Current Tunage: Deepspace5 – We In Here
Mighty Deepspace5 released a surprise mixtape yesterday. You can cop it at deepspace5.com for all the “goodness gracious lava raps of flaming amazing”.

I was having some email-type correspondence with a friend today on the subject of worship. We were talking about how praise and worship are things that are so much more than songs and Sunday mornings.

Here’s an excerpt:

Romans 12:1-2 ESV
I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

We present ourselves a living sacrifice – in a holy and acceptable way – which IS spiritual worship. In other words, worship isn’t just singing with our spirits and minds, but how we live and act and think and behave. It’s how we transform into the image of God by renewing our minds with His Word and using it to discern good from evil and acceptable from unacceptable and perfect from imperfect… all of it is worship.

Ephesians 1:11-12 ESV
In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory.

When we’re in Christ, the “praise of his glory” is something we can be.

Philippians 1:9-11 ESV
And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.

We grow in love, knowledge, and discernment – learning to determine excellence, to be pure, to be blameless… to be filled with the fruit of the Spirit – filled with righteousness… and it’s all ultimately praise and glory to God.

Of course, praise is also something we speak and sing -


1 Corinthians 14:15b ESV
I will sing praise with my spirit, but I will sing with my mind also.

When we praise, we don’t sing empty words (or it ain’t praise!); we sing and speak things to and of God that honour him as God – primarily for what he is, but (underneath that) also for what he has done in and around us. He took dead things (us) and made them alive. He saves some of us from our just damnation because of his glorious grace and mercy. He makes stone hearts beat. He holds the universe in order and cosmic control. Yet, he’s personal and makes himself known. He does the impossible endlessly.


Praise…

It’s not just coldplay-lite rock or organ/piano tagteams, it’s all the raps and metal and slam poetry and apoligetics and deep conversations and quiet moments and handwritten notes and anything else that communicates the truth about Him, honours Him, glorifies Him.

It’s what we were designed for.

When we’re not communicating, we praise him by loving, forgiving, and serving others, by crucifying the flesh, by sacrificing ourselves for our wife, children, family, church, friends, leaders, followers, acquaintances, enemies, and nobodies.

We praise him by spending time pouring through His Word gleaning the truth and the heart-transforming that it does, by depending on him in prayer, by sharing his goodness and blessings with others through hospitality and friendship and generosity.

We praise him by living with his people and with those who are still his enemies – always in a way that honours him and gives him the glory for the rebellious, sin-destroying, servant-hearted, self-sacrificing lives we live before both sets of people.

We praise him by loving his Church and his churches (…his Bride).

We praise him by fullfilling the Great Commission in the spirit of the Great Commandment.

When we’re in him, we praise him with everything but our sin – yet we praise him by the way we respond to it… with forgiveness and grace (to ourselves, to others), but without mercy (crucify the flesh).