My first video blog

Hi folks

Something I’ve been meaning to do for a while: video blog! Much preferable for many I think to reading text, is to watch a video. This one features a new revamped song! Enjoy!

Worship concert sometime in the new year…

Hi folks. For a little while now I’ve been thinking about getting a band together and doing a proper worship evening somewhere. As you’ll know from navigating this blog, I got a few songs I’d like to try out. Plans are now beginning to come together, and it’s looking like something may happen in the new year. Watch this space for more details.

The Lord’s Prayer

Okay so this is a second post to mention my new song which you can listen to here – sorry about that. It’s just that it’s based on the Lord’s prayer, and I’ve since realised that (among many things that are profound and wonderful about the Lord’s prayer), it really encapsulates everything that we have come to know is involved in the Christian life: Worship (Hallowed be Your name), fellowship (OUR Father, not just MY Father; forgive us as we forgive OTHERS), redemption (forgive…), seeking first the kingdom (Your kingdom come…Yours is the kingdom), prayer praise and prophetic proclamation (the whole thing especially Yours is the kingdom), trusting in God for provision and daily needs (Give us this day our daily bread), deliverance and release from evil – that is a completely fundamental part of any Christian ministry (Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from the evil one).

So, appreciation please for the greatest prayer in the world given to us to bring before Father:

Our Father in heaven
Hallowed be Your name.
Your kingdom come,
Your will be done,
On earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread
And forgive us our sins
As we forgive those who sin against us.
And lead us not into temptation
But deliver us from the evil one.
For Yours is the kingdom
The power and glory
Forever and ever
Amen.

New song up

Hello everyone. I rather unexpectedly wrote a new song yesterday based on the Lord’s prayer. It has now been recorded and I rather like it. If I’m allowed to say that!!

Click here to listen.

Worship 7: The results of extravagant worship

I blogged before about extravagant worship, concerning which I believe the Scripture has some important things to say. The Lord has been opening up a little bit more to me about this subject, of late. I have observed what else is involved in situations where worship is radically expressed in an abandoned way.

It came first when I was prophesying over someone. I remembered the story of Mary anointing Jesus’ feet with the costly perfume as told in John 12:1-8, and how it says that ‘the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume’ – in other words, this was atmosphere-changing worship. That’s what I’m after! On just a few occasions (and I wish it were more), I have been in worship services where everyone has been so engaged in worship, really pressing in deeply, and there has been an atmospheric shift because the Lord loves to come and be enthroned on the praises of His people.

But it also occurred to me afterwards that it also brought out stark offense in one who already had a hard heart towards Jesus – that is, Judas Iscariot. The Bible speaks in various places of the distinction between the righteous and the unrighteous becoming more marked (Isaiah 60:2; Malachi 3:18; Matthew 13:29-30), and this seems to be one of the ways it happens. Judas becomes offended with what seems to be waste, but it is clear that there is an inner problem within him which is not betrayed by the words he uses; in other words, he blurts something out to try and contest what is happening in religious terms, but really he has selfish motivations as John makes clear (John 12:6).

Then I turned my thoughts to another of the passages that I referred to in my blog on extravagant worship, namely 2 Samuel 6, and the story of David dancing before the Lord ‘with all his might’, dressed only in a linen ephod, which was a priestly garment. Especially in Old Testament times, this was an ESPECIALLY outrageous manner of worship, as they made sacrifices at very short intervals all the way from Obed-edom’s house to Jerusalem as the ark was carried on that route. First of all, that whole story is about atmospheric change, both in the fact that the ark was that which carried the presence of God in the Old Testament, and in that they offered so many sacrifices – you’d better believe they were aromatic, as all those animals were killed and then cooked! Jerusalem would have been full of the smell of food, and hopefully, the presence of God. And what was David doing the whole time? Dancing wildly.

And interestingly, again, we see an individual rise up in more virulent opposition to what is going on, this time, Michal, Saul’s daughter and grudging wife of David. “How the king of Israel distinguished himself today!” She says sarcastically. Michal says that David UNCOVERED himself, but as we have mentioned, it is distinct that he wore the priestly ephod. She didn’t recognise his worship. All she could see was on a human level, what others might have thought of him.

I’m not even sure what encouragement we are to take from this apparent evidence that extravagant worship will probably cause a bit of opposition, but I guess it’s no surprise. This kind of worship does looking alarming and barmy to some, but it’s what people do who are completely sold out and in love with God. It’s just what they do. Sadly I know others who have made some comment or other about the ‘crazy’ way in which some people worship. Somehow forgetting that we’re not here to pass judgment, and until you yourself are worshiping as you know you should because of your love for God, it’s difficult to justify being able to criticise other peoples’ relationship with God. The Bible does say that we are to love God with our WHOLE heart, mind, soul, and strength, and that this is the most important commandment. If it’s with ALL of those, it’s going to look like more than a quiet little thank you prayer on a Sunday morning, I somehow think!

Anyway, whatever it means that some will be offended with extravagant worship, I guess it IS encouragement, because it demonstrates that there really is an atmospheric shift taking place, and that the distinctions are becoming evident to reveal hearts and not keep things hidden that need to be dealt with.

Worship 6: This is the day…

I don’t know about you, but at primary school one of the tunes we really dug in assembly went “This is the day, this is the day that the Lord has made, that the Lord has made…” That was always a rocking number. If you know it feel free to momentarily pause and sing it to yourself – loudly, if you’re alone in the house.

Great song. And a great theme, taken from Psalm 118:24. It’s a good thing to rejoice in every day that the Lord has made.

But this morning, reading the Psalm from whence it came, I struck a deeper well. A well whose streams tap into other wells I have drunk from before.

You see, as I say, it is great to rejoice in every day as being made by the Lord, but I don’t think that’s all that this verse is talking about here. The previous two verses stand out distinctly from the Psalm and even apparently from our traditional interpretations of verse 24 stated above. They read (my version):

“The stone which the builders rejected, this has become the chief cornerstone. This is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes.”

Marvellous. Just a clue: that word doesn’t really mean “wonderful” here except in the sense that everything the Lord does is wonderful and awesome and bears marks of His otherworldly nature. But here it has to do with being unexpected. In the context of a song of praise and prayer, it is no doubt mostly metaphorical: the Lord has taken something that everyone threw out, and has made it the most important thing. It’s like if builders chucked out a worthless stone, and the Lord has taken it and made it the chief cornerstone.

For those of us who know the New Testament a bit, you will know that this Scripture is clearly applied to the Lord Jesus – indeed, He Himself applied it to Himself (Matt 21:42). He was the stone. Though many from Israel did follow Him from time to time during His ministry, and probably did come into the church again later, Israel at large rejected Him, in particular the religious leaders, who He was addressing when applying this verse to Himself.

And so these two verses from Psalm 118 that I paraphrased above are seen as prophetically speaking of a day when God would do what He does best – the unexpected. And so, when we reach the next verse, our famous “this is the day that the Lord has made…” I think there’s something else it’s saying.

Basically, God has done something marvellous in our eyes, unexpected. We do still have that today, by the way. The manifestation of the Spirit around the world in the extraordinary ways that we’ve seen, and some of the remarkable characters who have been getting saved…the bypassing of denominational boundaries by the Holy Spirit in His movement, all of these might be seen as the surprising, marvellous work of the Lord. And in particular, the scenario described here is commonly seen as the way God works in the church: through the unexpected people, the children, the servants…those who live like Jesus, the servant-king.

Now when we get situations in our lives that bypass or blow our expectations, where God works in a way that we didn’t think He does, but it’s obviously Him; when we struggle to understand and get our minds around situations in live to do with Him and His ways, often our response is to run to the pastors, theologians, books, friends and thinkers, working through things by debating theology. Especially in our Western culture this academic response I think is probably ingrained in us.

But at least in this situation (and I will argue in others too) I think it fruitful to note that when the Lord has made something out of what we thought was nothing, and blown our expectations, the appropriate response at least initially is “This is the day that the Lord has made” – He made this day in which He has surprised us, it is His making, SO: “Let us REJOICE and BE GLAD in it.”

In short, the appropriate response here is worship.

I want to stress this point, because God is not going to stop working in surprising ways. As the waves of the Holy Spirit over the last century have increased, so have the voices of the critics who say of those touched by Him, “they are full of sweet wine” – or such like. Because too often we observe the moving of a heavenly God and can’t help but critique Him by earthly standards. These critiques come from folks often not in a position of worship and reverence, instead positioned in their mind to analyse.

The fact is, you can’t know a God you don’t worship – and I mean, really worship. Worship draws you into the presence of God and brings you to a place where you can know Him more. So too worship is the place of understanding. If you’re not in a place of worship you will only be able to deal with ‘marvellous’ situations through your natural, fleshly intellect.

As I said there are other places where we can see worship as a response to lack of understanding about God’s ways, which I wrote about in the previous worship blog “When times are tough.” In those situations it was tragedy that led the worshippers to their knees, but in all cases it had to do with not understanding or at least being surprised by God’s ways or even whether something WAS God or wasn’t (because in Job’s case it was only allowed by God but was caused by Satan).

I think if we have situations which we are trying to understand – whether it’s tragedy, Holy Spirit manifestations, God’s working across boundaries you thought were off limits, or His using the lowest and the simplest, or anything else – I think we are much better positioned to understand if we acknowledge God as the Lord of the day: This is the day that He has made, so we will rejoice and be glad in it.

And perhaps next time we have a difficult theological issue, why not dare trying to take some time just to worship the Lord for who He is, before getting into debate?

New Song Demo Up

Hi everyone. Recently I wrote a prophetic song called “Did I Not Say” (click on the name) which include a few promises from God all about His glory, His goodness, and His name, and what it is to know Him! Sounds like quite a lot but hopefully it condenses nicely in this song. I’ve used it a couple of times at our celebrations and people seem to have responded well to it, so I thought I’d put it up here for people to listen to and, hopefully to be blessed by. The verses include some promises of God, while the chorus comes straight from something God said to Moses in Exodus 33 – which I believe He would say to us as well. The bridge then completes that with a quote from Exodus 34, because in chapter 33 and the chorus of this song, God says He will announce His name before Moses – and then He does! And so that’s the bridge of my song. Lyrics below.

Did I not say that if you believe
You would see the glory of the Lord?

Did I not say, do you not know?
It’s Jesus in you, the hope of glory

I will make all of My goodness
Pass before you
Unveiling My glory
Revealing My name
All of My goodness
Will pass before you
Unveiling My glory
Revealing My name

Do you not know? You are My friends
And I will tell you all My Father says

Gracious, compassionate
Slow to anger
Rich in love
Abounding in mercy

Pentecost and Premier!

Hi folks. On 22nd and 23rd May there is a most fantastic festival taking place all over central London, the Pentecost festival, with music, film, debates, comedy and more!

We at Ichthus are hosting an event down at the Victoria Embankment Gardens on Saturday 22nd during the day, with lots of live music, dance and more! I’m doing a set at 11.35 with some good friends (Phil, Sami and Jon). Would love lots of support!

I’m also doing an interview earlier that morning on Premier Radio between 9.30 and 10. Apparently they would like me to play some music and tell them what on earth I do in the world of worship! I’m not sure whether I’m going to feel relaxed just in the studio with one or two other people, or very nervous because there are probably thousands listening in! Well, let’s wait and see!

Give You Praise available to order

Just thought it worth mentioning that you can now order my new EP online at our Ichthus online shop. If you would like the hard copy why not try going over there to order one! Alternatively as always it is available on iTunes.

Give You Praise now available on iTunes!

I am pleased to announce that my first CD release, “Give You Praise” is now available to download from iTunes at just £3.16! Bargain! Do go over there and check it out or search for ‘Ben Trigg’ and you’ll see my album appear up there. Enjoy!