I think that just about says it all.

I can’t think of too many more powerful examples of the transformative grace of God than Rahab. She literally was a prostitute who chose the promises of God over her own people.

Then there’s Saul, religious henchman and persecutor of God’s people who later became one of the foremost preachers of the gospel that he formerly tried to destroy..

So many stories throughout the Bible showcase God’s ability to change lives and purposes for His glory. As I heard before, the sin and scars that served shame now serve a purpose — testifying to the goodness of God.

No matter how lost or hopeless you feel, there’s always a hope for a new start and a new story. Let God write yours and you will be the most amazed at all people at what God can do.

All of these are worship. It’s not about how well or how loud you can sing songs of praise. It’s about presenting your bodies asan acceptable offering for God to use however He chooses. It’s about being renewed and transformed by the power of God.

Worship is declaring the ultimate and infinite worth of God, whether it’s in a church service or in an office building or even cleaning toilets.

I would give credit for these images, but I can’t remember who first posted them or who created them. It wasn’t me.

“So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.”
‭‭Romans‬ ‭12‬:‭1‬-‭2‬ ‭MSG‬‬
https://bible.com/bible/97/rom.12.1-2.MSG

First, a disclaimer. It’s technically not spooky season just yet, though I am all for all the Halloween decorations at this point. It feels too hot to adequately celebrate spooky things.

I do love that I get another opportunity to take care of my favorite pups ever. At this point, they’re both super chill and just want all the pets and all the naps. I can relate.

I don’t take things like this for granted. I know how changeable and fleeting life is. I appreciate more and more how much of a gift each day is and how no one, including me, is promised a tomorrow.

So my plan is to pet all the dogs and be thankful. I think that’s a good plan, don’t you?

I have to confess that I am a fan of change . . . until it actually happens. Then I really like the way it used to be and want to go back.

I’m still getting used to the new rhythm of having Kairos once a month. Or more accurately, the Nights of Worship Formerly Known as Kairos. Hopefully, someone will come up with something more catchy or at least shorter.

But something magical always happens when people gather together in worship. It’s something where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. We could each all individually worship in separate places, but it would be nowhere near as powerful as all those voices raised as one.

I was reminded again tonight that worship is about more than singing. It’s about a surrender that leads to transformation. It’s about not conforming or allowing the world around you to shape you into its image, but allowing God to transform you and shape you into His image.

Real worship isn’t pretty. It’s messy and broken, because we who offer up our worship to God are messy and broken. Sometimes, authentic worship looks and sounds like a broken hallelujah. Sometimes, there are no words but only tears.

Richard Foster once said, “If worship does not propel us into greater obedience, it has not been worship. To stand before the Holy One of eternity is to change.”

I can’t worship God in spirit and truth and remain the same. If I have the greatest emotional catharsis and the most moving experience, but am no different when I leave, then it has not been worship. If I can continue in my own sinful lifestyle and not feel the need to repent over my sin afterward, then it has not been worship.

True revival isn’t about miracles and being emotionally overwhelmed. It’s about repentance that leads to renewal that becomes revival. And it starts not with singing but with surrender.

“To be grateful for an unanswered prayer, to give thanks in a state of interior desolation, to trust in the love of God in the face of the marvels, cruel circumstances, obscenities, and commonplaces of life is to whisper a doxology in darkness.” (Brennan Manning).

I love this quote so much. I’m sure I’ve put it in a blog post before, but it’s just so good. And true.

It’s one thing to sing praise songs when the weather’s nice, when my job is going well, when everybody I love is happy and healthy, and when my checkbook is solidly in the black.

But how many could sing a doxology staring in the face of death? How many could still worship in the wake of financial hardships or health scares?

The answer is yes, but only by the grace of God.

Left to myself, I won’t choose to sing. I might choose to curse, but not to worship. I’d definitely complain more than I’d belt out praise choruses.

The true test of a faithful witness isn’t how loudly we sing when life is good, but how you and I can keep reminding each other of the goodness of God when life gets hard. We can still sing, even if it’s just a whisper . . . or even no words come out at all.

A single doxology in the darkness brings God more joy than all the Hallelujah choruses and all the Beethoven’s Fifth Symphonies and all the greatest choirs singing all the greatest hymns ever written. Just one.

I know that according to the calendar, it’s already fall. But sense when did the great state of Tennessee pay any attention to calendars or seasons? It does what it wants to when it wants to. I can attest that we have all four seasons in one week sometimes.

But I’m ready for real, honest to goodness fall. I want flannel weather with my spooky season. I want all things pumpkin spice, apple cider, and bonfire. I want for there to be just a nip in the air in the mornings and for me not to break into a sweat in the afternoons for merely going outside.

I mean I’m not complaining about the less hot temperatures and the very low humidity. It’s better than over 90 degrees with all the steamy humidity.

But still I want fall. That weather, that particular scent that only comes in autumn, can conjure up a million memories from yore. I can suddenly remember the faces of those who are no longer here. Plus, there are the Pumpkin-shaped Reese’s.

I believe in the Word of God. I believe that the Word of God refers to the holy Scriptures as presented in the Bible. I believe the Bible to be inerrant and infallible.

That being said, I confess that I am not always the best at studying it.

I read it. Sometimes, I admit that I speed-read through some of the slower parts, like the genealogies and the laws and all the begats. I can read a text sometimes and go away and not remember a thing, much like the man in the book of James who looks in a mirror and goes away and instantly forgets what he looks like.

But I found this prayer that might be helpful. “We pray for the energy and the courage, that we might not leave the text until we wrench your blessing from it.”

It’s a reference to Jacob wrestling with God, unwilling to let go until God blessed him. Unwilling to let go even though it was crippling him.

How often to I come to the Word of God already thinking about the next task or the next day? How often do I treat reading the very Word of God as an item to be completed and checked off my list rather than an opportunity to hear from God Himself?

Wrestling takes time. Wrestling involves intimacy. As I heard it said once, you can wrestle with someone who’s far away. Wrestling with God in His word means coming close enough to hear His words, and lingering there until I have heard them.

So while I have read the Bible through several times, I can’t really say that I have let the Bible read me. I can’t say that I have given God time to speak to me through the reading of His word.

Lord, give me the courage and the patience to not leave your Word until I have indeed wrenched a blessing from it and heard from You. Amen.

That’s what change looks like from the outside. Everything’s the same for a while, and then BOOM everything has changed. But that’s not how it looks underneath.

If you could see beneath the surface, you’d se thousands — maybe millions — of minute changes, like when the ocean current wears away the shore over time. Minute to minute, day to day, it looks the same, but in 10 years it won’t look the same.

Day after day, you look and feel the same, but one day you will look back at who you are now and see the difference. You will see what the unseen hand of God has been up to all that time.

If you trust in only what you can see, you will grow frustrated and lose faith. You won’t see God or what He’s doing. You will only see part of the picture, like the tip of the iceberg. But what’s important is what’s underneath and unseen.

That’s why the old adage says about God that when you can’t see His hand trust His heart. Trust that He is at work even when you can’t see it and can’t feel it. Then the frustration turns to faith and the restlessness turns into peace.

“The entire human race was created to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. Sin has diverted the human race onto another course, but it has not altered God’s purpose to the slightest degree. And when we are born again we are brought into the realization of God’s great purpose for the human race, namely, that He created us for himself. This realization of our election by God is the most joyful on earth, and we must learn to rely on this tremendous creative purpose of God” (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest).

It’s amazing how much simpler everything gets when you seek God’s purposes over your own. When you finally surrender and let go of everything you’ve been chasing all these years, you find that what you really longed for and sought after was in God all along. You find that just as water is to a thirsty man in the desert, so is God to your soul, and everything else is dry sand.

I can attest that so many things offer fulfillment that fades, but only Jesus offers living water that never runs dry or runs out. Everything else will leave you wanting more — or just leave you wanting.

Trying to find your purpose or identity in your sexuality or your ideology or your profession falls short of fulfilling all of the purpose for which you were created. Only the one who made you can give you your purpose.

According to the Westminster Shorter Catechism, our chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. I think we do that when we live out of God’s purpose for our lives — knowing Him and making Him known.