A Pleasing Offering – Part 2

A continuation… (Read Part 1 here)

My husband gave me a word from the Lord, “You want to give an offering to God your way instead of His way.”

I immediately was convicted by the truth of his statement and realized that though my initial desire to spend time in the Word and in prayer was good and honorable, that I had never bothered to ask the Lord what kind of offering He desired! And perhaps that was the problem with Cain in Genesis 4. Perhaps he saw that Abel was giving an offering to God and in his own desire to please God, he strove to present something to God out of his own strength, instead of first asking the Lord what type of offering would please Him? I have done this countless times – I see what someone else is able to offer to God, by spending hours in Bible study or intercession, and then I feel that I want to do the same, regardless of whether or not that is what the Lord is asking of me. I so easily feel pressured by what the apparent standard is for being a “good Christian” and I strive to please God by checking off chapters on a Bible-reading plan or logging the hours I’ve put in through prayer. Only, I’m usually left feeling like it is never enough and that I can never attain to this elusive super-Christian status. I want to give God an offering my way, based on my desires and my strength, and I just set myself up for failure.

Why has it never occurred to me before to ask God what type of offering or worship He would like from me?? Yet this is the very same trap that the Israelites fell into several times. King Saul is a prime example, for when he was commanded by God to kill every person and animal in a particular tribe, he kept the best of the animals to present as an offering to God instead. And was God impressed by this extravagant gift? Not at all. In 1 Samuel 15:22-23, the Lord says this,

“Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice…”

Saul had his own idea of what would please God, but completely disregarded what the Lord had commanded him to do and in so doing, missed out on what He truly desired. As a result of this act of disobedience, Saul was rejected as king of Israel and the Lord began to seek for a man who was truly after His own heart. This brings me to David, who was perhaps one of the few who really sought God’s heart and sought to discover what He delighted in. In Psalm 51:16-17, he writes this,

“For You do not desire sacrifice, or else I would give it; You do not delight in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart – these, O God, You will not despise.”

It seems strange, that the very sacrifices and offerings that God commanded His people to offer Him were the very things that they would get tripped up on, thinking that these outward signs of worship were what He desired, when what He really wanted was their hearts. In Isaiah 1:11-17, the Lord rebukes Israel, saying that He has come to despise their sacrifices and that their incense has become an abomination to Him because of the sinful lives they were living. If I put myself into this story, I might be looking for God’s approval after reading for an hour in my Bible, only for Him to find it an unacceptable offering, since it was given at the cost of treating my children without love.

To be continued…

A Pleasing Offering – Part 1

Perhaps you are familiar with this feeling – you have a hunger and a desire to spend time with the Lord and when other responsibilities, events, or people get in the way, it’s almost as though they become your enemy. This is a good feeling to have when the things that hinder you from loving God are sinful or fruitless activities or relationships, since we need to be tenacious and violent in our pursuit of God and willing to forsake our other “lovers”. However, what do you do when the thing that’s getting in your way is your own flesh and blood – a screaming toddler or a hungry baby?

This was where I found myself the other day – longing and aching to fulfill that desire to spend long hours reading my Bible and communing with Jesus, only to be continuously thwarted at every turn by my own dear children. It didn’t take long before there was a pent-up ball of fiery rage burning on the inside of me and I just wanted to scream and cry and yell at the unfairness of it all (and in fact, I did scream and cry some). This is the paradox of parenting – how this little human being whom you love so deeply also seems to bring out the worst in you by exposing all your selfish motives!

But this is not what I wanted to share with you – it is just how the story begins. That evening, as I was ready to fall apart at the seams and break down once again, my dear husband turned in his Bible to Genesis 4, which tells the story of Cain and Abel. I’m sure you are familiar with this famous tale of the very first murder, but it begins with what appears to be a sincere offering to God on Cain’s part. He brought an offering of his crops to the Lord, while his brother Abel brought the firstborn of his flock. The Lord accepted Abel’s offering, but not Cain’s. At this, Cain became very angry and the Lord asks him, “Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door. And its desire is for you, but you should rule over it.”

To be completely honest, when reading this, it is tempting to side with Cain and wonder why the Lord was so hard on him? What was wrong with Cain’s offering? Why wasn’t it good enough? Wouldn’t you be angry and upset too? Must we strive to gain God’s approval and acceptance? Like Cain, I had an offering I desired to give to the Lord – I wanted to offer Him my time and focused devotion – and when that didn’t work out for me, I became angry and began to take it out on my own family members, even as Cain took out his anger on his brother Abel.

Now was there anything wrong with my desire? Was there anything wrong with wanting to spend time reading my Bible or praying? Of course not! But, here is where it hit home for me when my husband said to me, by the Holy Spirit’s prophetic inspiration,

“You want to give an offering to God your way instead of His way.”

Ouch!

To be continued…

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.

Moving the Heart of the Judge

I’ve been reading and meditating on Psalm 106 over the last few days and my thoughts are still very incomplete, but I’m going to attempt to make sense of them through writing…

They exchanged their Glory
In verse 20 and 21 it says, “They exchanged their Glory for an image of a bull, which eats grass. They forgot the God who saved them…”  This hit me personally and I felt the conviction of the Holy Spirit, for how many times have I had the choice directly in front me to either choose communion with Glory or exchange Him for something so much lesser and I have chosen the lesser?  When I choose to give my time, energy or resources (essentially, my worship) to something other than the Lord, how often do I reflect on the immense, infinite value of what I am giving up in exchange?  I don’t think I have a true revelation of the Glorious One, the God who has worked miracles and awesome deeds on my behalf and who saved me from the most horrific eternal destiny of hell that was my lot. 

I then was listening to a teaching by a woman of God name Shelley Hundley who was “coincidentally” (read “divinely”) speaking from this very same passage and she went back to the telling of this story in Exodus where the Israelites are getting a glimpse of their beautiful and terrifying Glory in a way they had not yet seen.  In 20:18-21 they are trembling in fear as they gaze upon a mountain shrouded in thick darkness, surrounded by thunder, strikes of lightning and engulfed in smoke.  While they had been invited by God to come close, up to the boundaries He had set for them, they shrank back in their fear and remained at a distance instead of embracing this gift of the fear of the Lord that God wanted to give them in order to keep them from sinning and keep them in intimate relationship with Himself.  As a result, in Exodus 32, when Moses takes too long to return from the mountain, Shelley proposed that the reason they created the idol was for the simple reason of boredom!  They had been given the opportunity to gaze upon the Glory of the Lord and be completely fascinated by His power and beauty, yet instead they distanced themselves and grew bored, exchanging Him for a lifeless golden calf crafted in the image of a soulless creature that eats grass!  Again, I ask myself, how many times have I exchanged the opportunity to be fascinated and captivated by my heavenly, eternal Glorious One in order to give my affections to something that is earthly, temporal and fading away?  Too many.

They shed innocent blood
The next thing that pierced my heart was verses 37-43 which starts off by saying, “They sacrificed their sons and their daughters to demons.  They shed innocent blood, the blood of their sons and daughters, whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan, and the land was desecrated by their blood.”  It doesn’t take a genius to make the connection with this verse and the spilling of innocent blood that is occurring today through the abortions of millions of babies in North America.  While it may seem to some that abortion is only the removal of a piece of tissue, the reality in the spirit is that these living babies with a soul and spirit are being sacrificed to the gods of this age – convenience, selfishness, fear, lust, call them what you like, but there are real demons feeding off the blood of these innocent ones.  I know it sounds harsh, but we must see abortion for what it is – demon worship and murder. 

The passage goes on to describe how the Lord was angry with his people for these horrible acts and brought judgment upon them, yet still they would not turn from their sin and were “bent on rebellion”.  Another reality is that there is real judgment coming in response to our sin.  We are naive to think that we will escape judgment, for even if we die before the end of the age and miss the end-time judgments, we will certainly face it when we come before the throne of God.  I truly don’t mean for this to be a doomsday post, but I want the reality of the Word to grip our hearts!  I don’t want to read this and gloss over the weightiness of what it says - we need to be pained over this and understand what lies ahead if things don’t change!

Moving the heart of the Judge
And yet, while judgment is imminent, there is hope.  When the Israelites built their golden calf, Psalm 106:23 says, “So he said he would destroy them–had not Moses, his chosen one, stood in the breach before him to keep his wrath from destroying them.”  The Lord is longing for a people, like Moses, who will walk in intimacy and friendship with Him to such a depth that when they stand in the place of intercession on behalf of a sinful and wicked nation, that their weak words actually move the heart of God and turn away His wrath!  He is crying out for this generation to respond to the call of Joel 2:12-14, “‘Even now,’ declares the Lord, ‘return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning.’  Rend your heart and not your garments.  Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and he relents from sending calamity.  Who knows?  He may turn and have pity and leave behind a blessing…”  I long to have revelation of Jesus as a Righteous Judge who will not allow injustice to go unpunished, yet who is fiercely in love with people and is more merciful than we know.  We must know this so that we will approach His throne of grace with boldness as Moses did and stand in the breach that He might have mercy on us.  The cry of repentance for exchanging our Glory and shedding innocent blood must ascend to heaven, as a people who are friends of the Judge rise up in intercession to move His heart…

“But he took note of their distress when he heard their cry; for their sake he remembered his covenant and out of his great love he relented.”  (Psalm 106:44-45)

Cultivating a Fiery Spirit

A few weeks ago I was listening to a preaching series by Mike Bickle called “Cultivating a Fiery Spirit”. As I listened, I would take notes to try and better absorb what was being said into my spirit. And yet, while it was very interesting, I wasn’t finding myself being deeply impacted by the teaching. Tonight, I thought perhaps I was ready to move on to another preaching series. But my loving and wise husband said to me, “Be careful not to move on too quickly. You don’t want to just sample preaching.” We were even just talking earlier about not sampling the Word – a little morsel here and there – but challenging ourselves to go deep in the Word and take the extra time to allow it to make a lasting impact on our hearts.

So, instead of moving on, I decided to take several of the key scriptures from the teaching, sit down at the piano and start to sing and pray into them. Immediately I felt the difference that it made for me to take that time and meditate on the Word of God and ask Him to make those things real in my own life.

In Luke 24, two believers are walking down a road after Jesus’ death, trying to wrap their minds around what has just happened, and where do they go from here? All of a sudden, Jesus meets them on the road and begins to speak with them, yet they do not recognize him. He says to them, “How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe…” At many times, I feel that this is the condition of my heart – slow, dull, asleep. Yet, as Jesus began to reveal the scriptures to them, they discovered that their hearts began to burn within them. This is what I desire – a burning heart – a fiery spirit – a flame that cannot be quenched.

I can’t help but feel an urgency in my spirit that this becomes a reality in my life – the verses that really struck me were Ephesians 5:14-16 ~ “‘Wake up, O sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.’ Be very careful, then, how you live – not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil.” As another version says, “redeeming the time” – I want to redeem and make the most of the time I have on this earth to acquire a fiery spirit. I want those areas that are dead and asleep within me to come to life, to rise up from their slumber!!

Interestingly enough, these verses are soon followed by instructions to “speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord” (vs. 19) – I believe that the key for me will be singing these desires in my heart to the Lord. Writing this now, several weeks after I first tried singing these prayers, I already realize that it can’t just be a one-time event. I need to pray and sing these things to God on a regular basis in order for them to actually take root in my heart. I need repitition – to pray without ceasing – if I want these desires to be fulfilled. My heart is slow to believe, slow to change, slow to act – it requires time and effort to rewire its circuits.

Jesus, awaken my spirit! Shine the blazing light of your beauty upon my heart – fascinate me, allure me, enthrall me, dazzle me with the beauty of your emotions and the power of your actions! Cause my heart to burn within me as you reveal the life in your words to me. May my spirit be set ablaze – quick to believe, quick to change, quick to act!

Awake, awake, O Jacquie,
clothe yourself with strength.
Put on your garments of splendor,
O Jacquie, holy daughter.
Shake off your dust,
rise up, sit enthroned,
O Jacquie.
Free yourself from the
chains on your neck!
(Isaiah 52:1-2)

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