I’m still buzzing from church yesterday. No, we didn’t have communion with real wine. I’m buzzing with excitement about what the Holy Spirit is doing. He is here. In the lives of the people in Nepal. And in the lives of the racers. I was inspired and filled up by the way that the Nepalese people worship our Abba.
They start with a solid hour of praising God. They sing and pray. They shout out to God and thank him for his goodness. It reminds me a little of my time in Africa. I went to South Africa a couple summers ago. While there, I attended church. That church was similar in worship style. They sang a few songs with minimal instruments, then exploded in prayer. Everyone around the room was praying and shouting hallelujah. Even without knowing the language, it’s enough to stand there and soak in all the joy.
Even though the people here have practically nothing, they are so thankful. What an opposite reaction to need. In America, if our fridge isn’t full, if our iPhone isn’t the latest and greatest, we need to fix it. We need to make it to the grocery store to stock up for the next week. We need to update our phone so that we will look cool. Here, they plan for the day. Just enough to get through today because we are not promised tomorrow. Rather, we are commanded by God to trust in him and in his provisions. No, this isn’t radical. This is living out the Gospel. Giving up control and giving it to God.
What we need to learn how to do is worship him and not expect anything in return. We need to stop expecting to be entertained at church. Instead, we need to worship our God in surrender of awe of who He is rather than be worrying about who we are.
I was recently rereading a Francis Chan book called Crazy Love. In it, he explains about how great God is and how small we are. Our life is small. He compares us to an extra in a movie. The extra might be in 3/5 of a second of the movie, and he will tell all his friends and family to look for him. They might see the back of his head for a second. If he tries to convince his friends and family that the whole movie was about him, they would think he was crazy. He is only an extra. That was not his movie. This is how it is with us. Our lives are not about us. The movie is about God. You are only an extra. I am only an extra.
We need to find joy in the fact that we don’t have to have control the universe. We have our faithful father to rely on and trust in. Let’s rejoice for that. The fact that he is good and he is love is enough to make me want to sing hallelujah along with the congregation.
