact that he came to save us from our sin and from eternal separation from God in the flames of hell.

He is My Salvation
As David so loved to declare in the Psalms, “The LORD is my strength and my song; he has become my salvation.”  The thing about salvation is that it is incredibly personal.  When Jesus came to save the world, although he paid the price for all of mankind’s sin, I have to consider that he was actually thinking of me – Jacqueline Ruth – as he hung on that cross.  He came not only for humanity as a whole, but for me!  “The Lord Saves” is my salvation!  How can I ever express my gratitude that he came to save me from my sin and from Satan’s grip upon me?  No matter how good I may have tried to be, I was never going to be able to save myself – I needed a Savior!  I was lost in darkness and destined for eternal death and torment before he came and rescued me.  Without him, I had no hope and would’ve sunk into deep depression and depravity, but in his incredible mercy and love for me, he came and saved me from the curse and bondage of sin – which includes salvation from sickness, suffering, barrenness, and spiritual defeat.  On that cross, he took my iniquity, infirmities, and sorrows.  He took upon himself the punishment that I deserved, pouring out his life unto death and making intercession on my behalf that I might be reconciled with the Father (Isaiah 53).  And while I can write all this, I know that my revelation and understanding of the magnitude of what this truly means is so incredibly limited.  How I long for greater revelation of what he did for me, that it might produce such love in my heart for him! 

Still Asking
I still have so many questions.  What is the significance of the name of Jesus for how I am to relate to him?  What does he want me know and learn about his heart and his character from his name?  What does this say about who he is and what was in the Father’s heart towards him when He chose that name?  What joy and delight does he feel, that every time his name is spoken, that people are declaring “the Lord saves”?  What pleasure does he experience in saving the souls of mankind?  How does he desire for me to partner with him in this mission and purpose? 

He Loves Saving People
In all of this, the one thing that he spoke that reverberates in my heart is this simple declaration – “I love saving people!”  I just felt the joy and pleasure that he takes in rescuing a soul from darkness and bringing them into his light.  This is something I also need more revelation on, that I might have that same passion for seeing the lost saved.  I want to have his heart for salvation, that I might proclaim “the Lord saves” to the world.  In fact, his desire to see as many as possible come into salvation is the very thing that is delaying his return, for “the Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness.  He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” (2 Peter 3:9)

My Worship-Leading Story

Through a blog I read, called The Esther Project by @lexikate, I discovered another blog called Beautiful Noise by @tamipants who is starting a new Facebook group and a blog for female worship leaders, which she has dubbed WorshipChicks. I decided I would join the dialogue by sharing about my own journey into worship leading.

For me, it started at the ripe old age of probably 5 or 6 years old when my mom began to teach me to play piano. She was an accomplished pianist by the time she was a young teenager who often played in her church, played for weddings and who went touring with the choir from her Bible College in her late teens. I grew up watching her play on worship teams and though she rarely ever sang on stage, I learned to harmonize by standing next to her in services and listening to her sing alto or even tenor.

However, my first experiences with music weren’t necessarily all positive. I can clearly remember a time when I was being forced to practice piano and I broke down in tears, wailing loudly that I hated piano and I wanted to quit!! I don’t know how my parents convinced me to keep going, but somehow they managed to get me over that crisis and I took piano lessons until the end of high school and completed my Grade 8 Royal Conservatory exam. While I had grown to somewhat appreciate the ability to play piano, understand some theory, and read sheet music, I was mostly frustrated by my inability to transfer these skills into worshiping God, since I had no understanding of how to “play by ear” or play from chord charts, like most church music is written (if you’re not playing from a hymnal or purchased sheet music from a Christian CD). So, after graduating, I stopped taking lessons and I almost completely stopped playing piano for a couple years.

As for singing, as a child, I hated it!! I remember being exceedingly frustrated that all of the songs sung in church seemed to be out of my range, so I would just stand there and refuse to sing. Until the day when, after years of standing next to my mom and listening to her harmonize and trying to sing along with her, something finally clicked and I was able to figure out the harmonies for myself. From that moment on, I learned to love singing and worship became so much more enjoyable for me. However, I was still incredibly insecure about my voice, which is nothing to write home about, and I was (and still am) envious of other female singers who could sing so much better than me, so I never sought to be involved in singing from the stage in church.

Yet, for all my frustrations and insecurities, I believe that worship is something that God had placed in my spirit from a young age and I would often sing when by myself (especially outside), writing songs and creating melodies and lyrics that were only for His ears. These times were a great outlet for me in expressing things to God that somehow wouldn’t have seemed to come out right in regular speech. For a time, when I was a teenager, I also found expression in worship through the avenues of tambourine, dance, ribbons, flags, etc. which all became an extension of my heart, communicating deep things to the Lord in partnership with and in response to the music and the words of the songs being sung.

Then, I would say I had a few significant breakthroughs while attending a discipleship training school called Tehillah Master’s Commission in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, which I was in for 2 years. In my first year (2000-2001), I took the plunge and agreed to become involved in the worship team when we went on various ministry trips, participating as a “back-up singer”, usually singing alto. This was something I had never done before and which was quite scary, but also exhilarating! I struggled with pride about being on stage and LOTS of fear of man and wondering what everyone thought of me, but still the Lord used me, even in my weakness and failings. When we were planning our big missions trip to Mexico at the end of my first year, our leaders were going to pick somebody to lead the worship team at one of the Sunday services that we were going to do. They started by asking if there was anybody who really didn’t want to do it. I was the only one to raise my hand. I was thinking, Are you kidding me? Me, worship-lead? As if! That’s terrifying! I’ve never done that before & I certainly don’t want to now! I’m definitely not good enough & I’m definitely not as good as the other singers on our team! My leaders looked at each other, then at the team, and then said, “Hmmmm…Jacquie, you were exactly the one that we were thinking of asking to do it. Why don’t you want to?” I was completely shocked! Why did they want me?? I blurted out my insecurities and how I wasn’t good enough, and yet somehow that was their confirmation that I was exactly the person who should do it! Ahhhh!!! My poor worship team! I had no idea what I was doing! I remember picking my songs and asking my piano player if she could transpose the songs to different keys so I could sing them, which she didn’t really know how to do, and trying to communicate with my team where I was going, but not knowing how, and feeling so incredibly inadequate. Yet, that experience was incredibly good for me and I believe that God anointed my weak offering of worship and that hearts were touched, in spite of me!

After that, I still wasn’t very involved in worship or worship-leading, but during my second year at TMC (2001-2002), I received what I believe to have been a significant prophetic word in my life. There was a man with a very accurate and at times, heart-piercing prophetic gift who was spending some time with our team to minister to us, and when it came to my turn, he spoke several things that encouraged and exhorted me, yet there was one thing that he said that made virtually no sense to me at the time. He told me that I would be involved in “harp and bowl”. Harp and bowl?? Some of you may be just as confused as I was! At the time, I had some vague idea that it had something to do with intercession, but I honestly didn’t think too much about it for years after that and just put it on the shelf. It wasn’t until, I believe some time in 2005, shortly after I had married the man of my dreams, that I was introduced to the International House of Prayer in Kansas City and learned about their model for prayer and worship, which they called “harp and bowl”. My husband and I started listening to their prayer room, which had been going 24/7 for about 6 years at the time, and we fell in love! Soon, we ordered their manuals on harp and bowl and began to discover what this was all about.

The idea of harp and bowl is found in Revelation 5:7-9, which says, “He (Jesus) came and took the scroll from the right hand of him who sat on the throne. And when he had taken it, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each one had a harp and they were holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. And they sang a new song…” Essentially, in it’s simplest form, harp and bowl is the combination of worship (the harp) and intercession (the bowls of incense), with the added element of the “new song” or what could also be called “prophetic singing”, “spontaneous singing”, etc. which is also talked about in Ephesians 5:19 and Colossians 3:16. At the time, my husband and I had recently been asked to head up the prayer ministry for the young adult service at our church, and we instantly knew that this was something we wanted to incorporate. When I look back on that time period, I sometimes laugh thinking of what others must have thought of us! We were both ammature musicians and singers who barely knew what we were doing, with no worship-leading experience, but just a burning desire to pray and worship God. In our small pre-service prayer meetings, with the few people that joined us, my husband would play his guitar & I would sit besides him and we would sing a couple songs, sing in the Spirit, and then we’d pray and sing spontaneously from those prayers – just the 2 of us! Then, others would add their prayers and we would sing from what they prayed, and they all probably had no idea what was going on or why we were doing what we were doing – lol. Again, I feel like the Lord really loved and enjoyed it, honored it, listened & responded and blessed it – in spite of us! During that time, I would occasionally accompany my husband on the piano, but most of the time, it was sort of a disaster, since we didn’t know how to work very well together yet and because I was still very poor at playing from chord sheets, and even when I knew the chords and didn’t mess up, it was sort of just me plunking on the keys and probably didn’t sound too pretty! I attempted a couple piano lessons for some help with this, which helped a little bit, but my progress was minimal.

After being married for just over a year, we came to a fork in the road where there were many options being laid before us in regards to careers and ministry. After much prayer, it became clear that prayer & worship, in the context of a house of prayer, was what we had been made for and what we wanted to do forever! Fortunately for us, a house of prayer had just recently been started in the city of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, which was actually where I had lived before moving to Calgary. We decided to pack it all up & moved to join Sanctuary House of Prayer in September of 2006. Since it was a very small ministry, just about anyone and everyone with any kind of musical ability was allowed on stage to lead these prayer and worship sets – including us! Within a matter of a couple weeks, we were recruited to lead a devotional set together where we both played our instruments and sang songs as well as sang spontaneously from various passages of scripture, with the help of a prayer leader. At times we felt like we had been thrown into deep water, without knowing how to swim, and that we were just told to kick our feet and flail our arms, hoping that we would somehow stay afloat! Yet, the Lord used it to help us grow and develop as worship leaders in a unique way that wouldn’t have been possible just anywhere. There was plenty of room and grace for us to make mistakes and sing an off-key note and lose our way amongst this community of people who just loved God and eagerly welcomed us into their midst with open and accepting arms. While I still struggled with my fear of man issues and insecurities, it felt like a safe place to learn and grow.

My husband and I have now been worship-leading here in varying degrees of involvement and different kinds of roles for almost 3 years. We’ve had moments of frustration, angst, humiliation – you name it – but through it all, we still know that we are where we’re supposed to be, we love it, and we wouldn’t want to be doing anything else! Though we have grown significantly in our abilities to play our instruments and in the area of prophetic singing, every time I go up on that stage, I leave feeling so grateful that it is the Lord who has chosen to bless and accept my weak offerings to Him. I still have a long way to go in my development as a worship leader, but one thing I’ve learned is that He loves it every step of the way – from the time I was a little girl singing as I walked down the country roads up until now, as a young woman of almost 28 years as I sing songs about Jesus to my own child.

Happy Father's Day!

I want to take some time to wish a Happy Father’s Day to my incredible husband Joe, who is also an amazing father!  Yesterday, we had a great time together as a family at the newly renovated YMCA near our home, where daddy and Justice got to have lots of fun in all the various play areas and in the pool!  It was great to watch them interact – Justice definitely loves his dad!  Sometimes I think Justice likes Joe more than me, which is actually totally fine with me, because I think it’s fantastic that they have such a great connection.  While Joe loves to wrestle and tickle and encourage Justice in his reckless adventures, he is also tender, cuddly, patient, and so incredibly loving towards his son.  They are a great pair and I am looking forward to observing Joe when our daughter arrives and how he interacts with his little girl!

I am also continuously thankful and grateful for Joe and what a tremendous help he is as a father and that he is absolutely hands-on and involved in all our parenting decisions and adventures.  He is right there cleaning the dirty diapers, feeding Justice meals, playing with him, giving him a bath, putting him down for the night, and everything in between.  We are 100% partners in this thing and I love that about my husband!  I think that recently though, the thing I appreciate most about him is his spiritual leadership in our family.  A couple weeks ago, Joe shared with me his desire to really make prayer for our family a priority and he lovingly encouraged me to join him by getting up early in the mornings to spend time praying together.  I am definitely not a morning person, so it was hard for me to agree to this arrangement, but I have already noticed that it has made such a difference when we start out our day connecting with God and asking for His help in our marriage and in raising our kids and whatever else is on our hearts to pray about.  I am so thankful that God gave me this man and for his leadership in our home – he is definitely the best husband and father EVER!

The Revelation of Jesus Christ

A little while ago, Mike Bickle at the International House of Prayer was teaching on the book of Revelation and he spent some time focusing on the fact that this book was meant to reveal Jesus to us, as it says in the first five words of the book, “The revelation of Jesus Christ…”.  For many, this book can be intimidating and confusing, and though it is meant to give us insight into “what must soon take place” by revealing details about the end of the age and the return of Jesus to the earth, it is primarily meant to show us who Jesus is.  The first chapter in this book actually contains 22 descriptions about Jesus (maybe even more), and so I was challenged to being meditating on and praying through them by following the simple acronym that Mike suggested – A.R.K.

A – Agreement: make declarations of agreement to Jesus about who He is and what He does. Simply declare the truth back to Jesus with affection and gratitude. For example, “Jesus, I thank You for being a faithful witness to the truth. I love this about You. I trust what You say”.
R – Revelation: pray for increased revelation of each description of Jesus. For example, “Reveal Yourself to me as the faithful witness and show me more of Your glory in this”. 
K - Keep the prophecy: by committing to respond in faith and obedience to the specific truths about His Name and by asking for God’s help to do so. We make simple declarations of our resolve to obey or to stand in faith in the Word. We also ask Jesus to empower us to do this. For example, “I commit to be a faithful witness to the truth regardless what it costs. Help me to walk this out”.

So, my desire is to go through all the descriptions of Jesus found in Revelation 1, as well as the others throughout the book, while dialoguing with Him, journaling, and blogging about the things He shows me about Himself.  It’s seemingly going very slowly and I am realizing that there is a lot of depth and richness in there that I hadn’t seen before, so I am happy to take my time discovering who He is! 

A helpful resource for your own meditation and study is an outline with the descriptions of Jesus and space to write your own brief notes using the A.R.K. acronym.  If you’re interested in reading the notes from the other sessions in this series by Mike Bickle, or even listening to the MP3′s, you can find it all here.  To read all of my blog posts on this subject, feel free to check out “The Revelation of Jesus Christ” category and I hope you will be stirred with hunger to search Him out as well and find yourself falling more in love with this God-man who is returning to claim us as His bride!

Justice – 15 months; Rayah – 20 weeks

Well, Justice will be 15 months on June 4th and baby in the womb was 20 weeks on June 1st.  I completely failed to write about month 14 for Justice, so there’s a lot more to cover this time! 

We let Justice play downstairs in the basement for the first time, as Joe is working on doing renovations down there.  It’s been too disastrous down there & it’s still pretty chaotic, but it was good enough to let Justice explore a little and get dirty.  He totally loved playing with Joe’s tools and discovering this new part of our home.

But much more exciting than the basement, Justice got his first real taste of the Great Outdoors!  At first, he was a little cautious and didn’t want to leave the blanket I had laid out, but it didn’t take long for him to overcome his hesitations and now he LOVES being outside.  He especially loves gravel, dirt, rocks and sticks and putting them in his mouth.   He also loves to throw the gravel and rocks from their designated areas into the firepit or onto our lawn.  (The picture of the two of us together is from Mother’s Day )

Justice also was introduced the grand world of babyproofing and was NOT too impressed.  From outlet covers to baby gates to drawer locks, it was quite a traumatic experience when his favorite troublemaking areas became inaccessible.  We, however, were delighted!

His climbing skills have also greatly advanced since my last post!  He is now easily able to crawl up onto any couch or chair and has actually managed to climb onto the toilet, filing cabinet, the top of the loveseat, and even onto our dining room table – scary!  He has also completely mastered the stairs and can easily climb up and down a full flight of stairs.

His greatest accomplishment in the last 2 months though has definitely been in the walking arena.  He started off just taking one or two tentative steps and mostly lunging towards his destination.  Then it wasn’t much longer before he started taking up to 4 or 5 steps in a row before falling.  He then gained confidence and coordination by learning to walk while holding onto a walker or by holding our hands.  The great breakthrough really occurred though when he learned how to stand up in the middle of a room without needing to hold onto anything.  Once he accomplished this feat of strength and balance, he became unstoppable and now he is pretty much walking constantly and has virtually left his crawling days behind!  He absolutely LOVES walking and especially in the beginning, he would get incredibly giddy with joy and excitement at his new skill and would be just giggling and smiling from ear to ear – it was so cute!  And once he discovered walking, it didn’t matter how many times he fell (which was often), he would always get right back up and want to try again, almost never crying when he fell.  Some evenings, he just seems to get a burst of energy and he wants to do is just walk and run around the house until he reaches the point of exhaustion – lol.  It has been incredibly fun for us to watch him learn and share in his joy.

As for talking, his vocabulary is growing, but very slowly.  He sort of stopped saying “Good” with great clarity, but will still sometimes say “Ga!” or “Gung!”, which I think is supposed to mean “Good”.    He says “Hi” a lot (especially when playing with a phone) and what started as simply “What?” has advanced to “Whassat?” or “Whatdat?” or the occasional clear “What’s that?”, which he asks probably 100 times a day!  He has also learned to wave “Hi” and “Good-bye” and will say “Da-Dye!”  Another of his most common words is “Daddy” which is obviously in reference to Joe, but which he also seems to use for “doggy”, birds, or sometimes what seems to be just the outside world in general, as he often says it when looking out the window.  He’ll say “Mama” when prompted, but I still don’t think he knows that “Mama” is me.    He also says “yucky” a lot, which we have been teaching him for all the gross stuff he’s always putting in his mouth and in reference to his diapers.  When we say “yucky!” he will actually sometimes take whatever he has put in his mouth and throw it away, repeating “yucky” after us, so at least he seems to be learning what that means!  After we pray at mealtime, he will sometimes say “Ba” or “Bam” after we say “Amen” and when he finishes drinking his bottle, he’ll say “Done!”  I think that’s all of his words at the moment. 

Other random things he does: fish lips, clicking his tongue on the roof of his mouth, “tractor noises”, grinding his teeth (ewwwww!), throwing things (a very common expression of playfulness and/or frustration), turn the water on in the tub, watch movies (he seems to be enjoying Baby Einstein), eat some finger foods (he especially loves cheese), chew & drool on everything (four molars have come in this last month!), LAUGHS A LOT!!!    He is definitely lots of fun to play with – especially tickling – because he laughs like crazy and has so many different laughs that are so funny – my favorites being the his growly laugh and his shrieking/screaming laugh. 

*********************SPOILER ALERT*******************

Here’s the latest baby bump picture, comparing this pregnancy with the last one – now is on the left, then is on the right.

As for baby #2, I had my 19 week ultrasound and it appears all is well.  But the most exciting part was obviously when we got to find out what our baby’s gender is…it appears that we will be having a ……..  GIRL!!!  We were totally pumped (that was for you Jacki, if you’re reading this), as we had both been feeling all along like it was going to be a girl and we only had a girl name picked out.  We also really love the name, which we feel God gave us especially for her, which is Rayah. 

Rayah comes from a Hebrew word in the Bible used only in the book of Song of Songs, which is usually translated as “my love” or “my darling” and which literally means “intimate companion”.  We feel like Rayah has a special invitation from the Lord for intimacy and friendship with Himself that we are excited to teach her about!  Of course, we all have this same invitation as the Bride of Christ, but at the same time, I believe it is her unique name and destiny in God to know and experience His love in deep ways.  The name Rayah is like a special term of endearment that Jesus calls His Bride and one that expresses His affection and His heart of adoration for her.  This name is used 9 times in Song of Songs, but here are a couple of my favorites…

Song of Songs 1:15 “How beautiful you are, my darling! Oh, how beautiful! Your eyes are doves.”

Song of Songs 2:10 ”My lover spoke and said to me, ’Arise, my darling, my beautiful one, and come with me.’”

So there you have it!  She’s lucky she’s a girl too, because when we were trying to find boy names that had a similar meaning, the best we could find was Theophilus and Jedidiah!