WorshipCentral

"I love my earthly Father but I wouldn’t tell him that his name is like honey on my lips." lol love it.

Wrongly or rightly I often don't think of God as just a father figure. Yes God encompasses all of the good quality of my earhtly father yet He is also so much more. So singing sloppy love songs doesn't make me feel less of a man. When we begin to understand the depth of God and His love, I don't think the intimacy becomes an issue because we are so overwhelmed there is not much more we can do. However I agree from a secular point of view it probably does look very strange and sloppy from the outside. But we must ask God to help us deal with the pride in our lives which may be getting in the way. That somehow as men we can't be seen as having a sensitive side in front of our mates.

Like David dancing and singing naked before God, among others who also happened to rock up. As men we often need to become more undignified than that. Since if we put God before our own selfishness there is nothing more we can do than enter in to the intimate times of worship.

Seriously though if I see any naked dancing in HTB i'm out of there!

I love the tension between the Greatness of god and this fatherly intimacy

Probably my favorite part of the Psalms is in Psalm 8

When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?

I've tried to capture some of this in song. It just excites me that despite all God has made, and all that he is, that he cares for us!

I certainly don't think we should throw the baby out with the bath water as far as intimacy goes, but I do think our songs can capture both aspects of Gods character.

Intimacy is crucial.... There has been a real swing towards reverent worship but both must be held together.... Even the demons address Jesus as "Holy One" and "Son of the Most High" - knowing, and declaring, who Jesus is just isn't enough to call it worship - it must come from a heart that loves Him....

When the prostitute poured perfume on His feet and washed them with tears and dried them with her hair she did something culturally offensive, awkward and "irreverent" - yet Jesus defends her and delights in her worship.

I want all the men in our church to be able to worship our King, yet I am far more concerned about honouring and obeying Him than I am about making things comfortable for those who find intimacy difficult.

Great topic and think there's a few issues all wrapped up in this.

1) Use of biblical imagery.

Biblical imagery of intimacy is grounded in the near eastern culture where it was written. There is still a huge gap between what we as British men would be comfortable with and those who live in the Middle East now are comfortable with - men holding hands walking in the street, would be one example. (Similarly it would be generally unwise to compare your girlfriends's/wife's teeth to sheep.) While I think the biblical imagery can be hugely helpful, is has to be taken in the context in which it was written. It is natural for us to find "His name is like honey..." difficult to relate to because, although we can all appreciate its meaning, it's not the words any of us would use. Nor would honey necessarily be the best image of "sweetness" nowadays.

2) What IS intimacy in worship?

Although the lyrical content of the songs is one component, intimacy is a sharing of your real self and has to involve a loss of reserve. It needs to physical, emotional and spiritual. Intimacy in worship would then be responding to God in a genuine and unaffected way, as He prompts.

3) How do culture, personality and intimacy interact?

People express intimacy differently and those differences are both individual and cultural. Some of the expressions (or lack of expression) may be inappropriate and need to change, but many just reflect that we are different.

4) Should expressions of intamacy be different in private versus corporate worship?

5) How do we as worship leaders (and churches in general) encourage intimacy (ie a real, genuine meeting with and response to God) in worship?

Sorry, now generating questions I can't answer. Help...

Paul

4) I reminded of the verse where Paul says we should pray to God behind a closed door. So there are new depths of private intimacy, but that doesn't mean we can't have some intimacy in a corporate setting.

5) I think you encourage it through areas of silence, and by encouragement of people singing in tongues or singing their own song.

Just some random thoughts, may not make too much sense but there might be something useful in there.

Like Tim said there is a danger of throwing the baby out with the bath water. Once I included 'You are God in Heaven' in a set, it was a Fresher's week service for the Christian Union, with an evangelical focus. I heard later that the speaker wasn't too sure on the choice of song, as singing 'Jesus I am so in love with You' is not necessarily appropriate for a service aimed at non-Christians. A worship coordinator also suggested to a friend that they leave out the 'You are my King' part of Amazing love for a similar service. Thing is I totally disagree with both, I understand where they are coming from, but one of the great things about knowing Jesus is the intimacy that He has opened up. I felt that singing Jesus I am so in love with You was a declaration of what was true, to be honest I didn't even think about and just did what I would normally do, to play differently would, to me, be hiding our light under a basket. Sometimes the danger can then be is that you bend so far backwards that you eventually snap in two. The leader at one meeting once prayed (again to try to relate to the non-Christians), 'God, if You're there'. He was trying to pray on their behalf, but was doing so in his opening prayer of the service, which gave the impression that the Christian's in the room who had invited the non-Christians also had no idea whether God existed or not.

I know that those stories were slightly off the subject, but I guess I was just thinking about the potential dangers of focusing too much on what we think the needs of others are, and changing our worship too much so that it becomes distorted.

Possibly it is a cultural thing, how we feel we should act as men. Thing is sometimes I think Jesus was as hard as nails, you just wouldn't mess with Him, but yet He went round calling God Daddy.

Sometimes I think our image of what a man should be is more an Esau kind of figure. If you gave a bloke a choice between being an Esau (man's man, out hunting, rugged, muscles etc) and Jacob (Mommy's boy, stays at home and does the cooking) it is pretty obvious which one most of us would choose, yet God's choice was different.

5) I think a lot of it is to simply point to God and let Him do the rest. I love songs that paint an image (however faint it might be) of God, such as Indescribable. I find that such songs cause a meditation and fixing of eyes upon God that leads to change. Everyone in the Bible who looked on God or truely met Jesus were changed in someway, and I find that by proclaiming God's greatness of who He is and what He has done then (for me) opens the way to greater intimacy as seeing His beauty just melts your heart. Sometimes I think that there are too few songs that really set out to paint a picture of God's greatness (Although I know we can never do it justice), but by procliaming who He is and what He has done, and using art the craft and skill in the writing of the lyrics to portray that. Going back to Indescibable again, I love the idea of who has seen heavenly storehouses laiden with snow, I know the lyric is from Job, but if it just said 'who has seen the clouds' it wouldn't really create the same wonder. Not to knock the more straight forward song lyrics, because I think that they are great also, especially when you just want to say something simple to God. I think part of pointing to God is also by our life. Hearing about Keith Green's life is something that has encouraged me to seek a greater intimacy.

I think the last post is a pretty awesome post

We mustn't lose the fact that God wants to be in a relationship with us (which is mind-boggling in itself), and that that can happen because of the ultimate act of LOVE by sending Jesus to take the weight of our rubbish on his shoulders.

Sure, we need to sensible with set-planning, maybe not 4 'I love you Jesus' songs in a row. But Tim is right - who says that intimacy is confined to slow, sloppy romanticism? I had lunch with my Dad last week and we talked about a couple of things which are really really difficult for us both at the moment. I then told him that I was so grateful for him being such a godly role-model to me. I reckon that that was pretty intimate - we were painfully honest with each other...but it was wonderful.

I reckon that God loves it when we're honest with Him - it's not that He doesn't know what we're thinking already; it's just the fact that He wants us to tell Him, wants us to make the move to prove that we are putting Him first. God's made the 'first move' in Jesus anyway - we're just responding to that awesome act of LOVE. And so, I reckon that honesty is pretty involved in intimacy