What worship looks like when God "flips the script"

Childhood cancer, broken relationships, children walking away from the voice of truth, ovarian cancer, anxiety and burn-out, addictions, and just this past week friends who almost lost their two boys (one who overcame leukemia) to a near fatal car crash. It isn't just my Facebook that is flooded with these trials. I have been personally touched by these headlines in the past few months.

This year has been CHOCK FULL of my family and of dear friends whose script for their lives have taken a drastic and unexpected plot twist. I often have heaviness in my heart to witness the brokenness that sin brings and have wrestled with how to reconcile God's goodness in what He Sovereignly allows.  The natural, even justified  response would be "where are you, God?" and I would have to humbly admit that I park there sometimes. We all do.

But, that has not been what I have witnessed in these dear friends and family.

As I have observed their trials I am amazed at how God has held them, hemmed them in, laid His hand on them and faithfully upheld their faith I have marveled at the worship that they have exuded.

Sacrificial surrender is a yielding and a direct link must be made to God's preserving grace, but these precious people are persevering under these trials, leaning into what God has revealed about Himself to them, not through their circumstances, but through the Word of God, and it is teaching me daily about submission to God's sovereignty in our stories and the joyous blessing that results (peace & joy? Amazing!).

In the early hours of the morning, as I was praying through some things God is asking me to submit to Him (nowhere close to the kind of submission they are leaning into), God's Word was revealing some things to me. His Word is about Him, it isn't about me. I was reminded again this morning that I can't look at my circumstances to "find God". I find Him through the Word.  I was reading through the Psalm 51 and David's prayer:

" The sacrifice pleasing to God is a broken spirit." 

As I mediated on this worship of contrition and humble admittance of sin, I  remembered this message that was preached by my brother. He preached it when he was resigning from his church this past June. Like so many I have watched this year, he has yielded this part of his story to God who he believes has authored the details of his life for HIS OWN purposes and plans. Scott has been an example to me of a humble, sacrificial yielding looks like to God "flipping the script", as he calls it. 
Here is what I wrote in my prayer journal this morning in response:

Don't let what you see and what you experience distract you from this under-girding truth:

His story is better. His ways are higher. Worship is submission. Worship as a sacrifice is a proper response to all God has done and continues to do. He can be trusted. 

He is Good.

I asked Scott if I could share this with you. This is an excerpt from one of the last messages he preached at the church he loved pastoring. God asked him to lay down his plans and the script for his life.  In doing so, he, and so many others I am thinking of this morning,

"proved their love for God, not with words or with songs of worship but with pure, undefiled obedience." -Marian Ellis

I am leveled by the meekness and the humble surrender of so many of you. I am thankful for the physical display of God's promise to keep you and never leave you, to pray for your faith and to provide for you, through the Spirit all that you need to be more than a conqueror.  I see Him in your worship. It is beautiful music.

I pray this will bless you as it did me:


"I say with strong words, by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God which is your spiritual worship."

In such a context, Paul is using "bodies" as a reference to one's whole self, your entire being. 

ALL OF YOU...

your body, your mind, your talents, your future, your hope, your dreams, the plans you have for your life, the script we have all written for ourselves...your whole story. GIVE IT TO HIM AS A LIVING SACRIFICE.

The phrase: "Living sacrifice" involves a contradiction in terms since "sacrifice" is something which is put to death. In some languages, the distinction is rendered as, "offer yourself as though a killed gift to God while still alive" , "give yourself to God just as though you were a sacrifice but still living", or "give your lives to God as though they were a sacrifice."

What this means is that proper reasons for all that God has done for us is that all we have, all that we are, our hopes, our dreams, our futures, our lives are not ours anymore...

Because of ALL that God has done, the very least we can do is give him EVERYTHING and live our lives for him, according to HIS script of us in a way that pleases Him...

IT IS THE POSTURE WE SEE IN JESUS.

"Not my will, but Yours be done."

The sacrifice of one who has been forgiven, freed, given and inheritance and made a part of the family is described in three ways:

LIVING, DEDICATED TO HIS SERVICE, AND PLEASING TO HIM.

Walking this life as a Christian means we don't belong to ourselves anymore, even our own bodies are not ours...the posture of self-sacrifice is your "spiritual worship".

Worship is the only proper response to what God has done for us...being a living, breathing, walking sacrifice is an act of worship. A response.

God has claimed us, he has made us His own. That sounds beautiful and freeing, but it is also binding. God has rights over us, he has authority over our lives.

So often we are content to receive salvation, adoption and forgiveness from God and we will even live for God as long as HIs plans for our life don't interfere with the script we have written for ourselves.

Paul says...NO..you have to give that up.

If you think that what Paul is saying here in Romans 12 comes across as a big ask...then you don't get it yet...

You don't yet grasp the magnitude of what God has done for us through Christ...

Sometimes...God flips the script on us, and it feels like death...BECAUSE IT IS...but that is what it means to be a LIVING sacrifice...but don't forget where this is all headed...where the story that God is writing for us is taking us! 

Grace and Peace, fellow travelers! The best is yet to come.