WARNING: 100% personal feelings reflected in this Blog

I want to know you,
I want to see your face,
I want to know you more.
I want to touch you, I want hear your voice.
I want to know you more.

I'm here to meet with You,
Come and meet with me.
I'm here to find You,
Reveal yourself to me.

Humbly You came to the earth you created,
All for love's sake became poor.

God be the Solution.
Be your hands, be your feet, to the least of these..
Woah, God be the Solution.


These are just a couple of songs that popped into my head the other night. Easy to sing, catchy tunes, so easy to stomp our feet, jump up and down, and even yell the words out to. Not so easy to actually do what they are saying. Or even, to simply think about what the ramifications are of us saying these things.
Maybe this is just my bitterness talking.
I like to sometimes treat my blog like therapy, so if it comes across that way, I apologize in advance. If you're not interested in a little bitterness, stop reading NOW.

When we sing, I want to know you, I want to see your face. Really, what does that mean??
I was on a retreat on the weekend, where this song was sung. I looked around, I saw hands raised, I saw earnest faces, eyes closed, some smiles, some concerned faces, some dancing, some standing incredibly still. As I looked around, I noticed a commonality, everyone was singing these words. Everyone was speaking these expressive and substantial words to God. I couldn't help but wonder what meaning that was to them.
To me, it means a lot to say something so huge to the God of the universe.
When we say, I want to know you.
When we sing, Come meet with me.
When we are acknowledging the life of Christ as one of humility and poverty.
How does that change us?
Maybe I'm off the ball a little here, but we call this worship.
And I speak solely for myself now, when I say that's fucked up worship, if we are going to continue defining it as that.
That is me singing to God, HUGE HUGE requests, HUGE HUGE "desires", and in the end what I would like to suggest are HUGE lies. Maybe I've gone a little too far in calling them lies. But I have made these phrases so easy to say that they have become meaningless.
You see, these phrases in these oversung songs all have some uniformity to them. They all have words of ACTION.
I don't mean ACTION in the sense that we need to be shooting up our arms, or closing our eyes to look more spiritual then the next person with their hands in their pockets. I mean ACTION. In the adventure, fearless, daring way.
When we suggest to God that we WANT to know him, we MUST be willing to go searching for him. He even says in Jeremiah, you will find me, when you SEEK ME.
Likewise, I'm here to meet with you, where are you?! I find that song the hardest to sing, mostly b/c I would be scared to meet God in the places I am. Why is that? Partly because I'm not really exposing myself to the places where Christ dwelled. If I am, minimally.
I guess what I'm getting at here, is that I need to be mindful of what I'm saying.
Also, to realize that words require action. At least to God they do.
I've come to a place where if I want to know God, I need to go where He is. The life of Jesus has given us a prime example of where he dwells. Amongst the lonely, forsaken and rejected.
I've also been thinking a lot about how these words affect community.
While, some would argue that they are simply words put to music and have little to no consequence on our behaviour, I would argue the exact opposite. When you sit down and disect a lot of "worship" songs, there can be so much meaning that we did not even think existed.
When we serve a God of action, when we sing words about how he came to the world and humbled himself becoming poor, it only leads me to conclude that that is what I am to become. So why do we sing it, walk away on a "high", and continue living our selfish lives?
And we continue to see that present, as bands like Hillsong are getting bigger and bigger. I just heard that they are coming to the Molson Ampitheatre. That's huge.
That's where Jack Johnson, Ben Harper, and Black Eyed Peas have gone. We've taken our praise songs to God and made them a performance. Not only that, but we've taken these things and consumerized them. I just would like to clarify another thing here, these attitudes are totally and 100% my feelings, I do not mean to disrespect Hillsong or other worship Cd bands or suggest that they are not as "christian" as I am. More so, to raise awareness that we really aren't living any sort of anti-cultural message by buying into this stuff. I am totally to blame too. The other day I went looking for Hillsong on iTunes to buy the song Solution. Mostly because when I heard it, it had a message about social justice. A message about how God needs to be the solution. A message of grace and hope, a message about being Christ's hands and feet to the least of these. It is rather empowering isn't it?
Yet, when we look at our world, it's not "christians" we see changing it, no, in fact it's the opposite. God is no longer the solution. As shitty as that is to say/type.
My biggest fear is that we will keep seeing these songs and making them as meaningless as they have already become. My fear is that we will keep buying $45 concert tickets to see people who are "praising" God. My fear is that we will continue singing about meeting Christ, and longing to see Him, but NEVER venture out to the places where He exists in HUMAN form. My fear is that we will continue to sing about how we long for a solution, and yet, NEVER EVER see the equation of that solution.
I'm sorry for this rant, but these are legitimate fears of mine, not only for the church, but also for me. I've begun to see these songs as words, as promises, as a contract to act. Without action, there will be no change.