lordship & lambs

This past week was such a blur – the days go slowly but the weeks just go so fast. Our topic was Lordship and our speaker was Mark Parker, and he’s maybe the craziest man I’ve ever met. I mean he was just wild – yelling things, jumping around the room, just so animated and full of energy – and he’s 55! But all the craziness aside, he is one of those people who just makes you want to love Jesus more, and that’s the thing I’ll remember most.

He started the week out by saying, “Lordship is not about proving or explaining how Jesus is Lord – he already is! Whether you want to believe it or not! HA – HA! So Lordship is about making Jesus your Lord. And that’s what we’re going to talk about.”

For the rest of the week, we mostly talked about what happens when you become a Christian, and what the process looks like after that. He separated the self into body (physical), soul (mind, will, emotions), and spirit (intuition, communion, conscience, connection to God). When you are “re-born”, your spirit is made new, but your soul is not. Thus, it is a process of renewing your mind so that your spirit and mind are in order and your body follows suit (Thus, Romans 12:2 “be transformed by the renewing of your mind”)

So the most memorable thing we did this week was on Friday. We essentially re-created the steps that the Jews used to take in the Old Testament to enter the temple, but re-vamped them to reflect New Testament living. The steps were (based on the books of Leviticus/Hebrews):

1. Gate of the Court / Jesus, Thanksgiving

2. Outer Court / Praise

3. The Brazen Altar / The Cross (burnt offering, sin offering)

4. The Brazen Laver / The Word

5. The Golden Candlestick / Holy Spirit

6. The Table of Showbread / Communion

7. The Altar of Incense / Prayer

8. Tearing of the Veil / Absence of alienation

9. Ark of the Covenant / Holy Spirit

10. Cloud of Glory / Worship

It sounds a little crazy, but I found that this is a really similar pattern to the way that liturgical churches structure their services. We give thanks & praise, we confess our sins, we are “washed with the word” (readings), we receive communion, we pray, and we worship. The only difference with this was that we did everything (thanks, praise, confession, etc) out loud and individually instead of collectively as one body or silently in our minds. But it is a biblical way that we truly enter into God’s presence, with no hindrances. And it lasted for 14 hours. Yeah! It was a crazy day, but it was really good. There was a real sense of God’s presence in the room.

On Saturday, we decided we needed to do something really restful, since Friday was such a long day. We went to a sheep farm and saw lots of animals, watched a sheep get sheared, and I even got to feed a baby lamb! That was definitely the highlight! I should be able to put some pictures up soon! J