Out of a place of intimacy

Today was our first day of class on the Tabernacle of David in School of Worship. At the end of class we were asked to spend some time reflecting on what stood out to us and how it applies to us as worship leaders. Here are my thoughts:

The thing that has stood out to me the most from class today is the freedom that I should feel in Christ, even in the midst of my calling. Yes, there is a lot of responsibility on me as a worship leader, as I am called to usher people into the presence of God, but I'm not able to do it in my own strength, so I shouldn't stress about it and try do it by myself. Leading people into God's presence and living a life that glorifies him will be a natural outflowing of a life of intimacy with him.

David was called a man after God's own heart, not because he lived a perfect life, but because he sought after God, even in the darkest times of his life. He was willing to admit to his shortcomings and surrender them to God and ask God to make him new and forgive him. He had great intimacy with God and because of that God used him to lead the entire nation into true worship of him, and used his kingdom as an example of what the kingdom of heaven looks like. 

I just find so much freedom in this example of the life of David and the intimacy that he had with God. Out of that, everything else was birthed. The only thing I need to concern myself with is focusing on staying in a place of intimacy with God and out of that everything else will flow. We learnt in class today that intimacy with God allows us to proclaim the truth about God as we get to know him better and through our proclamation God brings fresh revelation into our lives. This revelation takes us into a deeper place of intimacy with God. And so the cycle continues. But it all starts with me choosing a life of intimacy with God and guarding that as the most important thing in the world to me. 

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Deafening Silence - short song assignment

Here is another song writing assignment that I did for my School of Worship class this week. We were given 20 minutes in class to write the lyrics and then could take some time in the evening to put it to music if we wanted. 

The assignment was to take one of five oxymorons and use it either in or to inspire a song. I chose 'deafening silence'. My inspiration for this song came from Elijah's expereince with God on the mountain in 1 Kings 19:11-13. 


I did a short recording of it on my iPhone and made it into a video so that I could put it on here. The sound quality isn't great, but at least you can get the just of how I want it to sound :)

Verse 1:
I want to hear Your voice
I want to see Your face
I want to feel Your presence
Here in this place


Verse 2:
But You're not in the wind
You're not in the quake
Nor are You in the fire
Though they seem so great


Chorus:
I stand on this mountain top
Humbled and in awe
Surrounded by Deafening Silence
It's You
            and I adore
I adore


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Metaphor - song writing assignment

In class this week we’re learning about song writing. We have incredibly teachers, Caleb and Erin, who are really great musicians. One of our assignments from Monday was to choose a metaphor from Isaiah 25 or 26 and explore it poetically.

I chose the metaphor from Isaiah 25:4 which says,
“You have been a refuge for the poor, a refuge for the needy in their distress, a shelter from the storm and a shade from the heat.”

You are a refuge in my need

A safe place for me to hide

You keep me sheltered in the storm

Protecting me from raging tides

In my distress I run to you

Guard me from the blazing heat

That burns and bickers in my soul

Leaving no room for retreat

Your love is like a cooling balm

A shelter in times of trouble

You, Lord, make the waters calm

Rebuilding my heart from rubble

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Whatever Happened To Worship?

- A Call to True Worship - By A. W. Tozer

Book report by Sarah Palser for School of Worship

Whatever Happened to Worship was compiled from a sermon series that A. W. Tozer preached in the 1960s shortly before His death. Even though it was written 50 years ago, Tozer’s thoughts are still very relevant to the struggles that the Christian church faces with worship today. The book starts by looking at worship in the church, where people often feel like they are rich and lack nothing. But what is really lacking is a true, unadulterated worship of God. We were not created to obey a set of laws, but to worship God and enjoy Him forever. He does not need our worship, be He loves it. Sadly it is often the case that those who lead in the church are not those who pray, seek God and spend time adoring Him together. This is something that I have witnessed in my own church and it is a tragedy indeed that breaks God’s heart.

Tozer then goes on to say that true worship demands new birth. We need to have a biblical understanding of who God really is and how He wants to worship in order to really worship Him. “True worship of God must be a constant and consistent attitude or state of mind within the believer.” (page 24) It is birthed through our understanding of who He is. We please Him most when we stop trying to make ourselves perfect but give ourselves wholly to Him, knowing that He understands and loves us completely. And this comes through a correct understanding of the fear of the Lord.

We often call things ‘worship’ that are not actually true worship. God loves it when we worship and we need to ask Him how He wants to be worshipped. This was a new insight to me which has challenged the way that I view worship. I have always worshipped God in the ways in which I have been taught, or in the way that I like to worship, without considering that God may have a particular way in which He wants to be worshiped. I want to apply this to my life by seeking God and asking Him how He wants me to worship Him. Tozer also pointed out the importance of worshipping in both Spirit and Truth. One without the other would not be adequate. We need both to really bring pleasure to God’s heart.

We were born to worship God. It is a tragedy that many people never come to this understanding. We need to focus on teaching people the true reason for their existence. Jesus walked on earth to reflect God’s glory and we were created to do the same. Tozer ponders that when people lose God they spend their time trying to find something else to worship. It is a tragedy that while humans were made more like God than any other creature, most now reflect His glory less than the rest of creation.

Tozer next discusses the fact that we cannot find God by our own intellect. If we could, we would be equal to Him. Instead, we are awed by the presence of God and drawn to Him by His revelation to us of who He is. Tozer defines worship as “to feel with the heart”. For us to worship in Spirit and Truth we need to feel wonder and experience the mystery of God.

The church, Tozer says, exists to do corporately what each Christian should be doing individually – to worship God. The church fails God when it fails to allow people to truly worship Him together. When we align ourselves with Him again, His Spirit will realign the church with the Word of God. I really like this quote: “There is no limit to what God can do through us if we are His yielded and purified people, worshipping and showing forth His glory and His faithfulness.” (page 101) We often limit the way that God can use us and how effective we can be by not yielding to Him and worshipping Him wholeheartedly. What power there is when we live out what we were created to do!

It is not the exception that Christians worship God in Spirit and in Truth, Tozer states, but rather that is what a normal Christian does. Those who do not cannot be considered normal Christians. We have become a generation that has lost sight of the sacredness of our worship. To really know God is to love and worship Him. They cannot be separated. Our worship is not something that happens only on Sundays, but is something that should be lived out every moment of each day. “If you cannot worship the Lord in the midst of your responsibilities on Monday, it is not very likely that you were worshipping on Sunday!” (page 122) This is something that I need to be constantly reminded of in order to make sure that my whole life is lived as an expression of worship to God. This cannot be done if I have not fully surrendered every aspect of my life to God and if I am holding on to things that I know are displeasing to Him. This book has challenged me with the importance of really living a life of complete surrender, one that glorifies God every moment of my day, for I was made to worship Him and that is what I want to do. 

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A dream becoming a reality after 7 years :)

Dear Prayer Supports, Friends and Family

On Friday I graduated from my Community Development for Missions school. I was asked to give a speech during the graduation ceremony to sum up my experience in the school and to share a bit of what God did in us and through us. I put up my speech on this blog and you to read if you are interested. I learnt so much in the school and it was very hard to try and sum it up in just a few minutes. I have also got a number of other posts on this blog which you can read if you are interested in hearing more about my time in the Community Development School. A little bragging point: I got 100% for my final project for the school I just finished! I worked very hard on my project and I'm proud of the outcome. The project was based on the community of Viedgesville that I have been to visit five times with the Pinelands Baptist Church Mthatha missions team over the years. It was exciting coming up with a development idea for a real place that I have a big heart for and I'm excited about the possibility of going there with our church the week that I return to South Africa at the end of June this year. The paper is quite long, but if you are interested in taking a look at it, let me know and I will email you a copy. 

As of Monday this week I am now a student again at YWAM Denver, doing a School of Worship (SOW) at last! It has been a seven year journey from when God first gave me a desire to do this school (in 2005), so I know without a shadow of a doubt that I am exactly where God wants me to be, doing what he wants me to be doing. I'm very excited about what I will learn this quarter and I'm looking forward to see the things that God grows in me and gets me to step out in. There are eleven students doing the SOW and only three of them are Americans! It's lovely being in such a diverse and international class! We have four Canadians, three Americans, a South Africa, an Australian, a Norwegian and a girl from Finland. Between all the students currently at the YWAM Denver base this quarter, there are at least 10 nationalities represented and I absolutely love that!

Yesterday (Monday) was registration and settling in and today (Tuesday) has been bonding and instructions about how things are run at the base. We have the afternoon off and then will be having a class party at our leaders' house tonight. This week we will be sharing testimonies and getting to hear from the base directors as well as from the pastor of the neighbouring church. I'm looking forward to finding out which band I will be in and who I will be getting to write and create music with. It's so exciting! During this quarter we are each required to write and perform four original songs which we will further develop as a band. From these songs, a number will be selected to be recorded professionally by our class and made into a CD towards the end of the quarter. We also receive one on one training on an instrument of our choice which we want to learn or develop further in. I have chosen to do acoustic guitar because I really want to learn to play guitar better and hopefully reach the point where I will be able to lead worship on either piano or guitar. I know this will be incredibly useful, especially since there are often times where pianos aren't readily available. During this school I will also be reading three books on worship and writing book reports on them. I will be posting my reports on this blog, so if you are interested in hearing more about what I am learning, feel free to subscribe to it by entering your email address on the left hand side of my blog's page. If you need help subscribing, please let me know and I will help you. 

I'm so incredibly excited to be here doing this School of Worship! I know that God's timing is perfect and that there is a reason why he's made me wait seven years to do this school. I feel like I am much more confident in my worship leading and my ability to play in public now than I was in 2007 when I originally wanted to do the school. Over the last few years I have received several prophesies over my life about my gifting in worship and, while I do not yet feel like I am at the level that these prophecies indicated yet, I want to get to that level by being in a place like this where I can receive excellent training and equipping and being in an environment that will stretch me and grow me in my ability to worship God and lead people into his presence. 

Thank you so much for partnering with me in this adventure. I covert your prayers and I know that God uses them powerfully in my life. Thank you so much for all your love and support over the past three months and I really look forward to sharing with you what God teaches me in the coming three months. Thank you also to those of you who have contributed financially towards me being able to be here. I really love the way that God provides when I step out in faith and obedience to his calling on my life. I am very close to being debt free, but am still in need of a little more support. Please prayerfully consider whether you would be able to partner with me in this. If you feel God leading you in this way or just want to help me out, please feel free to either send money straight to Pinelands Baptist Church (for my South African supporters) or to YWAM Denver (for my American supporters) with a note saying that it is for me. I really really appreciate it. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me. 

Much love in Christ,

Sarah

Graduation Speech for CDFM

My CDFM class - students and staff: (back) Dante, Sarah G, Kai, (front) Me, Chrissy, Kourtney, Jonathan, Keri, Angie and Jenna

Honestly I didn't know what to expect of this school when I applied. I hoped I'd learn something about God's heart for the poor and how to combat poverty, but I didn't have incredibly high expectations. But within the first week of teaching God had already blown me away with a complete change in worldview and I learnt more that first week than I expected to learn in the whole school. 

And from there on the learning and amazing teaching continued. Each week brought new insight and revelation into topics that God can use in us to change the lives of people all around the world. Things like water & sanitation, healthcare, education & teaching, economics, how to start an NGO, amongst many other things. But while this school did teach us a lot of practical skills that we can use on the missions field, these would be a lot less meaningful without the Godly foundations that everything was built on and the biblical worldview through which everything was seen. 

I know I speak for my whole class when I say that I now definitely have a much better understanding of how to go into a community and be able to empower them and help them build themselves up without doing more harm than good in the process. This school has revealed to us so many misconceptions we've had about missions and the ways in which we've done things in an unsustainable and unloving way in the past, even though we thought we were doing the right thing. I feel equipped to go out and make a much more long term impact in the world now, wherever that may be. And I know that I will be able to use the principles taught in this school to bring God's Kingdom on earth as it is in heaven in every sphere of life that I may be in: whether that be in church, on the missions field, in social circles, education, IT or in business sphere. I know that God is going to use each one of us to bring about his intentions for mankind wherever he may take us in life. And I'm really excited to be a part of it. 

I would like to thank all our staff for all their input in our lives over the past three months. We really appreciate you and would not have made it through without your love and support. And thank you YWAM Denver for this amazing opportunity that you have given us. I look forward to seeing where God takes each one of us from here. 

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Last week of Community Development

I can't believe how fast time has gone. I officially have only one more week of my first school at YWAM Denver, studying Community Development for Missions (CDFM). For an overview about what I'm doing this year, check out this post. 

 

It has been a pretty challenging school, but I've learnt so much and I'm looking forward to putting it into practice at some point in the near future. I feature in this video below where I talk about a stove that I made out of tin cans! 

These photos are of the finished product :)

I think the most impactful things that I've learnt in this school were summaries really well in the book "When Helping Hurts" which I wrote a book report on here. I'd really encourage you to read it if you are interested in Missions or Community Development of any form. In Missions and Community Development we so often end up going into a community thinking that in just a few weeks or months we can 'fix' them and make them like us. Obviously most of us don't consciously think that way, but it very often ends up being the underlying attitude that the community receives during our time there. We go in and build them houses, paint their schools, plant trees, teach them about God or abstinence or about health and HIV, without taking the time to really understand their culture. 

All people are created in God's image and have incredible potential to do amazing things. On Friday night I went to a thing called the Resound: One Night Conference with Ray Hughes from Circuit Riders as the speaker. It was a really amazing time of worship and teaching. The church where the conference was held, VineLife, is situated in the middle of the country with huge windows on either side of the stage that overlooked the fields and Rocky Mountains. Instead of standing facing the band, we were encouraged to stand on the side of the stage and look out over God's creation as we worshiped Him. It was a really incredible experience to watch the sun set over such amazing beauty and try to comprehend that the God who made all of that loves ME and created me to be in relationship with him. It blew my mind and I just wept! 

One thing that Ray said that really stood out to me was that "God created everything to be creative". Such a simple yet so profound a concept! Every cell in our body recreates many times a second. All creation creates and grows with God all the time. How much more should we! I also love the concept of the universe being described as "uni" = one, "verse" = song. The universe is one song, every part of creation singing it's part in harmony. It reminds me of this mashup that Louie Giglio made of stars and whales singing together. So amazing! 

So coming back to how that applies to what I learnt in the CDFM school, God has put amazing potential and strengths and talents in each one of us and we just need to harness them. So when we go into communities where we want to help bring about change, we need to see them the same way. I've learnt that when we go into a community we need to help them recognise their own strengths and identify the potential that each other have. From this we can help to empower them to bring about the change that they want to see in their community. 


There are some really amazing stories of what has happened in communities when the local people have been empowered and have hope again to reach for their dreams and create a better life for their families. Obviously alongside this we need to help through educating the people in the areas that they want to develop in and helping them come up with sustainable solutions to their identified needs. So that may be teaching them how to build a well or a water catchment system, but not simply building it for them. The most important thing is to make sure that when we leave the community, the people are empowered to continue bringing about change and developing further from the work that has been done. 

On Tuesday and Wednesday I'm going to be sharing some of what I've learnt with the Compassion Discipleship Training School (DTS) that is running at YWAM Denver Arvada campus (Paul is doing that school) and with Boarders DTS that is running up at the Eagle Rock campus. I'm kinda nervous about it and would really appreciate some prayers. I haven't had much time to prepare yet, so I need to spend most of the next two days planning and preparing. Tomorrow (Monday) night is also the last time that our school will be working with the Koren refugees who we have been teaching English. I'm pretty sad to be leaving them because I've really enjoyed working with them, but I hope that I might be able to visit them again next when I'm doing School of Worship next quarter. But I think I'll write more about that in a different post :)

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