Sweetly Broken, Wholly Surrendered

Whenever I need to be reminded of the real nature of worship, I pull up a video from the sermonspice.com website. It's called "The Gift of Worship." Behind masterfully done visuals, you hear the music of Jeremy Riddle. The words, images, and sounds combine to remind us that worship is not about us. It's not about whether we sing from a hymnal or words on a screen, whether we hear music from a pipe organ or an electric guitar, or whether we sit in pews or chairs. It's not about whether or not we like the songs or how the service makes us feel. As the video brazenly proclaims, "It's not about us; IT'S ABOUT HIM!" (...the one who died on a cross for us.)

Riddle's song contains this haunting phrase: "Sweetly broken; wholly surrendered." What an ironic concept - sweetly broken. Usually, when we think of the breaking of our spirits, our hopes, our goals, our wills, we think of that as being something unpleasant or undesirable. Yet in the hands of an ultimately loving and seeking God, this "breaking" is not something designed to ruin our lives, to make us miserable, or simply to show us that God is boss. It is for our healing, strengthening, molding and shaping; that we might be what God has longed for us to be all along. With the "it's all about me" in us broken, then we can be wholly surrendered to God. Then, in a deepening relationship with God, we can hear God more fully in prayer, through the Bible, through other people, through circumstances, and through the Body of Christ itself.

Back to my on-going image of a river canoe trip...The rapids will not bend to our desires; the canoeist must yield to their power and flow. When I do that, the mainstream is supremely trust -able, and I will experience the ride of a lifetime.

May we all be sweetly broken. I'll see you around the next bend.

(If you're interested in the video mentioned above, go to www.sermonspice.com/videos/9109/the-gift-of-worship.)