19.3 All Things Holy
© 2018 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
The flow through rooms is all about how we approach each next space in a home. Hebrews 10:19-22 is all about how we approach everything Holy inside of God. Unless we enter the Holiest as children, that is, as playing pirates in full-blown excitement, we cannot please God.
Yes, that is the opposite of how Christianity has described “the holy.” There is a reverence inside the Holiest, most certainly, but it is the reverence of full enjoyment and not the fake, which is little more than masks for the timidity that displeases God.
The Worship Services. In this lesson, we want to talk about the role of ministry inside the Holiest, in the full appropriation and enjoyment of everything inside of God given to us. This appropriation and enjoyment is found primarily inside the worship services of the Church, although it most certainly flows on out from there. In other words, the topic of this lesson is the worship services of the Community.
You might wonder from whence comes all this word from me. I can tell you that much of it comes out from innumerable deep, varied, and priceless experiences of the Holy inside the worship services, things that most modern churches know nothing about.
Christ As He Is. I must state this here. When I have listened to or read those who teach “union with Christ,” except for those who have experienced the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, it is clear to me that they do not know the Christ I know. I hardly know of what they speak, a “Christ” so flat and shallow.
We are talking about an all here now mighty Spirit of power, personal and kind, filling us with all glory and flowing out from us in rivers of transformation. We are talking about union with the Energeia by which all things are created and sustained. We are talking about the Becoming Known of Father, all the innumerable, but specific things coming out from a Holy, INFINITE, and Mighty God into our human lives. We are talking about Jesus.
God Energeoing. I expect power inside of life together, the power of God released in surprisingly wonderful ways. And such have I known, and witnessed with my own eyes, and been part of the glory and the beauty. Out from that personal knowledge of God among His people, I want to write regarding worship services by the Spirit of the Lord. And in doing so, I want to be quite specific, for we are preparing for Session 21, the very Ekenosis of God, God walking this earth, God seen and known.
For indeed, God is the energeoing inside of you both continuously to will – to choose – to desire and to energeo on behalf of His good pleasure (Philippians 2:13 – JSV).
Glory IN Weakness. But before we do that, I want to put a gray X across my boasting in all the glory of God I have experienced in the midst of His people, not to cross it out, but to put it in its place. Regardless of all the glory I have known, we were crippled by two awful underlying beliefs. First, that God was “superior,” and second, that our human weakness was our enemy.
You and I have been healed of such awfulness. Now we know that, regardless, God is beneath of us, carrying us in all that we are, sharing with us every particle of a weakness designed entirely by Him, yet, at the same time, filling that weakness with His own energeoing, a reality we know entirely by faith. When I am in my weakest position, I am more inside the Holiest than I ever knew back then.
Knowing AND Knowing. And thus, I do not want to give you a view of worship in terms of “We’ve got the glory now, brother,” that is, as a momentary and hyper achievement, something impossible to maintain. We live and walk in that glory every moment regardless of what we feel or experience. When I am frightened and discouraged, I KNOW that I am never separated from my Father, energeoing all things in me.
Yet, at the same time, though we are already filled with all of God now, any idea that we “know” what that means is folly of the worst sort. The KNOWING of God will be exploding in us and among us in worship far beyond what we have ever known – continually – forever.
Two Services a Week. Having one worship service a week is not enough, having three a week is too much. Two services a week is always just right. At the same time, a community, having breakfasts at home, could make the decision to gather together for a devotion time before the work or school day. If that seems good to you, I would recommend making it just the five work/school days, putting less pressure on the weekends. Wednesday night always worked great for the “lesser” of the two services, but either Saturday evening or Sunday morning (both times held differing advantages) are great for the “greater” worship service. (I am assuming here, that God has ordered the steps of my life specifically to teach me of His ways.)
A Sharing Service. The Wednesday night service should be a sharing service, more relaxed, with sharing limited to about fifteen minutes each, and without formal “preaching of the word.” Every member of the community should feel comfortable getting up to share, even if only for a couple of minutes. We are speaking the wonderful knowledge of Jesus in our daily lives, personal to each one of us.
But before continuing further, we must position exactly what is happening here, what we are doing in the “worship service.” To do that, we must understand the relationship between praise and word. You see, union with Christ is marriage, and the worship service is the marriage bed.
Bringing Forth Life. Everything in the Bible is written around the metaphor of bringing forth life. When Jesus said, “You must be conceived again,” He was talking entirely about “sex” in all of its ramifications. I am not speaking of smut, but of God.
The words that I speak to you are Spirit and they are life (John 6:63). Those words are God’s Sperm, entering into us in order to bring forth in our bellies the very life, the energeoing of God. Faith is the female part of sex. – To the pure all things are pure (Titus 1:15). Life must bring forth life.
The Sperm of God. I am drawing these thoughts from The Two Gospels, Chapter 7. Life. I then wrote these words. “Worship without preaching after is like foreplay without consummation; desire is awakened, yes, but no life can come forth. Preaching without worship first is like sex without romance; it gets the job done, but not inside of love. More than that, preaching without worship first means much of the seed sown will not find faith.”
When you do a study of Paul’s use of the word “logos,” the Word, the Sperm of God (which is the actual Greek word), you see that much of the time he said, “The logos that was preached into you.” Sitting around talking is never the same thing as the formal speaking of word inside a worship service.
The Romance of Love. As we speak Christ into one another, the very Seed of God is passing out from the speaker and into the hearts of those receiving that Seed. Be filled with Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your hearts to the Lord, speaking good grace at all times, giving thanks for the sake of all things (Ephesians 5:18-20 – JSV).
The entire purpose of praise before the speaking of the Word is to open our hearts as the female of God, that we might be fully receptive to that Word which our Husband, Jesus, is planting in our womb. It is the romance of love.
The Biology of God. In recent years, on a few occasions, I have experienced speakers of Christ who had dispensed with “the praise service,” and who simply starting speaking. That experience of word was, to me, abrupt and rough, with very little Seed from God finding faith inside of me. On the other hand, when we have a wonderful worship time, and then the leader says, “Well, we’ve had all we need tonight,” with no speaking of the word; the truth is, though the romance was great, there can be no bringing forth of life apart from the planting of the Seed. Now, it’s not that romance only is not a great experience, and on occasion all that the Holy Spirit chooses to do. What is critical for us is that we understand the biology of God.
A Serious Business. Let’s talk about the order of services. You see, bringing forth life is a serious business. Yes, God designed pleasure into procreation, but the woman knows that “nine months” of Christ being formed in her is ahead, and that the act of bringing forth God-Life into the universe is great travail. Yet in the natural, a woman conceives seed only now and then, in God, we conceive Seed in our womb in every worship service.
The worship service, then, is not a time for “coffee and donuts.” We are always ourselves inside of God, yes, but conceiving God Seed to bring forth God Life is a serious business. (And all of this groundwork is necessary for us to grasp the Ekenosis of God into creation.)
Let the Holy Spirit. No bulletins. No prescribed “order of service.” No assigned roles. No prior planning or collaboration.
Let the Holy Spirit be what He does.
As we gather, everyone placing themselves individually into the worship of God as they are seated, anyone is free, as they are led by the Spirit, to go to the front and lead the praise. And having more than one person leading the praise together is always a wonderful blessing. Let the Holy Spirit be what He does. When you just follow the Spirit in the flow of songs and worship, you are in for wondrous surprises of goodness and joy. The Spirit is always orderly; the Spirit is always doing utterly unexpected things.
A Time of Praise. Praise should normally continue for 30 to 45 minutes. When the Spirit is directing that praise, everyone knows at the same moment when it is done. Prophecies are an essential part of praise, and praise should be mostly standing, ‘cause someone is gonna’ start dancing, and it will likely be me. Dancing (both feet off the ground) is an incredible faith-act of worship.
And here’s what David says about entering into what we know of as marriage-bed union with Christ. Make a joyful shout to the Lord… serve the Lord with gladness; come before His presence with singing. Know that the Lord, He is God… Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise. Be thankful to Him, and bless His name (Psalm 100).
Wealth versus Poverty. For twenty years, we never once used a written form of the songs, whether in a book or on the screen. As a result, we all memorized quickly many hundreds of songs. It rarely took more than a couple of times singing a song for it to be lodged permanently in everyone’s mind. For twenty years since, the words were always on the screen for us to read. In all these years, I have not learned one song to remember it. I would call that poverty.
For twenty years I did not know a service in which the Holy Spirit was not clearly the leader in all things. In the twenty years since, I witnessed a pastor follow the Spirit against the bulletin one time. He was fired by the church board that next week.
The Preaching of Tabernacles. Christians don’t trust God, and they don’t trust one another. Let’s change that, you think?
That brings us to the preaching of the word in the more formal weekend service. Typically, two or three individuals should PREACH – yes, the Biblical term, God speaking Christ into us through His sent one in that moment. A Word of the revelation of Jesus Christ preached inside a Holy of Holies (Third Feast) anointing, carries with it a power of penetration and life far beyond what most have ever experienced. Thirty minutes of preaching in the anointing of Pentecost is enough for me. I can sit for hours hearing word after word without a break in the anointing of Tabernacles.
A Deeper Word. In the ministering of the word, however, as in the praise, there is no “plan”; no one knows beforehand who will preach. Typically, it would be those who have been given the gift of shepherding and teaching who would minister the word in the weekend service. I would make that a guide, not a “rule.” This is Word, however, at a deeper and more penetrating level than “sharing.”
Listen, God is not “osmosis” nor a vague and insubstantial vapor. God is action; God is life; God is specific biology. The Holy Spirit is always orderly, however, which means that from two-thirds to three quarters of all worship services will be quite similar.
Regular Services. And here is what Paul says about those regular services. When you come together, each one has a psalm, or a teaching, or a revelation, or a [prayer in] tongues, or an interpretation. Let all be done for edification. If one speaks in tongues {directed towards the assembly}, let it be by two or, at the most, three, and in turn, and let one interpret… If there are prophets, then, let two or three speak and let the others discern. If, moreover, a revelation should come to another sitting by, let the first be silent. You are all able to prophesy, one by one, that all might learn, and that all might be exhorted. And the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets. Indeed, God is not a God of disorder, but of peace as in all the churches of the saints (1 Corinthians 14:26-33 – JSV).
Watch Care. In all these things, those who are elders bear the responsibility to oversee that all things in the service are truly flowing out from the Spirit of God and in good order. That is normally the case. Yet I have seen occasions in which someone began to move inappropriately, and I watched, in those differing times, a wise and anointed elder gently re-direct that one to quietness and peace, keeping the flow of the service in the Spirit of the Lord.
Now, powerful things of God are taking place in our lives through this normal flow of “orderly” services. God-Seed is being planted into hearts prepared to receive that Seed. And God-Life is springing forth in every direction, all through our daily lives.
Spontaneous and Incredible. BUT – just as the Holy Spirit always moves in good order, so that same Spirit is spontaneous and filled with incredible and utterly unexpected surprises of very different kinds.
And so, I would say, that, in a wholesome Community, we should expect around, say, one quarter of the time, for the Holy Spirit to spring something different upon us. We won’t quibble over how often, we just know that if services that just blow the socks right off our feet are not occurring, something is wrong in the Church. And here is where those who are gifted as elders “earn their pay,” one might say. For as they are yielded utterly to God, that He might move through them into His Church, so faith gives way to mighty, mighty things.
Examples of the Holy. And here is where I want to talk about the Holy.
In one service, an elder spoke a word of thanksgiving before anyone had gotten up to lead the praise. Then another followed, and another. For two hours we spoke thanksgiving, one after the other, remaining seated, but each one participating in an unusual and preciously sweet moving of the Holy Spirit. In another service, an elder who had the gift of strength in joy, began to lead the praise. He discovered immediately that the chairs were in the way. The chairs disappeared, and we spent two hours dancing in praise and singing, often in a great circle, in the joy and strength of Jesus going all through us together.
These are just two examples of MANY very different and wondrous experiences inside of Spirit-Led worship; what we must have here is to understand the energeia of God.
Drawing Near. Here is the operative word. Let us draw near (Hebrews 10:22). Let us approach together every single thing we can find inside of God in our present season and forever. Let us experience together all things Holy.
When we KNOW that in our weakest and loneliest moments, God is utterly with us sharing all things with us and moving through even our agony to reconcile all things to Himself. Then, in complete compatibility with that rooted faith (upon FIRM we stand), God is also all about experience.
Here are just a few more of the things we approach inside of worship together inside the Holy of Holies.
More Things in the Holiest. But you have approached {same word as in Hebrews 10:22} Mount Zion, and the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem and myriads of angels {all things found when living inside the Holy of Holies.}. [You have approached] the festival assembly {the gathering of the Feast of Tabernacles} and the Church of the Firstborn enrolled in the heavens. [You have approached] God, the Judge of all, and the already perfected spirits of the righteous. [You have approached] Jesus, the Mediator of the New Covenant; and the sprinkling of blood speaking far better things than Abel’s (Hebrews 12:22-24 – JSV).
You will show me the path of life; in Your presence is fullness of joy; at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore (Psalms 16:11).
Always Purpose. You see, it’s not the specifics of order that guide us, but rather, God’s incredible purpose in everything. When we know the PURPOSE, we know what contributes to that purpose and what does not.
God’s purpose in the worship service is two things. First, that He might plant His Sperm, Christ into our hearts through aroused faith receiving the preached word.
And one “unusual” kind of service is when the “sermon” is preached out from an apostolic anointing. Kind brings forth kind. The level of the Seed coming in is the level of the LIFE springing forth. And that is always the first and primary purpose of worship.
Holy Inside of Father. But the second purpose of worship is also of vital importance, and that is that we together approach to connect with that element of the HOLY inside of God that the Holy Spirit wishes to impart to us in the present moment.
Yes, we have wonderful moments in our own personal walk with God. But our own moments are confined and restricted entirely by our own selves. You will likely never dance in the Spirit by yourself. But if you want to sing praises together with me, you’d better prepare yourself for the Holy Ghost getting into your feet.
HOLY inside of our Father.
Having laid this foundation of worship, it is my prayer that the Spirit of the Lord would overwhelm us as we approach the very Ekenosis of God.