Holy WarsGuru Woo WooChurch Babel/With My MindTags: Church Growth, Church Growth Movement, Church growth consultants, worship leader, conservative, liberal, Conservative Christian, Conservative Christian theology, Evangelical, evangelism, post modern church, modernism, praise and worship, hymns, hymn singing, New Worship, Evangelical Church, charismatic, renewing of your mind, Faith Mind, Third Patriarch of Zen Buddhism, Chien-chih Seng-ts'an, 19 Sermons on Praise Charles Spurgeon, Tommy Walker, Let's Think About Our God, new age, draw near unto GodChurch
Now I was used to getting together to pray
with people in a manner that one person prayed at a time in some intelligible fashion.
This would not be the case here. Even during the first rehearsal with this charismatic
band I found that prayer had taken on quite an unfamiliar ring to it. As soon as we
entered into prayer the whole group started babbling some phrase or another. Everyone did
this at the same time. Some would say, “Praise You, Praise
You, Praise You” over and over and over again. Others would be chanting
“Hallelujah,” “We worship you,” “Jesus, Jesus,” and so on.
It seemed weird to me. But I got used to it soon enough. In fact, I eventually got pretty
good at chanting mantras. It’s not all that difficult, which is the point. Later I learned that people do this in
tongues as well. A certain pastor in a charismatic church that I was ministering in would
always speak in his “prayer language” throughout the entire prayer time. This
would occur even when one person was praying an intelligible prayer aloud. His chant was:
“Roah, roah, roah, roah. . . .” That was with a trilled “R.” And as
the prayer became more intense the trill lengthened and dramatically increased in volume.
Though the speaking of tongues is encouraged in the Bible, (I Cor After years of that I finally landed in
the
But God wants us to do more with our heads
than bang them against a wall. Jesus commanded us to love God with our
mind. (Matt 27: 37) When speaking of Christian worship Paul followed up that we are to be
“transformed by the renewing of your mind.” (Rom 12: 2b NIV) He also added to
the Corinthian church, “I will pray with my spirit, but I will also pray with my
mind; I will sing with my spirit, but I will also sing with my mind.” (I Cor 12: 15b
NIV) The Poem Verses on the Faith Mind
supposedly written by the Third Patriarch of Zen Buddhism, Chien-chih Seng-ts'an (in
Japanese, Kanchi Sosan), who lived in the late 500's AD, demonstrates what little value
the mystic places on the mind: "The mind does not have a shape, it does not have a
form, it is not a thing, it is a no-thing." But to the Christian, the mind is
everything. Therefore in his 19 Sermons on Praise Charles Spurgeon disagreed with the
pagan mindless worship contention when he wrote, "Instead of cavilling at the Lord
because of certain stern truths which we read concerning Him, we are enabled in these to
worship Him by bowing our reason to His revelation.” The mind of reason is not an
inhibition to worship. It is the very thing that inspires it as we acknowledge God as He
is revealed in His Word.
The One who gave it all, He gave up
everything. Let’s think about the Man who shed
His precious blood, So we could be His friends, His friends
until the end. And give our love and praise to Him, He is our Savior and our Friend.” Notice that when Paul said, “I will
pray with my spirit, but I will also pray with my mind; I will sing with my spirit, but I
will also sing with my mind,” He spoke of prayer and singing in the same breath.
Praying and singing have a lot in common with each other. They are times of emotion and of
quietness. They are times to be still and know He is God. (Ps 46:10) We live in a very
fast-paced, hectic world and need to spend quiet time with God just as Jesus needed to go
off by Himself and pray. (Matt Though it is a spiritual activity to pray
and sing unto the Lord, where our emotions rise, as they should, Paul is telling us here
that we need to remember to keep our minds involved. Intimacy is about knowing someone
else and “knowing” is based upon communication that reveals what that other
person is all about. How many of us would believe that it is becoming intimate with
another person by getting together and chanting repetitive statements to each other?
Rather, intimacy is about learning who that other person is through the use of
intelligible dialogue. The pagans believe that God is an
undefined force. To them God does not have a personality, nor does He have attributes. To
them He does not have a nature nor does He have intelligence. To the pagan, God is just
some spiritual feeling in the air. Therefore the New Age folk seek to find God through
means other than what we know as communication. That is why they need to transcend into
another state of mind that circumvents the natural state. But in reality God is a Person. He has
specific attributes that can be recognized. We can talk to Him and He will answer. We can
sing to Him and He will receive our praise and bless us in a way that we can understand
with our minds. We can communicate with Him through natural means. We can get close to Him
in the same manner that we draw near to each other. “Draw near to God, and he will
draw near to you.” (Jas 8:8b KJV 2000) God has a mind brimming with intelligence and
knowledge. Thus we can only communicate with Him intelligently. Consequently, though God is supernatural
and communicating with Him is a spiritual event, He is a Person and we worship Him with
our mind. The difference here between paganism and Christianity does not have to do with
the fact that people desire to see and experience God. To know God is a basic human desire
that cannot be ignored. The difference lies in the manner in which this communication is
accomplished. The pagan worships in order to find God. The Christian has been found by God
and therefore worships and fellowships with Him in everything he does. It is only the
Christian who can know God.
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