It would be fantastic to start this venture off with something uplifting and inspiring but this isn’t meant to do that. It is meant to bring us to consciously evaluate ourselves. In Rev. 3: 14-22 the bible speaks about the church of Laodicea, which was lukewarm. Through the prophet John, God spoke to them and said “I spue thee out of my mouth, because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.” The church of Laodicea is then counselled to buy from Christ gold tried in fire, in order to be rich; white raiment in order to be clothed, and eyesalve in order to see.The part of this scripture that always gets me is Rev. 3: 20 “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.” If you are like me and your head sometimes gets caught in the clouds, you will probably say “how on earth does Jesus get locked out of His own church?” or something else along the lines of “I am so dedicated to Christ therefore this will never happen to me.”I have learned in my few years on earth to never say never when it surrounds things concerning my humanity. I have failed many times, I can assure you of that. A quote which my dad likes to use and I have now adopted from Rev. Lee Stoneking states “anything divine placed in the hands of man is subject to error and misuse.” While I have made mistakes I have also learned that God is faithful, and He will get you back on track when your heart is in the right place.
I was at the Canadian Apostolic Ministries Youth Explosion this year and I was in a very conscious session, on music ministry taught by Lisa Nunes. She did a fantastic job, and I was agreeing with her every step of the way. The theme of the conference was “The Jesus Project”, so the whole session surrounded Jesus in Music Ministry, and the importance of the name of Jesus. I was sold! I was like “Yes Lord!” “Thank you Jesus!” Then here comes the faithful Sunday when I am leading praise and worship, totally in and enjoying every second of it. When it hits me, do you realize that you have sang about three songs and not one word was Jesus? I will not lie that moment threw me off in a good way but the problem in all of this was that I started racking my brain and not one song with the name of Jesus was readily available. This might not matter to some people but to me it was a big deal. “How do you sing three consecutive choruses and not once did you say Jesus?” I mean they are good songs and they have good lyrics, but the only thing that would give an idea of the subject of the song is “you” and “Lord”. Some would say, “It says Lord, so that’s fine.” However there is no power when we mention Lord, there is no access in the word Lord. If we desire to be biblically correct, the bible says in Phil 2:10 “That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” The bible never said we couldn’t use the word Lord, but we need to declare who is Lord, and ensure the songs we sing are biblically sound. I believe it is important for our worship to be Jesus focused. We can be singing for 10 minutes and unless the person with the microphone says Jesus, His name may never be mentioned. As the lovely Lisa Nunes stated “It must have meat!”
I can now see how easy it is for Jesus to end up on the outside knocking. It takes absolutely nothing. It takes more effort now to include Him in whatever we do in our gathering together than to exclude Him. This experience brought me back to an analogy I sometimes share; There is a congregation of people and everyone’s shoelaces are untied, they are dancing but their shoelaces are untied, they are getting things done but their shoelaces are untied. A preacher comes, and ministers on the importance of a tied shoelace, and everyone is agreeing but at the end of the day with all the yelling and agreement, no one actually stops to tie their shoelaces. I don’t want that to be me, and for me this is a moment of serious reflection. I want to include Jesus in my worship, in my day to day activities, and overall in my life. I don’t want to be thinking that I am rich, and I am clothed in the best garments, and Jesus is with me, when in fact He is standing at the door to my heart knocking. I don’t want to believe that He occupies this temple when in fact I have thoroughly excluded Him from my life and begun to worship the subject of “you” and “Lord” but not Jesus. Maybe I am making this way bigger than it is? But I would prefer to go too far like Abraham and have God say “now I know” than to not do enough and get cast away. My plan of action is to revisit the songs that crown Jesus Lord of all, and ensure that I practice what I preach. I have challenged myself to do better. I might not get it right with one go but by the grace of God I will get it right. As long as I am willing to acknowledge where Jesus is then there is a chance. My few words in Jesus Name.
-Ashley #followerofJesusChrist
