Radical Network begins!

Wow. One of the most intense seasons of my life has just kicked off! For those of you who don’t know, I’ve just begun a course with my church (Ichthus Christian Fellowship in London), training in leadership for a year. Am now living in the house they have in Forest Hill with some new friends! One is James (pictured below) with whom I have a great connection, he’s only two months older than me and we’re on the same page with a lot of stuff.

They’ve also put me with a congregation called New Life in Greenwich which is really going for it, they do so much stuff! My first day on Wednesday 17th ‘on patch’ at the congregation, I was there for 15 hours! (Long story.) So they’ve got me working hard, but I like that. I was going through a rough time from when I graduated in July 07 through to the beginning of 08, where sometimes I would be literally doing nothing at all, and it was horrible. Picture below is the painting hung up at the front of the church, tis nice.

The course involves lectures on tuesday and thursday, and ‘patch’ work (ie. in Greenwich) on Wednesdays and Friday afternoons. (Friday morning is ’study project’ time – the study project will be a 10,000 word project handed in in January with a presentation, the same will happen again in July!! Lots of work methinks!!)

Weekends (not to mention weekday evenings) are bonkers with church and events and conferences etc. Oh plus we’re going to Totnes on mission at the beginning of October, then Pakistan in February! Expect many great photos etc. around those times!

I’m personally saying to the Lord that this is the time for the increase of miracles, signs and wonders, that we would fully preach the gospel as Paul did, in such displays of power (Romans 15). I’m asking Him for an increase in His presence and anointing as I have this time to dedicate to Him and His purpose, and to help me to stay engaged in the Spirit and not just make it all about an intellectual learning – and that’s down to me, not the course.

Forgot to mention Mondays: I’m teaching guitar! So I look forward to the odd Saturdays when there’s nothing happening! (About once a month!)

Notice the all-important COFFEE MACHINE in the background

James Kallas quote

Love this:

‘We see polio or crippling and we piously shake our heads and cluck all the trite absurdities of a non-thinking people by saying “it is the will of God…hard to understand…providence writes a long sentence, we have to wait to get to heaven to read the answer.”…Jesus looked at this and in crystal clear terms called it the work of the devil, and not the will of God.’ Kallas, Synoptic Miracles, p.63

Quoted in Boyd, God at War p.183; Boyd also says himself on p.182 ‘Jesus never once appealed to a mysterious divine will to explain why a person was sick, maimed or deceased, as many Christians today are inclined to do.’

God’s determined purpose to bless

In today’s mixed culture of evangelical Christianity, among many things the belief and understanding of the Blessing of God has varied across the board – concerning its divine intention, attributes, and usual manner of reception. It is no doubt a broad topic, but I want to demonstrate something here that simply tackles the more concrete concerns that people have over what it looks like and how some Christians seem to have come to receive it.

For some reason there has been aversion in certain circles to what others call the Blessing of God – which often takes the forms of outpourings of the Holy Spirit and its related manifestations, or prosperity, or increasing numbers in church on a Sunday. Whatever form it takes, I am of no doubt that it is God’s intention to bless His people, and any aversion should not be to the notion that God can bless me, but to excessive imbalances in the body of Christ. And that with humility – Jesus’ instruction to remove the plank from our eye before removing the speck from our brother’s tells me that my sin ought to be a way bigger deal to me than someone else’s.

I realised the importance of understanding the blessing of God when reading the Bible! It’s a good place to start to gain understanding! It was one of those occasions when a familiar passage takes on a new shape and meaning even though you’ve read it countless times. It was Hebrews 6. I was already familiar with certain phrases in the relevant passage – about God confirming His oath by swearing by Himself, which made two unchangeable things which showed how committed He was to His purpose. But amazingly, I’d never tied the passage together to find out what this purpose actually was that He was so committed to. But on this one occasion, I went back and found out what it was – and was amazed. Here it is:

‘For when God made a promise to Abraham, because He could swear by no one greater, He swore by Himself, saying, “Surely blessing I will bless you, and multiplying I will multiply you.” And so…he obtained the promise…. Thus God, determining to show more abundantly to the heirs of promise the immutability of His counsel, confirmed it by an oath, that by two immutable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we might have strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold of the hope set before us.’ (Heb 6:13-18)

Wow! What an incredible passage! Now what you have to understand when you read this passage is that we are indisputably the ‘heirs of promise’ that the passage speaks of. The book of Galatians speaks most clearly to this, which includes a reiteration of the subject in hand, the blessing of God:

‘…just as Abraham “believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.” Therefore know that only those who are of faith are sons of Abraham. And the Scripture…preached…to Abraham before hand, saying, “In you all the nations shall be blessed.” So then those who are of faith are blessed with believing Abraham…. Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law…that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.’ (Gal 3:6-14)

What an incredible purpose that the New Testament highlights as our inheritence! It is my prayer that now you might realise the significance and importance of understanding the blessing of God. It is something He tied Himself to by swearing an oath by Himself – He is that serious about it! We must be careful to rule out too quickly anything that peolpe are calling ‘the Blessing of God’ in case it really is the blessing – because we will be cutting ourselves off from His purpose, and indeed from faith in God, for it was to the man of faith that God spoke the word, because of faith, and by faith he obtained the promise.

Finally, simply to address the perceived pride that exists in being a blessing-seeker, perhaps in what some have crudely and unthoughfully labelled the ‘bless-me clubs’. Isn’t it selfish to seek the blessing? Isn’t it indulgent and therefore, if it’s indulgent, then surely this is all a deception?

Well if seeking a blessing was selfish, then why did God stop in the middle of a geanealogy to mention the prayer of Jabez? ‘Oh, that You would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory, that Your hand would be with me, and that You would keep me from evil, that I may not cause pain!’ In fact it actually says that he was more honourable than all his brothers, and that God gave him what he asked for! (1 Chron 4:9-10) No comments about selfishness anywhere!

In fact, I believe (perhaps controversially) that nothing could be more humble and selfless than learning to receive the blessing. I guess for me it would be an exercise in humility at least for the fact that I know there are those around who sneer upon running to the altar for a fresh touch, and so I have to not be bothered by that. But again I seek the blessing not for myself only, but for the nations, for my neighbours, for my brothers and sisters, as of course is indicated by the passage from Galatians, that the blessing is to affect nations.

Furthermore, word studies in verses like Psalm 37:7 (‘Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him’) – specifically on the words ‘wait’ and ‘patiently’, suggest waiting in ambush, and patiently with the kind of focus required to spin about very fast or the concentration involved in giving birth! It’s all there in the Hebrew and in the contexts in which the words are also used in the Old Testament. There is a kind of seeking after the Lord which carries the determination that Jacob had, saying “I will not let You go unless You bless me!” (Gen 32:26). It is a search which requires abandonment and a loss of self-dignity, for Jacob walked with a limp for the rest of his life as a result of that encounter! But he got what he was after – the Blessing of God. Therefore I maintain that there is something truly humble about seeking for God’s blessing on your life.

How else could we do life unless we went with His blessing and favour? Oh, we could try to live like Jesus, but the most we would achieve is a few moral standards which, I have to be honest, I’ve seen matched in non-Christians. We need the manifestation of His Spirit, the supernatural, evidenced blessing of God, if we are to effectively change the world for Jesus! Lord, help us to humbly seek Your blessing, and to learn how to receive the same!

Healing testimonies

VERY EXCITED about what the Lord has been doing! We’ve had a whole bunch of people from our church who have been to Lakeland in Florida where there is an incredible outpouring of the Spirit, and they’re seriously carrying something back!

Chris Orange especially, our worship leader and my mentor, he walked into Tescos and felt the fire of God on his hand and mouth, and prayed for a lady there whose back was hurting, when he laid hands and prayed she was instantly healed! And just this Thursday gone we saw 9 ppl saved. One of them was a policeman off duty because he was in pain in his ankle, they prayed and he was absolutely shocked, all pain went, and they said ‘give your life to Jesus’, and he said yes and got his six friends to come over and give their lives as well!! COME ON JESUS!!! And we’ve had at least 5 more saved since then!!

The Lord is manifesting His name through His representatives on earth as He did through Jesus (John 17:6) as Baal Perazim, the Master of Breakthrough (1 Chronicles 14:11) and as Jehovah Rapha, the Lord who heals you (Exodus 15:26). And He’s ultimately manifesting as God is Love, people on the streets are just being blessed to find out that God loves them and wants to bless them!

Worship 3: I’m coming back to the heart

I’m coming back to the heart of worship
Where it’s all about You
All about You, Jesus
I’m sorry Lord for the thing I’ve made it
‘Cause it’s all about You
All about You, Jesus

So goes the chorus of Matt Redman’s well-loved song “When the Music Fades”. Yet I wonder even with it’s many years of popularity within the church, how much we have really got this message yet? Matt has written a song with such a key to our worship lives yet I think it has yet to really dawn on us.

I have a confession to make – I’ve tended to get slightly frustrated on occasion when as worship teams or even just groups of friends have set out to ‘define’ what worship ‘is’. We’ve determined some things we think happen, what form it ought to or can take, we’ve tried to work out which way the river flows and who is affected and what the meaning is and why we do it. I remember times when discussions have branched in all sorts of funny ways like “which direction do we think worship goes?” – this was funny because the answers seemed to be everything except “up?” There was all this talk of the people and what the people think and how they are affected and how they affect worship – and it just felt like we were stuck in a paradigm of thinking that worship is just a bunch of people singing at a semi-concert with a band on stage.

I’ve got to be honest – I really think most processes like this have actually only served to draw us further away from the true worship. I’m not denying that things happen, that people are affected, that worship has definition, that is has a form, that it does flow, or that there is a reason for it. But I feel that we are prone to over-complicating the issue.

What if – potentially – worship were as simple as: us loving God? What if the primary direction was upward and everything else that happened was a response back down from heaven? What if we got away from caring about what people thought about the music, the attitude behind worship, or even whether they were having a good or bad day – and just worshipped? What if things happened during worship not because we were trying to make them happen or because we had a theological reasoning as to what things take place during worship, but rather because we were so lost in God that the atmosphere of heaven broke in and God’s will was done on earth as in heaven? What if we could really give to the Lord the glory due His name (Psalm 29)? Church has become so people-ministry focussed that I don’t think we can even worship without trying to help people. This is noble! Yet loving our neighbour was surely always meant to come second to loving God? Whilst I don’t deny that it may be a wise thing if the Spirit instructs, to start praying for people during the worship, I think we sometimes jump the mark a little too quick, because we’re used to a certain measure of His presence, a certain way of doing things.

I really feel there is a lot more glory to give to His name. I believe He’s inviting us to push the envelope. Only once or twice in my lifetime have I been in a meeting where all the songs just keep focussing us more and more on the Lord and the whole room has been caught up into just worshipping Him – which is loving Him for who He is and for what He has done. It is an amazing place to be. And it is one of the best atmospheres to enter in church life because it stirs faith in God. What if we could strip away all our ministry agendas and simply do ministry to people out of our ministry to the Lord? He loves to be worshipped! And we were made to worship Him, I believe that. Nothing fulfills us more.

Jesus help us to come back to the heart of worship, where it’s all about You. We’re sorry Lord that we’ve somehow made worship about so many other things, when really, it’s just all about You. Take us into new places in worship where we enter Your presence just through loving on You. Teach us to love You more, Lord.

The voice of the Lord

I was asking the Lord the other night as I was praying, “Lord, show me Your heart. Show me even just a little bit of what You’re saying and doing right now.” I have a real hunger for discovering and understanding the purpose of God.

What He left me with is, I believe, only a very small part of what is on His heart right now for His church and for the world, especially given my small part in it, but it is nonetheless significant. At some point during prayer I had the words from Psalm 29:3 just dropped into my spirit out of nowhere (well, heaven, but you know what I mean): “The voice of the Lord is over/upon the waters”

I began to ponder and have continued to ponder over the past couple of days why the Lord might have highlighted this particular Scripture. As I have been meditating on it I have been led to Genesis 1 verses 2 and 3 where we find the surface of the world to be formless and void and in chaos…and the Spirit of God hovering (or bithing - Hebrew ‘rachaph’) over the waters. And in the very next verse, God speaks, and thus begins the process of creatively bringing about order to the face of the planet.

This I believe is at least a little part of His heart for the moment. He desires to bring prophecy to life again in the body. It burns in one or two vessels but He would have it now be the voice of the Bride, of the whole body. The Spirit of God is hovering over the chaos of the earth ready to bring to birth the purpose of God but it requires the spoken word to set things in motion. As Isaiah 51:15,16 says (and now I understand why these two verses go so neatly together):

“For I am the Lord your God, who stirs up the sea and its waves roar (the Lord of hosts is His name).
I have put My words in your mouth and have covered you with the shadow of My hand, to establish the heavens, to found the earth, and to say to Zion, ‘You are My people.’”

It’s funny how often the earth is spoken of in terms of the sea. Think also of His promise that “the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.” (Habakkuk 2:14) But that aside – this is the message for now:

“The voice of the Lord is upon the waters
The God of glory thunders
The Lord is over many waters.” (Psalm 29:3)

Where does Capitalism end?

In a bit of a daze at the end of a hard week it appears a little foggy to me to be able to answer this with clarity now but I can at least safely say I can see two answers.

At dinner tonight with friends, talk first turned to the swiftly closing Mayoral elections for London and the political ramifications inherent in voting not for policies, but purely for candidates, as policy seems almost immaterial in the much wider game that is being played here in London.

Following from this we engaged in a rather convicting discussion which revolved around consumerism, choice, the Smorgasbord we seem unable to avoid in every day life. The missionary couple from Nepal standing bewildered and thoroughly shocked by the culture as they take their first trip to whichever Supermarket was closest, they and others like them I know can tell that tale.

One of our friends, a doctor, professorial, philosopher-theologian highly engaged in debating current matters of justice, reflected on how a short trip to Burma had given him a beautiful taste of an incredibly different life: “What you did,” he said, “was to get food for the kids, and clothes on your back. That’s it. And everything goes at around 8 miles per hour, at this sort of biological speed – it’s wonderful.”

What he stated reflected just a small part of the overall distinction between what we know to be ‘normal life’ in our part of the world, and that in the (I suppose) ‘non-westernised’ parts. My own short trip to Thailand holds a similar mirror to the issue, blogged about a short while ago.

That makes one of my questions, where do we go from here? I believe Capitalism will not last – a statement which I know of course requires ample justification which I hope to provide in further bloggings in the near future. That means that either I follow it to the bitter end, try as I might to believe that it might work for me, even though we know from a short examination not only of today’s situation but of recent history, that we are getting worse and not better, economically.

Or, I go the way of the nomadic Jew who once worked in a carpenters shop only then to quit, give up everything, and live a radically different life from the rest of the world around Him, giving up possessions, money, often not even having anywhere to sleep. Yet somehow making it, and going on to become without doubt the most influential Man in history.

?

I shall blog more on this subject when I am decidedly more awake and have pondered this thing further.

Worship 2: The intimacy of worship

Spurred on by Rob’s comment on my last blog on worship – “Worship mingled with revelation” – I wanted to begin to extend upon the subject of worship into what could perhaps become a series on the subject!

I’m kind of excited about the prospect, as worship is a subject that I have been passionate about for a number of years now – passionate that is, in terms of having more than just the usual interest in and devotion to worship that Christians might have.

A large part of what the Lord has been doing in me is to do with what I will be addressing in this blog – what He stirred up in me with regard to intimacy has affected a large part of how I come to the whole issue of worship generally, from leading at the front to worshiping in my bedroom.

It started when I began to get into the habit of taking time just with my keyboard to worship the Lord freely, often not trying to go for any particular worship song, but rather just singing out of my heart to the Lord. I must have been doing this for over two years now, and if you can play piano or guitar or just sing, it is a great thing to do. The presence of the Lord would become much more real to me during these times of worship.

But I had a problem. Often the experience of worshipping in His presence ignited creativity. This is a good thing; the problem was my desire to start writing songs down! I would be playing away and would find myself singing something, and my mind would say “Ooh, this is great, we should make this into a song to record and use in church and stuff” and I would stop and write things down and start working out more lyrics and chords and a tune… but by that time I had lost the flow of worship, and the presence of the Lord would start to lift. I obviously felt this was a shame but the Lord helped me to profoundly recognise something.

As I have said, the great tunes and words that I was finding in these spontaneous times of worship were all good – it is creativity inspired by His presence. However my desire to write these things down was evidence – in a sense – of a man-pleasing attitude in me, a desire to have something great to bring to the congregation. Now, I’m not averse to creativity, in fact I would love to spend more time to promote the subject. But there is a matter of priority to address. As great as bringing creative songs to the church is, it is secondary to my actual worship of the Lord!

There were times when I would get frustrated because I would afterwards forget the great lyric and/or melody I had been singing, and so I could not write it down. It was here that the Lord graciously chided me and helped reorder my priorities: worship is first for the Lord. He made it evident to me that it was silly to get worried about not having written the song down after it had already served its purpose.

Picture it: if I am worshipping the Lord, one on one, out of a heart-flow of worship, and out comes a song no-one has ever heard, what do I need to worry? The Lord is hearing it and loves it! It was born for Him out of my heart in union with His creative Spirit, and as it comes back to Him it blesses Him to receive it from one of His children. If He and I were the only ones to ever hear the melody, chords and lyrics, surely I should enjoy the intimacy of that. There are things only husbands and wives know about each other because of their closeness, and we can enjoy that same preciousness with the Lord.

Before I conclude I want to say two things, 1. I hope that what I have written is abundantly clear, and 2. (and maybe this should have come as number 1) As a disclaimer: I am not against songwriting. I am not against writing out of a creative flow of worship to the Lord. All I want to say is this, that we need to be careful about interupting our times with the Lord. Sometimes I believe He gives the go-ahead to write songs out of these times of worship, and I have done this sometimes. But on other occasions He might just want to spend time with us and take things in a different direction. Our walk with the Lord is all about relationship, not religion. That is why I have no problem saying we need to be prophetic pretty much all the time – it is the same as in any other relationship: we cultivate continual development and different dynamics of relationship with pretty much everyone we know, obviously to different degrees. The Lord is a person not a computer, so don’t tap in your formula thinking you know what will come out. He hates religion.

To wrap up then, and to hopefully clarify once and for all what I am saying: worship is for the Lord. If I have sung a song to Him and no one else has heard it, what does that matter? He has heard it and is pleased, and I’ve got a feeling that the Lord will take some time in heaven with each of us to go through those moments again that were so precious to Him because we shared them with no one else. Just like when a husband and wife might say to each other, “Do you remember when…?” But on the other hand there are times when the fruit of our worship is free to be released as corporate songs of worship, or as part of an album or something. We must prioritise and put Him first, as Jesus said, that the greatest commandment is to love the Lord our God with all our hearts, souls, minds and strength, and that the second commandment was to love our neighbours as ourselves. When we have our priorities right, then He can use us most fruitfully in those things that will bless our neighbours, because we are blessing Him first in our lives!

As a postscript, this is not a blog about songwriting! It is a blog about intimacy! So if you have something to say about songwriting, wait until I blog on it, because I have other ways of writing songs except just in these creative worship times!

Attack on family in the UK

Just wanted to register something of my opinion of what is going on in the UK right now in terms of a disintegration of family and family values. It’s obviously not a new thing, but the situation is the same as it has been for decades and is getting worse.

Part of the issue right now is the attack on fatherhood. In a loony case which is currently going through government, along with the embryology bill (for which the government are telling MPs they cannot vote with their conscience , which is pretty much tyrrany), there is a motion to remove the need for the name of a Father on birth certificates. Making divorce (if it becomes an issue) easier on the conscience. Meaning that lesbian couples can adopt with no third-party name on the certificate necessary.

Apparently the two teenagers arrested for the murder of Damilola Taylor both grew up in fatherless homes. That has to say something to us. Lack of discipline and fatherly role-modelling hugely affects children. How can they not look up to those they grow up with? If they have no father to discipline them and to act as role model, their primary influence comes from the movies, TV and video games which are riddled with violence. To say what we watch doesn’t affect our behaviour and attitude is stupid. Stay indoors all day and watch depressing movies and try to feel positive at the end of it.

I don’t know what the government is up to with this embryology bill and the appended issues…I mean I know what they’re doing but I don’t know why they are doing it…but I sure don’t like it.

For more info, and to petition against this motion to allow free votes on the ‘human fertilisation and embryology bill’, see http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/embryovote/

Worship 1: Worship mingled with revelation – the essential lifestyle

We Christians when talking about the subject of worship often quote the words of Jesus, “God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” (John 4:24)

While I have always appreciated this verse, and those two factors which Jesus said would be essential ingredients in New Testament worship, I never fully understood why it was these two elements that He mentioned specifically. Why the two together?

It took listening to a friend of mine preach in church one Sunday to open this up. One of our assistant pastors – and also a good friend of mine – was preaching on John 12 where Mary took some very
costly oil and anointed Jesus’ feet with it, so that the fragrance of the oil literally filled the whole
house. Judas got offended and, with devious motives, made a statement which might have been taken
for nobility, but would have put Mary under massive shame: the oil should have been sold and the
money given to the poor. Jesus’ rebuke to Judas actually did not concern the fact that Judas just
wanted to take money for himself, but rather that Mary’s worship was mingled with revelation, on two counts: 1. It was required that He be anointed for the day of His burial, and 2. (and this was much more for the sake of those who might have tried to fight on Judas’ side) that we will always have the poor with us, but Jesus in His earthly form was not always going to be around.

On this second point let me just say this: I am finding it increasingly necessary every day of my
Christian life to be continually prophetic about everything! If I try to walk on principle alone then I
could easily miss something that God is intending to do. Principles are good and right, such as selling
what we have and giving to the poor – but that principle did not work in this situation. Another example would be that Jesus stated that He came only for the lost sheep of the house of Israel, and telling His disciples to go to the same. Yet in John 4 we find Him ministering to a Samaritan woman, and then staying in their city another two days! And the gospels of Matthew and Mark record an amazing story of a Syrophoenician woman (Matt 15 and Mark 7) whose radical faith obtained Jesus’ answer way before the gospel was due to go to the Gentiles.

I see those who lived in prosperity, those who lived in poverty, and some who lived in both and didn’t
mind either way (Phil 4:12)!

I see the sovereignty of God over the earth expressed (Ps 24:1), the responsibility of man over the earth (Ps 115:16) and even, dare I say it, the devil’s power over the earth (1 John 5:19)! There are theological camps who would like to emphasise one or another of these (and God help those who want to emphasise the last!) when in truth if we take an overall view it seems manifestly clear that there is a war raging over this planet! The sway between the Lord’s power and the devil’s is in man’s power to determine.

I see hundreds of other contrasts in the Bible which, of course, non Christians would say are contradictions. I hope I have slightly described in that last paragraph how they are not even slight contradictions, they are all true on different levels. And when this comes to my day-to-day life it requires me to be prophetic rather than merely principled.

For example, and I hope this doesn’t offend too many people, I have never particularly subscribed to
a doctrine of prosperity entirely, but at the same time I have had to remain open to the Lord’s
working in such a way as to bringing great finances into the life of an individual, family, or church,
and sometimes I have even found myself praying for it for some! At the same time I believe wholeheartedly that one can live with very little and yet, of course, have everything in the world because you have Jesus. For me personally I think it is more likely to become that, but I have seen Him using people on both sides of this fence.

So to draw it back to the main subject, our worship must be revelatory. Mary’s was. So was Abel’s as
he brought a Lamb, evidently somehow understanding that something had to die, prophetic of Jesus’
sacrifice. Cain’s unfortunately wasn’t. Neither was King Uzziah when he tried to enter into priestly duties to be more worshipful. God had not allowed him to try and carry out the duties of priest, and so the principle of course remained established that it was the duty of the Levitical priests. Uzziah went to offer incense, the priests withstood him, he got angry…and broke out in leprosy, from which he tragically died.

At best, when we worship without revelation it can cause us to miss something God is saying. But in the cases mentioned it cost them dear, and we must take this on board.

What then do I believe Spirit and Truth refers to? I believe that, at least in part, it refers to
revelation. Revelation is the sum of Spirit and Truth. When the Spirit of God comes on the Word of
Truth, revelation cannot fail to result. The One who authored it is keen to reveal His purpose,
historically and now, to write His law on our hearts, and of course to reveal Jesus in the Word.

So, for us to worship in Spirit in Truth, I believe that we must worship with hearts open to God that
are crying out for what He has to say for this moment in time. We must remain open to what He
wants to say and do. And simply, sometimes our worship just takes different directions, such as
prayer and intercession, or warfare, or high praise and celebration, or intimacy, or commissioning…

Let us be prophetic as we worship, let us worship in Spirit and Truth.