Last night’s sermon continued the series on ‘Everyday Church’, this time looking at the topic of ‘everyday worship’. By studying Psalm 34, we learned more about whole-life worship, as defined by Rom 12:1, yielding everything we have and are to God: ‘Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.’

Everyday worship: not defined by circumstances

Ps 34 urges us to bless and extol God at all times and is so positive we might be forgiven for thinking it was written when David was living in favourable times. The heading makes clear that this was not so; the psalm was written by David ‘when he pretended to be insane before Abimelech, who drove him away, and he left.’  The historical background to the psalm is found in 1 Samuel 21 and shows us David fleeing from King Saul, who was determined to kill him, and forced to hid in enemy territory, living like a fugitive, living amongst foreign kings who did not trust him, resorting to feigning insanity as the only tactic he can think of which will preserve his life. In those difficult, unfavourable circumstances, he makes a determined choice to rejoice and to boast in God, rather than wallowing in misery and moaning at the difficulties he is facing. Outward circumstances do not have to determine our spiritual response: as Rend Collective say in their song ‘Joy’: ‘pain will not define us; joy will re-ignite us.’  When we are faced with conflicting emotions, we have to decide who and what to believe. When circumstances tell us one thing and God tells us something which is directly contrary to what the circumstances are telling us, we have a choice: believe the visible or trust in God. David chooses to trust in God, focussing on God’s ability to deliver, refusing to be defined by circumstances, but only being defined by God.

Everyday worship: dependent on God

Everyday worship is dependent on who God is. Worship is rooted in God’s character. The reason we don’t have to be defined by circumstances is because God is completely independent of the circumstances of our lives. He is above and beyond the circumstances which may seem to shape us or hem us in. He is a God who can deliver out of adversity. (Ps 34:7) He is good and full of blessing. (Ps 34:8) David reflects that ‘the lions may grow weak and hungry, but those who fear the Lord lack no good thing.’ (Ps 34:10) God is ever-vigilant and ever-aware: ‘The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and His ears are attentive to their cry.’ (Ps 34:15) He is able to hear when the righteous cry out and He doesn’t just hear: He delivers us. (Ps 34:17)

This principle of focussing on God rather than on circumstances was ever present in David’s life. When the Amalekites, enemies of God, raided the Negev and Ziklag and took captive the women and everyone else in Ziklag, both young and old (1 Sam 30:2), David and his army knew sorrow and despair. David faced opposition not only from the Amalekites but from his own men who talked of stoning him, but his strategy was to encourage himself in God and thereby find strength. (1 Sam 30:7) Ultimately, worship is a choice we make. Matt Redman reminds us ‘And when the darkness closes in, Lord, still I will say “Blessed be the name of the Lord.”’ (‘Blessed Be Your Name’, Matt Redman) Kutless remind us ‘Through the best, through the worst, Jesus, we choose: we will worship You.’ (‘We Will Worship’, Kutless) Worship cannot be left to those days when we feel like worshipping, when things are going well for us and God seems eminently real and close to us. Everyday worship happens every day simply because we make it happen through an act of our wills. (see Ps 27:8, Ps 57:8, Ps 91:2)

Everyday worship: done with others

Ps 34 also teaches us  the importance of corporate worship as part of our everyday worship. Whilst faith is personal and individual, David reminds us ‘Glorify the Lord with me; let us exalt His name together!’ (Ps 34:3) Eugene Peterson says ‘The whole life, the complete life, cannot be lived with haughty independence. Our goal cannot be to not need anyone.’ (‘Run With The Horses’, P 164) Much of the psalm is written to other people and reminds them of the benefits of praising God (see Ps 34:7, 9, 10, 17, 22) As we come together in worship, our whole focus is turned to God and we are able to understand more of the bigger picture; as we pause from the busyness of everyday life to ‘be still and know that I am God’ (Ps 46:10), as we deliberately and consciously take our eyes off ourselves and look to God, we put ourselves in a place where we invite God to come and search us, to speak to us, to reveal more of Himself to us. 

Dave spoke this morning at Cherry Tree Court from Luke 7:36-50, the story which tells us of the woman anointing Jesus at the home of Simon the Pharisee. Luke often gives us personal details not found in other gospels (the Parable of the Prodigal Son and the story of Zacchaeus are only found in Luke’s gospel, for example), and he clearly relates to the woman’s heartfelt response to Christ’s lavish love.

The woman is described as having a ‘sinful life’ and she comes to be with Jesus because she knows she desperately needs His forgiveness and unconditional love. The depth of her repentance and love is shown in the lavish gift she pours on Him – perfume costing a year’s wage, poured from an alabaster jar (in itself a beautiful pot.) She cries wracking sobs and weeps tears of shame and gratitude in an outpouring of emotion which clearly made Simon, the host, uncomfortable and made others discuss the waste of such extravagant devotion. Jesus, however, never views devotion in coldly clinical terms, remarking that those who have been forgiven much love much, whilst those who have been forgiven little love little. Simon’s curiosity in Jesus is intellectual; he presumably is confident of his own righteousness and therefore can remain detached from Him. Those who know their need for love and forgiveness cannot be so measured in their response to the lavish, unconditional love which Jesus offers us freely – but at great cost to Himself. The woman’s selfless devotion prepares Jesus for the burial which is to come.

Do we realise what God has done for us? Do we understand how desperate our situation is without God? Only when we see the depth of our sin and the desperation of life without God can we come to appreciate all He has done for us.

‘I am broken at Your feet
Like an alabaster jar
Every piece of who I am
Laid before Your majesty

I will bow my life
At Your feet
At Your feet
My lips
So lost for words
Will kiss Your feet
Kiss Your feet

Oh the gravity of You
Draws my soul unto its knees
I will never be the same
I am lost and found in You.’ (‘Alabaster’, Rend Collective)

We also had a birthday to celebrate:

Geometry is defined as the branch of mathematics which is concerned with the properties and relations of points, lines, surfaces, solids, and higher dimensional analogues. I struggle even to understand that definition! I vividly remember maths lessons at school dealing with shapes. Everyone else loved these lessons, because 2D and 3D shapes would be brought out and all these kinesthetic learners who loved handling things and learning from touch revelled in these practical lessons. I can simply remember agonising over how many sides and faces and edges a square had and wondering who on earth really cared about all these different shapes…

The linguist in me, however, loved the names for these shapes. Triangles obviously had three sides  and three angles: the name itself told you that! A pentagon was a five-sided shape because its very name told me so (from pente and gonia, which is Greek for five and angle.)

A hexagon in a six-sided polygon for similar reaons (hex is Greek for six). I rather like hexagons, because they tessellate so well:

I also remember feeling a deep satisfaction when I first learned that France is often called ‘the Hexagon’ because of its shape:

Thus, my love of languages kept me going through heptagons, octagons, nonagons, decagons, hendecagons, dodecagons and the like, even when I was entirely bored with counting sides and learning other geometrical terms related to these shapes!

Today, that interest in words (rather than the amazing world of shapes) resurfaced. Garry, in his job as a mechanical engineer, often has to deal with drawings and turn these drawings into a 3D reality. He did it when designing a model of the Buckminster Fullerene (affectionately known as the ‘Bucky Ball’, technically known as a spherical fullerene molecule with the formula C60.) The model, made by Garry,  is shown below with Nobel Prize Winner Professor Sir Harold Kroto who discovered this molecule.

Now he is on with a task for church (to be revealed at a later date, hopefully!) which requires similar skill and when I was surveying the drawings, I asked what those ‘plastic-cup like things’ are called. (You can see I struggle with words when I don’t know the correct ones!) He told me these were frusta. Agog with anticipation at discovering a new word, I was back in the world of geometry. A frustum is the portion of a solid (normally a cone, as in this case, or a pyramid) that lies between two parallel plans, cutting it. Confused? It looks like this:

I have no doubt that Garry and others will have great delight in wrestling the properties of this shape into the design they actually want. For me, the joy is in discovering that the Latin word ‘frustum’ simply means a ‘piece cut off‘. A new word to add to my vocabulary. I’ll probably never have cause to use it again, not being an engineer, mathematician, aerospace engineer (where frustum is the common term for the fairing between two stages of a multistage rocket like Saturn V, which is shaped like a truncated cone) or computer graphic designer (where it describes  the three-dimensional region which is visible on the screen, formed by a clipped pyramid.) But I will feel immensely satisfied at knowing what these people are talking about in future!

We are immensely grateful for the people at church who volunteer their time and efforts to help improve the building. Thank you to Garry, Stephen, Stacey, Jade and James who were willing volunteers in painting and to Mark who put up the scaffolding for us on Friday night.

James’s height was definitely useful, given the height of the room!

Stephen bowing to his father’s superior skills?

Jade in her coveralls:

Stacey and her cloud dream:

However, there are countless more people to be thanked. The church’s leadership gladly invest time and money into everything that is done in the church. Once the decorating is completed, a new floor surface will be fitted along with a sink to facilitate painting and other messy activities. Dave and Ray were busy discussing the best location for the sink, gladly giving their plumbing expertise another outing!

Those helping with the coffee morning willingly kept workers going, supplying them with drinks and biscuits. Stepladders were loaned so that more people could be involved in the work at the same time. All of this teamwork is greatly appreciated by us all. THANK YOU!

In our continuing desire to improve the facilities we are able to offer local people, we have recently begun work on decorating the children’s room. We began to clear the room of furniture and put down cardboard to cover the flooring:

The first job was to make the notice boards into chalk boards so that these can be used not only to display work but as a teaching aid for Sunday School:

Then a group of volunteers started work on the ceiling, turning this into a blue sky with fluffy clouds!

Concentrating on the clouds:

The finished ceiling:

Next, walls were tackled:

Round one completed:

Continuing teamwork:

Glossing:

Goods ‘fit for purpose’ are ‘well suited for their designated role or purpose.’  The chillies we have been lovingly tending since October last year have provided us with endless amusement and spiritual enlightenment, but if the proof of the pudding is in the eating, then presumably the success of our chilli-growing can only really be measured once the said chillies have been eaten.

Yesterday was the day when, upon inspection of the red chillies, we decided that if we left them any longer, they would start to shrivel. So we plucked the first one:

We plucked another two and then chopped them, ready to eat (and ready to re-plant their seeds, so they can continue to fill God’s command to reproduce!)

I’m pleased to report that these chillies had flavour, fire and quite an after-burn!

What is our purpose in life, then? (other than to eat chillies, of course….!) The Westminster Shorter Catechism asks what is man’s chief end (or purpose) and answers this ‘man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.’ How are we doing when we evaluate our lives according to this criterion? Are we fit for purpose? We are undoubtedly still being pruned, shaped and refined by God, but we need to examine our purpose regularly and refuse to live by any other standard imposed on us. All that really matters is found in Christ and our purpose needs to reflect His centrality and importance.