Nehemiah – Week 6 – Spiritual Expression
There’s been a tale of two walls playing out recently:
1) The Tale of Wall St. and its rapid crumbling and tumbling. The toppling is being heard and felt in purses and board rooms all over the world.
2) The Tale of the Wall of the Kingdom, as symbolized by the rebuilding of the wall in Nehemiah. We are seeing our “Wall” being built in really tangible ways around here and it’s not reliant on Wall St.
I don’t want to deny or overlook the seriousness of the economic situation. We have friends who have lost their jobs and parents who are visibly concerned about their shrinking retirement nest-eggs. It’s a shaky, ulcer-giving time for a lot of people who are only a street or phone call away from us.
In spite of all of that, I have this sense of excitement. And I am not a sadist or anything. I believe that it is times like this, like when all that Wall St. stands for is failing, that we turn to depend on God and each other for our existence instead of depending on our country or the dollar or interest-only loans. It is a perfect time for the “Children of God to be revealed.”
I believe that we are starting to see stories come in “from the field” that show that building the Kingdom is taking place. And that the crumbling of Wall St., and other crutches, is actually making the Kingdom more real and more urgent and more miraculous in people’s lives. We are seeing renewal and refreshed sense of identity and confidence as we build the Kingdom Wall in the shadow of the toppling wall of consumerism, materialism and convenience.
What does this have to do with spiritual expression? I’ve sensed for a long time that our Worship lacks guts and nerve and passion because we are approaching God as an intellectual reality. And intellectually realities are not very moving or personal. They don’t live where we do, and they don’t work out crazy, powerful good in our lives. To be honest, we haven’t sensed any need for God. We have wanted this cosmic pacifier to help us through our neurotic drama, but that where the need stopped. As the Wall St. Wall crashes, we’re starting to see real need for God, and we are becoming real expressions of God’s love and liberation for people in all kinds of need.
So, here’s how worship (or Spiritual Expression) was meant to work and is starting to work…When our world starts to lose its sense of security and comfort, we are called to bring a sense of security and comfort to it, as extensions of God’s love and power. When we become part of real stories where we see that process in action, where we actually are depending on God to do and be what only He can do and be in these situations, where we are depending God to come through or else someone dies, we recognize that He is at work. And He becomes alive to us. And we gather to talk about what He’s really done in our lives – things like parting the financial seas, like healing desperate relationships, like finding peace in turmoil, like finding a God that loves us – we naturally worship Him as if we’ve finally awakened to the fact that He is real.
Honest spiritual expression is an acknowledgment the reality of the living God in our lives. Worship is a response, not a duty or a pleading. It is the coming together to tell and enjoy stories that show God and us working together in ways that matter and that change things. As our trust in the Walls of materialism, money, government, consumerism fail us, let us down, and fall on us, we find that the Kingdom of God and its walls growing. And it is amazing enough to draw out our praise for the King of the Kingdom.
I hope you’ll check back soon to get a link to some real, local stories and expressions of God working among us as we become His Living Wall. I hope it draws honest worship from all of us!
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