Thoughts on Honesty with God and In Our Worship

Man…to be able to write like this:

A Thousand pairs of fiery eyes
Burn like a serpent down the Highway 5
As the long amber tail to Los Angeles unwinds
I’ve got His resurrection down in side my skin
But for all my revelating I just cant make sense of this gravity we’re in

Cause I’m a dead man now with a ghost who lives
Within the confines of these carbon ribs
And one day when I’m free, I will sit
The cripple at your table
The cripple by your side

– Carbon Ribs, John Mark McMillan

These lyrics just reverberated in my head today as I listened to them a number of times.

I read an article about McMillan this morning and two things hit home – one about his songwriting and the other about worship, but both dealing with being honest with God.

On his songwriting/being honest with God:

“I think it was during those months [after the death of a close friend] that I learned how to write a song, because that was the year I learned to be honest with God.”

Imagine that…being honest with God.  I think sometimes we feel that God can’t handle the brutally honest communication we often reserve for family and friends.  After all, He’s God – we don’t want to anger Him or bother Him.  We think that if we were to truly tell God how we felt, He’d certainly be unhappy with us, possibly ignore us, or even worse.

The truth is, God can handle honesty.  He can handle the truth…He is truth.  In the Bible we read about some brutally honest conversations that David had with God – and he lived.  I believe that we can have that same level of intimacy with God; in fact, He desires it.

On worship/honesty with God:

“To His own hurt, Jesus, chose to be a part of our world.  Why would we pretend that we don’t bring all our love, loss, and insecurity with us into the conversations we call ‘worship’?   After all, we don’t serve a God who is unacquainted with grief.  He is not surprised by or even unfamiliar with the darkness that can plague a human heart.  In fact, He specializes at dealing with that sort of thing.”

I think the church, in general, strives for sanitary worship.  I’m guilty of doing it and even probably fostering it as a worship leader.

forgive me God – especially for the latter.

You see, we feel we have to uphold the perception that once you enter the four walls of the church building, you better “have it together for God.”  We’re there to bring glory; so we better not be a mess – God might be offended and others might be distracted.  We see our fellow worshipers and know their stories (if they’ve shared – which is another thing i fail at probably); but we all smile, face forward, and sing like we’re “doin’ all right for Jesus” – when in fact we’re broken, hurting, scared, addicted, … , all the junk in our lives.

We forget that Jesus knows.  He knew and He knows.

He knew what it meant to be broken, beaten, abused, neglected, deserted, betrayed, saddened, hurt at the death of a friend He loved, … , all the junk we encounter in our lives.  He knew it and still pressed forward for the joy set before him and “endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”  In doing that, He enabled us to worship Him directly, whether smiling, crying, on top of a mountain, dealing with Junk, whatever.

He knows.  Whether we’ve been honest with Him about the junk, He knows.  He desires intimacy with us.  He wants honesty in our worship – which is really all our life as Christ followers.

Sadly, it’s almost as if we cheapen His death by forgoing honesty with Him and in our worship.

All this to say, we need to worship with honesty.  Worship leaders need to lead in a manner that enables it.  Everyone in the room – Creator and created – knows the junk, so why ignore it.  Why not sit and weep or in silence while everyone else is singing?  Why not sing through the tears of joy and faith in God’s everlasting strength, providence, and grace.  Why not stop singing when you see someone sitting and weeping and care for them.

Just some random thoughts.  I was kinda convicted today.  Guess I’m just being honest…

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