{"id":9763,"date":"2023-09-07T12:00:21","date_gmt":"2023-09-07T17:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/iphc.org\/discipleship\/?p=9763"},"modified":"2023-11-03T10:34:35","modified_gmt":"2023-11-03T15:34:35","slug":"future-of-church-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iphc.org\/discipleship\/2023\/09\/07\/future-of-church-music\/","title":{"rendered":"Going Beyond “Woe is Me” Worship"},"content":{"rendered":"

Going Beyond \"Woe is Me\" Worship <\/h3>\n
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Not too long ago, I heard a story about a boy who was around ten years old. One day, he got so mad at his mom that, in the heat of the moment, he said some pretty harsh words. But he had been raised better than that, so it didn\u2019t take long for him to settle down and realize the error of his ways. Part of his punishment was to sit down and write out an apology. (The pain of an apology can sometimes hurt worse than a whipping!) In his apology, he wrote, \u201cI am dumb. I am stupid. I hate the Devil. I want God and Jesus.\u201d Even at ten years old, he recognized his own heart\u2019s tendency to hurt the people around him. But once he became aware of what he had done wrong, he knew what it would take to make it right. The only remedy at that moment was for the boy to be reminded of his mother\u2019s love, and what began as a correction from his mother quickly turned to compassion\u2013\u2013not despite what he had done but precisely in light of it.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard for us to imagine how God is capable of love, justice, mercy, wrath, grace, power, omniscience, and omnipotence all at once, but none of God\u2019s attributes cancel out the others or make him any less than who He is. Isaiah\u2019s experience in chapter six paints the picture for us of what it looks like to recognize our inadequacy yet receive God\u2019s grace to get going again in a better direction. I can only imagine what it was like for Isaiah to see the Lord on his throne in the Temple. The seraphim cried out, \u201cHoly, holy, holy\u201d again and again. As Isaiah watched the worship around the throne of God, he became deeply and painfully aware of his sin. He was so overcome by the chasm of sin and depravity that separated him from a holy God that the only response he could give was, \u201cWoe is me.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The \u201cwoe is me\u201d response is a moment that causes us to realize how far we are from God and reminds us of His infinitude and our fallen condition. The \u201cwoe is me\u201d moment recognizes the weight of God\u2019s glory and holiness. It sees humankind as being incredibly inferior to the majesty and might of the awesome and almighty God. Certain theological streams are content to stay in what I call the \u201cwoe is me\u201d mindset. They do not try to excuse sin, but they focus on it so much that it becomes the end-all-be-all of their worship, preaching, and teaching. They become almost exclusively focused on the depravity of humankind in the name of God\u2019s holiness that they miss other aspects of God\u2019s character revealed in Scripture. God\u2019s holiness is not threatened or augmented by our depravity because He is God all by himself! He does not need the contrast of human sin to accentuate his holiness.<\/span><\/p>\n

We all need a \u201cwoe is me\u201d moment, yet we cannot stop there or stay in that moment. We all need to see God seated high upon His throne and acknowledge as Isaiah did, \u201cWoe is me.\u201d But as soon as Isaiah says, \u201cWoe is me,\u201d the seraph takes the coal from the altar and cleanses Isaiah\u2019s lips to speak the word of the Lord. This is what God does for all of us who make the profession, \u201cWoe is me!\u201d He makes us useful to declare His words. There is a danger when we stop at \u201cWoe is me\u201d because it causes our act of worship to become me-centered, yet God wants to move us to \u201cHere I am, send me,\u201d and we cannot say, \u201cHere I am,\u201d unless we have said, \u201cWoe is me.\u201d God wants to use us and many of us want to be used by God, but some want to skip from seeing God on the throne to saying, \u201cHere I am,\u201d without going through \u201cWoe is me.\u201d But others stop at \u201cWoe is me\u201d and never say \u201cHere I am.\u201d When we say, \u201cWoe is me,\u201d God cleanses us to make us fit for His use. This is a second crucial moment for every Christian.<\/span><\/p>\n

Once we say, \u201cWoe is me,\u201d God can make us useful, and then we can boldly respond to the Gospel call with, \u201cHere am I. Send me!\u201d When God spoke to Abraham in Genesis 22, Abraham responded, \u201cHere I am.\u201d When He called Moses in Exodus 3, Moses said, \u201cHere I am.\u201d When He called the young Samuel in 1 Samuel 3, the boy responded, \u201cHere I am.\u201d Isaiah followed this pattern of obedient response to the call. Now, what we should notice here is that responding with \u201cHere I am. Send me!\u201d is not a mere <\/span>moment<\/span><\/i>. It is a daily reality. We can and should look back on the moment when we acknowledged and repented from our sin and said, \u201cWoe is me,\u201d but we cannot and should not stay there. We can look back on the moment when we were cleansed with the coal from the altar, but we must not stay sinful and unclean. Those moments happen so that we can live in the daily reality of being sent out into the world as our act of worship (Rom. 12:1). It is an act of daily obedience to say, \u201cHere am I. Send me!\u201d Like the young boy who wrote down in his apology letter, \u201cI want God and Jesus!\u201d we all find the same response from the Lord. When we come to Him to acknowledge and repent of our sins, He does not turn us away. He embraces us with great love; His love is an expression of His holiness, and He thereby makes us whole; and then, because His love casts out fear, and as an ultimate act of worship, we can respond with confidence to His call, \u201cHere I am. Send me!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

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Tr\u00e9s Ward is a fourth-generation ordained minister in the International Pentecostal Holiness Church. Tr\u00e9s has served on pastoral staff in three IPHC local churches and the denomination as a conference worship leader, choir director, Fine Arts evaluator, evangelist, youth camp speaker, and missions team leader. He is Assistant to the President, Director of Ministry Teams, and an adjunct instructor in Music and Worship at Emmanuel College in Franklin Springs, Georgia. He oversees the Worship Ministry degree program and directs the\u00a0<\/span>Emmanuel Singers<\/span><\/em>,\u00a0<\/span>Resound<\/span><\/em>,\u00a0<\/span>Conquest<\/span><\/em>, and the chapel worship teams. Tr\u00e9s earned the Bachelor of Music in Music Education from Appalachian State University, the Master of Divinity at Liberty University with an emphasis in Worship Studies, and is a PhD student in Christian Worship at Liberty University. Tr\u00e9s and his wife, Rachael, reside in northeast Georgia and enjoy going to the movies, Braves games, and spending time with family.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"excerpt","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":10122,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","filesize_raw":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,1325],"tags":[1031,1482,1312,1484,570,1485],"class_list":{"0":"post-9763","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-discipleship-ministries","8":"category-worship","9":"tag-discipleship-ministries","10":"tag-q3","11":"tag-tres-ward","12":"tag-what-is-worship","13":"tag-worship","14":"tag-worship-ministry","15":"entry"},"title_es":"","content_es":"","author_name":"Tr\u00e9s Ward","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/iphc.org\/discipleship\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2023\/09\/Contract.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4T9u2-2xt","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iphc.org\/discipleship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iphc.org\/discipleship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iphc.org\/discipleship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iphc.org\/discipleship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iphc.org\/discipleship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iphc.org\/discipleship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9763\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iphc.org\/discipleship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iphc.org\/discipleship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iphc.org\/discipleship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iphc.org\/discipleship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}