The Prayer of the Satisfied Soul

My new favorite book is Ten Questions to Diagnose Your Spiritual Health by Donald S. Whitney.  The first chapter is entitled “Do You Thirst For God?”.  I love the fact that he starts the book with this chapter, because too often we begin diagnosing our spiritual health by the “spiritual things” we are doing or not doing (reading my Bible, praying, church involvement/attendence, etc.).  NO NO NO!  We must begin by pursuing God because he is a worthy pursuit and satisfying to the soul.  It is of God himself that Paul says in Phil. 3:10, “that I may know Him…”.  The Apostle Paul knew God a lot better that I do, but He wanted to know Him even more!  It satisfies our soul to be satisfied in God himself and crave more!  THEN…. the desire for His Word will grow stronger, the need for communicating in our relationship with Him will grow deeper, and the love  of serving Him will be sweeter.  You see, we often desire the results of pursuing God rather than pursuing God Himself!  Wow.  Good stuff.  Worship leaders, you must read this book!

Check out this prayer from A. W. Tozer.  It is the prayer of the satisfied soul:

O God, I have tasted Thy goodness, and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more.  I am painfully conscious of my need for further grace.  I am ashamed of my lack of desire.  O God, the Triune God, I want to want Thee; I long to be filled with longing; I thirst to be made thirsty still. (Whitney, p. 23)

Weekend Worship Review 2/22

I introduced another song that I wrote.  As a songwriter, it is exciting to see people catch on to a song and hear them sing it to the Lord.  People seemed to pick it up quickly, which is how I intended the song to be.  When I write a worship song where the goal is congregational participation, it is important to keep in mind the “accessibility” of the song.  On other songs that I have written which I intend to sing myself, the phrasing and melody will be more suited to my own voice.  Also, I might be more personal on the subject of the song or it’s meaning, but for worship I don’t want people spending lots of time trying to figure out what they saying to the Lord because I wrote the song about how God provided for a specific situation in my life.  Although people can relate to provision, the song is about me.  I’m trying to give a group of believers a voice to express worship to God.  I also don’t want people trying to hit notes that when they try to sing they thinking, “man, my vocal cords are gonna break if I have to sing that on the second verse!”.  I’m also not going to write in a long instrumental break between verses because I thought it was a SWEET chord progression, while everyone is thinking, “how much longer ’till I’m supposed to sing again…I just want to sing to the Lord!”.  Anyway, these are some of the ramblings of a songwriter trying to do his best at helping the church express worship to God in song.  I’ll try to post an acoustic version of the song.  Here’s the set this past week:

1. Sing to the King
2. Greeting
3. Announcements/Offering
4. Update on St. Vincent Church planting (Pastor Al Blake)
5. Yours (We introduced a new song to the church that I wrote)
6. Scripture reading: 1 John 2:15-17 (esv)
7. Be Thou My Vision (I wrote a simple flute line for the verses, worked good!)
8. How Great Is Our God
9. Message: Pastor Dan (series: Worldliness)
10. Turn Your Eyes upon Jesus (no band, just Joe on acoustic)