WorshipCentral

Here are some thoughts on the role of the Holy Spirit in worship, being sensitive to the Spirit and how to lead worship in the power of the Holy Spirit...

I find it easy to understand Jesus and the Father, but the Spirit is a mystery. Sometimes we miss a lot of what the Spirit has for us, because we don’t really understand him. It is as if the treasure the Holy Spirit has for us gets lost in translation.

I heard of a Bank Robber named Pepe Rodruigez. Pepe Rodriguez was one of the most notorious bank robbers in the early settling of the west of America; he lived just across the border in Mexico. He regularly crept into Texas towns to rob banks, returning to Mexico before the Texas Rangers could catch him. The frustrated lawmen were so embarrassed by this that they illegally crossed the border into Mexico. Eventually, they cornered Pepe in a Mexican bar that he frequented. Unfortunately, Pepe couldn’t speak any English, so the lawmen asked the bartender to translate for them.

The bartender explained to Pepe who these men were, and Pepe began to shake with fear. The Texas rangers, with their guns drawn, told the bartender to ask Pepe where he had hidden all the money he had stolen from the Texan banks. ‘Tell him that if he doesn’t tell us where the money is right now, we’re going to shoot him dead on the spot!’ The bartender translated all of this for Pepe. Immediately, Pepe explained in Spanish that the money was hidden in the town well. They could find the money by counting down 17 stones from the handle of the well bucket and behind the 17th stone was all the money he’d stolen. The Rangers had their eyes pinned on the bartender waiting for the translation. 
The Bartender said in English, ‘Pepe: he very brave man. He say: you are bunch of stinky pigs, and he not afraid to die!’

I was not brought up a Christian. For me much of the Christian faith was lost in translation. I became a Christian by accident: I was doing my A-Levels at a boarding school.One afternoon, I was supposed to be revising but was caught sunbathing with very little on on the roof of my school. I was sent home for the weekend in disgrace. I arrived home and my Father was so furious he could not speak to me. We all went straight to bed. Now things were quite hard at home: my step-mother had been fighting cancer for a few years and somewhere along the way they’d ended up spending some time with some Christians, who’d begun to pray with them and they had turned to Christ.

That night my father was praying about how to help me and God told him in a dream to tell me about Jesus. The next day we went for a long walk together, and my Dad explained to how all the Jesus stuff was true and that I could know God. I was one of those people who would try anything once, so I thought I might as well: I had nothing to lose. So my Dad prayed for me there and then in a field. He led me in a little prayer of repentance, laid his hands on me and asked God to come and fill me.

The next day I went back to school, promising everyone that I would no longer need to be naked to read Shakespeare, and I went straight to see a friend. She was the only other person I knew who was a Christian. I told her I had asked Jesus into my heart, and she said: ‘Great, you’ll need a bible and this…’ she gave me a worship tape. I was very into music at the time, so I took the tape she gave me home to my room, shut the door and lay down on my bed with my Walkman. Nothing prepared me for what was about to happen… I hit play and my world completely changed. What happened next I will never be able to forget for all eternity: there were some simple songs of worship, songs of repentance: people singing to Jesus. There was nothing musically amazing about them, but as I listened something in deep in my soul broke: I began to come alive.

I began to worship God from my spirit, for the first time. As I worshipped, I began to experience the presence of God. I had no idea what was happening, all I knew is that I was encountering God. I began to experience a great power flowing into my body: I was weeping, laughing, repenting, rejoicing, all at the same time. This went on for hours, then days… I would snatch every secret moment I could and run to meet with God. That day my world totally changed: looking back, I know I was being filled with the Holy Spirit and my knee jerk reaction was to worship God in Spirit and in truth.

Let’s look together at John 4, the story of Jesus with the Samaritan woman at the well. Jesus says: Verse 10 – “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”
Then, in Verse 13 – “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
And, in Verse 23 – “Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshippers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshippers must worship in spirit and in truth.”

There are ‘window’ moments in the bible that give us a glimpse of the big picture, and this is one of them: little moments when Jesus is doing something, but suddenly it is as if the camera pans away and in an instant we see the whole big picture spreading out in front of our eyes… we glimpse the reason behind why Jesus came… why we exist, why we are.

Here we see the trinity at work: (1) Jesus reveals this awesome truth to us: God is not some distant dismissive deity, but a loving (2) Father who longs for us to connect with him!
The Father is seeking worshippers: real worshippers who will engage with him, spirit to Spirit, heart to heart, in the truth of who he is. How is the possible? Well, (3) all of this is made possible by the Holy Spirit. God is Spirit. The Spirit empowers us into that dynamic relationship.

People are always getting in a muddle about what worship is: we get bogged down worrying about what style to use, how long, what songs, what form worship should take. But that is to miss the point entirely. Here Jesus takes worship out of human hands and puts it into the hands of the Holy Spirit. Worship is only possible with the Holy Spirit.  We must worship in spirit: our spirit connecting with the Holy Spirit. And we must worship in truth: with a correct view of who God is. People don’t recite the sermon on the way to work on a Monday morning, but they do hum the songs. Just by the songs you choose, you will be influencing the theology of your church. You’re going to be connecting people with ‘truth’ about who God is.

Graham Tomlin says “we’re all theologians, in the sense that anyone who talks about God is a theologian, the question is whether we’re good ones or bad ones…”

We all need to be hungry to know good theology. We worship in spirit and in truth. Worship is like a bonfire: without truth, the fire will just burn out, as there is no fuel. Without the Spirit, you’re just left with dry wood. So we’re called to worship in spirit and in truth, but how does that impact the worshipping church? What does that actually mean in practice for us?

I’ve been looking through the bible: there are lots of great worship leaders in the Old Testament. And they’re not just little songs, they’re all singing, all dancing numbers… the bible is basically a bit like one of those brilliant old fashioned musicals everyone falls asleep in front of the telly on Christmas day… The story trundles along, and then suddenly, TAH-DAH there’s a great big sing song, everyone starts singing. Take Exodus 15 - Moses and the People of Israel escape from Egypt through the Red Sea, they make it to the other side and all the Chariots get swallowed in the sea. What happens? They stop and have a good old singsong. It’s a kind of a duet, called the Song of Moses and Miriam. It was a huge hit.

Then there’s David... David must have been a nightmare to be a fugitive with. Saul’s army would be breathing down their necks and they’d be hiding in a cave with David, everyone keeping very still and suddenly… David’s got the harp out! No wonder they all abandoned him – he was a complete nightmare! Then later when he became King David we have all the big dance routines with lots of people, whole great troupes of singers and dancers. David had loads of hits. If you think about it there were loads of them: Solomon – he’s got his own book of Songs. The Sons of Korah had a number of hits, scattered through out the Psalms. The Levites…

The point is that the Old Testament is full of songs, and we know who wrote them, we know who sang them, and we know who the Worship Leaders were! Then at the start of the New Testament, the same thing carries on. In Luke 1 & 2 there are 4 individual songs: Mary’s Song (one we traditionally call the Magnificat), Zechariah’s Song (he was mute, then suddenly he begins to sing praise), Simeon sings a song when Jesus arrives in the Temple (we call that one the Te Deum).  Then the angels do a big number in the sky with lights and everything. The New Testament promises to be packed full of songs: we can expect songs from Peter, Paul, …James & John “the Sons of Thunder” (that sounds like a great name for a rock band)!

But something changes at the day of pentecost.

People sometimes get all confused and say ‘Look, there are no worship leaders in the New Testament!’ But that’s simply not true! There are loads of times of worship: they worship like crazy, in public, in private; in prison they sing hymns at the top of their lungs. The New Testament is packed full of songs, not just Psalms from the OT, but contemporary worship songs from that time. Here are a few that ‘most NT scholars’ agree are direct quotes from songs they were singing:

“Wake up, O Sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” (Eph 5:14)

“He appeared in a body, was vindicated by the Spirit, was seen by the angels, was preached among the nations, was believed on in the world, was taken up in glory.”
(1 Timothy 3:16)

“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy” (1 Col 1:15-18)

Then there’s that incredible hymn that Paul quotes word for word in Philippians 2, saying your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: “Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped…”

What’s more, in the original Greek, loads of these passages are written in rhyme. And, then just in case you’re in any doubt: the Book of Revelation comes along… a huge, all singing, all dancing finale with angels and animals and elders…

But there is ONE major change at Pentecost… while there are no authors listed, and no worship leaders highlighted, that silence does not prove that there were none, but rather that they had ceased to be the focus, because something else was going on.

The songs stop being David’s song and Mary’s song NOT because there were no authors or worship leaders, but (and this is of central importance to our understanding of worship)From the day of Pentecost onwards, THE HOLY SPIRIT IS LEADING THE WORSHIP!

So, not only do we worship in spirit and in truth, but it is the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus himself that comes to lead our worship.

Does that mean we can pack up and go home? Are we out of a job? Absolutely not! The wonderful thing is that the Holy Spirit is a Team Player. He loves us all to be involved along the way. We’re always getting great emails sent into podcast@worshipcentral.org asking the same question: “How can we encourage Spirit-Led Worship?”

I want to look very quickly at SIX LITTLE TIPS for encouraging Spirit-Led worship in our churches… They make the work PRAISE:

[1]
P is for Prepare with the Holy Spirit
In Ezekiel 36:27 God says “I will put my Spirit in you and move you…”
When you’re choosing a set-list for a time of worship, ask the Holy Spirit to come and fill you, move you, to help you choose the songs, to guide you.
If you’re a musician, the same applies. Ask the Holy Spirit to move you in the parts you choose to play…

Then [2],
R = we must Rely on the Spirit
When we’re standing up to lead people in worship, we need to rely on the Spirit every step of the way. You could just stand up lead well-rehearsed tunes, but without the Spirit interacting with your spirit, that would NOT BE leading worship in spirit and truth IT WOULD JUST BE be leading songs in the flesh.

To lead worship in spirit and truth, we need to rely on the Holy Spirit → PRAY. We always pray before, during and after the lead, as a team, to keep inviting the Spirit to come and fill us

[3]
A = Adjust to the Spirit
So, you’re prepared, your relying on the Spirit, but then we need to keep in step with the Spirit. A great little rule is: one eye on the Lord and one eye on the people. Keep your eyes open too… it’s not more spiritual to lead worship with your eyes shut. It’s great to keep checking on where people are at… Presumably someone had their eyes open at Pentecost!

….So how do we ‘see’ the Spirit in a time of worship?

Jesus says the Spirit is like the wind in the trees, we can’t see the Spirit, but we can see his effects. It might be that during a certain song, the Holy Spirit starts to fill people, or a particular theme might really resonate with people.

We can use our God-common sense here: if people start weeping during one song, it might be that the Spirit is bringing a sense of repentance. It may be that as you’re leading, you begin to feel a real sense of joy.

That’s why we have a stage: not so people can look at us and think ‘Oh isn’t that guitarist skilful, Praise the Lord!’ but so that we can see what the Holy Spirit is doing and adjust accordingly.

Now, of course the Holy Spirit can speak to you months in advance about the songs, but in our experience, like in the book of Acts, unplanned things can happen when the Holy Spirit is about.

So keep to keep flexible you might need to adjust to the Spirit. That’s not an excuse for not preparing, but just worth bearing in mind.

Then [4]
I is for the Inspiration of the Spirit

Gordon Fee writes “perhaps most noteworthy from the available evidence is the free, spontaneous nature of worship in Paul’s churches, apparently orchestrated by the Spirit himself.”

We must leave room for the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes the Holy Spirit will inspire someone to start singing a song. It might an old song, or it might be a brand new song or a spontaneous song. It might be the worship leader or it might be someone at the back. It could be a melody line, that really echoes something of God’s heart.

The important thing is that it is the inspiration of the Holy Spirit!
We need to make room for more of that…

Then… [5]
S is for Sing in the Spirit

Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 14 about the gift of tongues, saying “I will sing with my spirit”. Sometimes it is wonderful to have a time where we express our worship by singing in tongues. It is important that we don’t force this, but that we allow room. The Catholic Theologian Father Raniero Cantalamessa, who has been the Preacher to the Papal Household for a quarter of a century, writes this about Singing in Tongues in his wonderful book ‘Come, Creator Spirit’:

“This is a gift quite beautiful in its simplicity. It allows us to transcend the limitations of set words and known melodies, and so doing, it creates a real unity of heart and soul throughout the entire assembly. It is a wonderful expression of adoration, praise, rejoicing, and thanksgiving to God, majestic in its tranquillity. As the last note of a familiar hymn fades, or even perhaps in the midst of a time of silence, a rustle of voices grows little by little, swelling and fading, rising and falling, becoming at times loud and strong and at others soft and worshipful as though an unseen conductor were directing it, and as it at a given sign, it spontaneously comes to an end.”

That’s a wonderful way of the Spirit of God leading our worship…

So to encourage Spirit-led worship in our churches, we need to:
P = Prepare
R = Rely
A = Adjust
I = Inspiration
S = Singing in the Spirit

Then [6] and finally,
E is for Edify

In 1 Corinthians 14:26 Paul says: “when you come together, everyone has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. All of these must be done for the strengthening of the church”.

The golden rule here is, as Paul says, “All of these must be done for the strengthening of the church”.

You have to ask yourself the question when you’re leading: is this a good thing for the church? If the worshippers are caught up as one, touching heaven and being changed from glory-into-glory, then that is a very good thing.

But if they’re starting to rip up the pews and throw stuff at you, then you may need to chat with your church leader afterwards. It may be that the church leadership need to teach into this a bit!

On the 24 MARCH our Worship Central day is a ‘Bring Your Pastor’ day, and we’ll try be thrashing out a few of the issues in building a strong Pastor/Worship Leader relationship…

Most of the time, as we move forward in the things of the Spirit, it is a mixture of the two… some people will be thrilled, some not… That’s why it is key that you stay close to your church leader on these things. Chat things through with them, de-brief, ask for advice, and keep learning.

Facilitating Spirit-led worship can be a little like abseiling: you can do it on your own, but it’s much more comfortable if you’ve got someone holding your safety harness. Your pastor is that person.

And it’s amazing what can happen when we are sensitive to the Spirit… I long for more of the Holy Spirit in our worship times. There’s something so powerful when we encounter God in worship, and we’re equipped and empowered by the Spirit.

You know when you walk down the streets of our nation, you’re more likely to hear name of Jesus used as a swear word than in worship or prayer. We long for a time when this nation turns around and when we hear the song of the people of God echoing from stadiums, radios, and street corners.

We, like Esther, are ‘born for such a time as this’
We are the worshippers the Father has called for this moment of History

We long to see the church restored to its calling as the birthplace of great creativity, stunning music, great art, passionate worship where the name of Jesus is High and Lifted up…

But the truth is, whatever you feel the challenges facing your church in worship are, the answer is not to be found in more drummers, great news songs, chart-topping worship albums or amazing worship bands…

OUR MOST URGENT NEED is not churches full of great worship…
    BUT worshippers who are full of the Holy Spirit.

Have a look at EPHESIANS 5:17

17 Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is. 18 Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, BE FILLED with the Spirit.

Let me tell you some really good news. God want to fill you with his Spirit today. Now if we’re Christians, we have the Holy Spirit living in us.  But not like a little cupful, hidden away in here somewhere…

Jesus promised us, as we read, that the Spirit will be like a spring of water welling up inside us. Paul is encouraging us to ‘be filled’ the on-going present continuous tense – we are to experience an ongoing flowing of the Holy Spirit in our lives…

We desperately need to go on being filled with the Spirit. Then, what happens next in Ephesians, what is the bi-product of us being filled?

19 Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord…

Once we get the first bit right, the second bit will follow. In once sense we can relax about doing the stuff – leading worship in the power of the Spirit, releasing prophetic worship, singing with the angels, all of this stuff will happen if we set our hearts on being people who are filled with the Holy Spirit.

So how do we receive more of the Holy Spirit? Jesus said to the Samaritan woman “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

No matter where you’re at today, Jesus wants to pour out his living water on you. Would you like to be filled? All we have to do is ask Jesus to fill us.