God's Glory

To pretend I understand God's glory would be a lie. I read a lot about God's glory...that the heaven's declare it, it can so fill a room that people can't even see, it can leave a group of people, people can worship in it...it has many dimensions. I think in my existence I have probably never experienced God's full glory. Maybe no human can. I'd like to think I've seen or felt glimpses of it. I know that I want to feel, see, experience God's glory but that it requires that so much flesh dies that I fear I may never be able to get to that point.

I was listening this week to a song on the radio. It is a song I've heard a lot of times by a band I'm not really that fond of so I've never really thought a lot about the song. But this week a phrase in the lyric really grabbed my attention and I think it holds real meaning for me at least. The lyric goes, "When all of a sudden, I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory." Pretty simple line, but these words have become powerful for me.

First, can you imagine that being in God's glory, even a little bit of it, can totally eclipse (blot out, make you forget) all your afflictions? That is huge. Why? Because that is what holds most of us back. We spend so much time worrying, pondering, sulking, wallowing and otherwise focusing all our thoughts and efforts on fixing/dealing with our afflictions.

Then, what if everyday we entered into a moment of worship that brought us so close to God's glory that we could walk out into the day totally focused on God and not our afflictions. What a different group of Christians we could be. Maybe that is how the disciples were able to walk away from their businesses and families and follow Jesus. Most of us would have worried sick about everything going on at home, but I think they were so close to God's glory when they walked with Jesus, that their afflictions were totally eclipsed.

So how do we use this in our lives? Well for me, I've been trying to keep this lyric in my mind. When a situation (or a person as it often seems to happen) begins to put my mind in a place where I feel oppressed, stressed, afflicted or irritated I just remind myself that I would much rather have God's glory than feel this affliction. I remember how much greater it is to be in His presence than to be stressed out by this trivial thing. So far, that has given me much more grace in dealing with tough situations. I'm not saying I don't feel the weight of afflictions, but God's glory is beginning to make that weight feel much lighter. Give it a try.

*Disclaimer - I'm on the road and ran out of time to proofread. I hope there aren't too many typos!

7 Hebrew Words for Praise

I was at a conference in July and one of the speakers was Jeff Deyo. He is the former lead singer for SonicFlood and now he tours with his own band and is a fantastic worship leader (or lead worshiper as he would call it). In one of his sessions he commented on the fact that in Hebrew, from which much of the bible was translated, there are a lot of words that ultimately got translated into the word praise. Another way to explain it, the Hebrew had several words that dealt with what we might consider praise, but since we only had one word to translate them too, some of the detail got lost.

This is very interesting to me. As a worshiper and a worship leader, I struggle with what praise to God should/could/would look like. I hear all kinds of opinions - worship should be traditional like it has always been (which really means "always been in my memory"), people should praise in any way they feel comfortable (which usually means as long as I feel comfortable when they do it in my presence) and many more opinions.

I try to go to other churches and see how they praise. I see a huge spectrum of differences from church to church which really makes this idea that there is more than one way to define praise seem believable to me. I am no expert on this but I'm beginning to dig a little deeper into what the word "praise" should really be saying to me when I read it in scriptures.

Jeff Deyo has a couple of podcasts on this topic that are interesting. You can find them here. Here is a summary of the words he talks about:

1.BARAK – baw-rak – To kneel or to bow.
2.YADAH – yaw-daw – To worship with the extended hand.
3.TOWDAH – to-daw – To give worship agreeing with what has been done or will be.
4.ZAMAR – zaw-mar – To worship with instruments.
5.SHABACH – shaw-bakh – To address in a loud tone, a loud adoration, a shout!
6.HALAL – haw-lal – To make a show, to boast; and thus to be (clamorously) foolish; to rave; causatively, to celebrate.
7.TEHILLAH – teh-hil-law – A spontaneous new song. Singing from a melody in your heart by adding words to it.

So I guess when asked is praise raising hands, the answer is Yes. Is it kneeling? Yes. Can it be shouting? Yes. Can it be quiet and reverent? Yes. Can it be crazy and exciting? Yes. It opens up a whole new way to examine yourself and others as you worship. Definitely has me thinking...