My thoughts are rather fleeting.

Well, here I am. It's the week before finals week, (dead week if you will...I'm not sure if you are supposed to wish to be dead or if things are supposed to calm down. The latter hasn't happened yet.) and I am writing on this thing.

Last night I went to Overflow, a praise and worship experience for college students here at Oklahoma State. I've struggled with Overflow this year, because I've struggled with how consumer driven our church culture has become. So much so that we have a worship concert every Tuesday night that is an hour long. It's quick, easy, and no outside time commitment involved. We come in talk, socialize, sing, "fellowship", and then leave spiritual "recharged" so we last until Sunday. I'm not sure how much life change is actually involved, but it's fun, and it is a good place to build relationships with people, so I go. Maybe it's not the best motivation, but there are a lot of people who have the same driving force as me. Not to mention, I get to sing songs to God. That's a plus. I say this to show that I am not criticizing, merely stating what I struggle with. I also get frustrated when I head in with the right heart, but I feel as if no actual worship is going on. No actual finding joy in God's glory. I try my hardest, and sometimes it doesn't work. While I realize that worship is between the worshiper and the object of worship, oftentimes I feel that corporate worship adds the dynamic of everyone in the room participating in order for God to be experienced in all of the glory of who He is. This is probably a horrible statement doctrinally since worship is not based on emotion or chill bumps alone, but based on fully imitating the One we serve. Stating who He is and our response. But for me, something about knowing that the people next to you are truly striving and struggling to tell God who He is, makes me see God better.

Except for some reason last night everything seemed to click. We were outside, and it was relatively cold (40 degrees on April 25th? Really?). But for some reason, when the worship started, the singing of God's people warmed the place. The brisk wind felt more like the breath of God's work. We sang about how God numbers the stars in the sky, but we could not see the with the overcast cloudiness in the way. Somehow that made words more meaningful. Although we couldn't see the stars, God knew them by name and was working them in motion behind the clouds that had brought a powerful thunderstorm the night before. I felt as if my breath was being used to sing to God instead of to keep warm. And it solved all my fears, my chills, my shivers. We called nature to sing to Him as we sang together. "Praise Him under open skies,/ everything breathing praising God/In the company of all who love the King". And as I looked around, I saw men and women responding to God's pursuit of them.

This whole week I have been thinking about God's glory, and what it means to fully respond to it. To use an illustration of one of my favorite teachers, John Piper, God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him. He describes God's glory as so great and so wonderful, that our human, finite, time-driven minds cannot fully comprehend it. All of human life is spent reaching for His glory, striving for His passion. Our response should be one of trying to reveal the little bit of glory that we can comprehend now, to the rest of the world. In short, we are to magnify his glory to the world. Now there are two ways to magnify something. You can use a microscope or a telescope. A microscope is used to make something that is really small bigger. As a church, we cannot try to magnify God in this way. If we do, essentially we are saying, "Oh God, you need our help. You are far too small. These people can't see your work everywhere on this planet, in their DNA, in their daily living. Let me help you, for God you are too small." In saying this, we make ourselves above God, an reduce Christianity to a spritualized version of secular humanism. However, there is another approach. One can also use a telescope to magnify something. When one uses a telescope to look at the stars, one does not see an amplified version of a small thing. One sees more clearly what the stars truly are. HUGE THINGS that we cannot see unless the images are reflected and refracted into our finite understanding of them. If magnify God to the world as a telescope, we will essentially let others see God's HUGENESS and MAJESTY in a way that is applicable to their lives. And when they look through us to see God's hugeness, we fade away. And only Christ is there. Overwhelmingly loving and purposeful and righteous.

I think my approach can be seen in this way. Throughout the year, Overflow may have been a way for us to produce God, so that He could be seen better. My words are failing me now, I can't think of how to describe this idea. I think this is why it has frustrated me so. In a sense we have been saying, God you are too small. Let's do this so we can feel you. Let's magnify you to the world with a microscope mentality. We reduced God to a Tuesday night from 9-10:15.

Last night, Overflow was not that way. Last night it was as if God forced us out of the picture because his glory is already so wonderful. It was as if Overflow telescoping His broad glory to us. We moved out of the picture. The picture became the glory in the things around us. The songs were more cries for us to understand how big his glory was, instead of cries to simply understand within our own context. Last night collectively, corporately, I believe a body of believers asked God to help us understand Him in his context, outside of our consumerized view of who He is. I tried to understand Him as the all knowing, the I AM.

Charlie Hall's song "Center" brought these thoughts to my mind last night, and I could not help but meditate on them throughout the day. If you haven't heard his music before, you should try it. Charlie really does have a way of creating quality artistic music, but moving himself out of the picture. I wish I could find that balance. Anyways, I think that right now my life, and my pursuit is summed up in the words of this bridge.

We lift our eyes to heaven,
We wrap our lives around your life.
We lift our eyes to heaven, to You.

After thinking about this post, I realize how it doesn't make sense. I surely hope that the promise about how the Holy Spirit intercedes for us works for blogs too.