“Leading worship begins with the way I live my life, not what I do in public”—Bob Kauflin “Worship Matters”
“Let me know You love me and let that be enough”—Switchfoot
A couple years ago I had a friend tell me that I reminded her of Joshua in the Bible. That statement made me feel proud. At the time, I was more confident in who God has created me to be than I had my whole life. I was living in Guatemala with plans on working with an International ministry. The plan was to travel to different Spanish speaking countries and teach people how to study the Bible inductively. At the time, I was on top of the world not because of who I thought I was but mostly because I was more confident in whom God is. My lifestyle was living a life pleasing to Him. I loved living in a third world country and I loved speaking Spanish. I felt like God was with me mostly because I was drawing near to Him. I felt like Joshua…at the time.
There are characters within the story of Joshua. It’s the rest of the people of Israel. These people fed off the confidence of Joshua but once he was gone, their confidence faded quickly and they found other gods to try and meet their needs. They became full of themselves but unfulfilled. They lacked the glory of God’s presence because of their sin. After a summer of training, I had a distraction. Something came in between me and my worship of God. I chose not to continue with my training in the Spanish ministry not based on what I felt God desired but what I wanted. It is during those times that you rush into things without thinking things through that lack of confidence begins to grow. Needless to say, with my lack of faith and my lack of desire to grow in God’s word and relationship, I fell into sin.
I wanted to start this sentence say, sin is a funny thing, but its not really funny at all. Also, let me preface this with saying that my sin was necessarily anything that one should go “Oh my gosh!” It was just a continuation of following my own desires. Besides, its wrong to qualify sins anyways, sin is sin. Where sin dwells though, God cannot. I do not believe that God has ever left me nor will ever forsake me, but I do believe that I can’t experience the fullness of God when sin dwells in our hearts. Before the Israelites were to go into the land of Canaan with Joshua they were to take time to purify themselves. They were to set themselves a part. There are times in our lives that we have strayed from the heart of God and there are times we need to recognize this and take the time to purify ourselves as well.
All this to say is that I am not a Joshua. There is one account in the Bible of Joshua sinning against God. I feel more like King David. I have many sins. I know though that I can recognize those sins and turn from them. I am not perfect nor will I ever be perfect. Many people who read this note may know many of my sins and I may have ruined all chances to share what God has done and is continuing to do in my life. I can’t say that I have that same confidence that I did before and I can’t say my lifestyle has been at %100 full on following God. I am recognizing that though. Worship is a lifestyle. It is what you find your worth in. I see it two ways, you both find your worth in God and his love and commandments and are fulfilled or you find your worth in something else and still feel like life is lacking…
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