The Table California
The Table is a church family in Arroyo Grande, California. Our desire is to give Jesus His desire...a house where He can be Himself with His family. This podcast hosts the weekly teachings from our Sunday evening gatherings and occasionally supplemental conversations throughout the week.
The Table California
Worship Through Distraction
BONUS MATERIAL - This is a mid-week conversation Neil, Lindsey, & Layla had as a followup to our gathering on Sunday.
The whole earth is full of the glory of the Lord...if only we'd give more attention to Him than to our distractions. Our hope is to cultivate a lifestyle of worship that overflows into our Sunday gatherings...to become a people who can worship through the distraction.
To see the video of this conversation, check out the new AROUND THE TABLE YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/@AroundTheTable-xs6ld?sub_confirmation=1
For more information on THE TABLE please visit:
www.thetablecalifornia.com
okay, here we are. This is the first take. We wanted to have a conversation about what happened yesterday in worship and how beautiful it was, and we thought what better person to join us than leila? So, leila, thank you for being part of the conversation with us. You're welcome. Yesterday was absolutely beautiful.
Speaker 1:What you and Francis and Hallie have been cultivating in worship over the past few months has been it's been a gift for us. It's been fun to watch. It's been even more fun to participate in, and I felt like yesterday and I know you feel the same way we talked about this last night we were all enjoying the fruit last night of months of cultivating something in worship. It's something that the three of you cultivate hours before we even come together on a Sunday. You go in that building and the three of you just lock away and you worship Jesus on your own, and then we catch the spillover of that every Sunday, which is beautiful. But I felt like last night we were enjoying the fruit of all of us really going after something in worship that not many of us have experienced before specifically being able to worship through distraction. So we use family language when we gather, we say, hey, kids are going to be kids, people are going to have car trouble, they're going to arrive late, there's going to have car trouble, they're going to arrive late, you know there's just there's going to be distractions. And so we we press through that during the message sometimes, but we also press through that during worship, which can be challenging. It can be really difficult because we're used to worshiping in carefully cultivated atmospheres where the lights are down low so you're not seeing any distractions. The speakers are really loud so you don't hear any distractions. All you hear is what the worship band is wanting you to receive.
Speaker 1:When you're in a setting like this, it's hard sometimes to get to that place of genuine encounter in worship, because there are distractions. The babies are walking around, the babies are distractions. The babies are walking around, the babies are crying, the kids are being kids. You know someone has to go get up and go to the bathroom. Someone arrives late because of car trouble, whatever, you're having to put out extra chairs. The wind is blowing against the squeaky tent. You know there are distractions. And blowing against the squeaky tent. You know there are distractions.
Speaker 1:But our desire is to get to that place of authentic encounter with Jesus, where you know it wasn't emotionalism. You touched his heart and you know it. It had nothing to do with the perfect worship song sung by the perfect voice in the perfect room with the perfect set, like, throw all that stuff away. And if you touch his heart, you know it. That's what we had yesterday. It was absolutely, authentically genuine and real.
Speaker 1:And in the midst of you know, at one point, danny Grace walks over to me and I pick her up it was so sweet and you know we're putting out extra chairs and I feel people bumping into me as they're whacked in the head with one of the chairs. You know, I know. At one point, you know you had to go get tissues for somebody who was crying and there was no. You know, pull out of that worship moment for a minute, deal with real life, whatever that may be, and then it's like right back in to touching his heart and I knew this is real, this is authentic. Jesus is here. Was I the only one who felt that way or did you sense that also?
Speaker 3:I didn't really think about it until after everybody had left last night and we were just talking about it, and I think one of the things that we've done is, over the course of the past months of being here, we've developed muscle strength in being able to push through distraction and to find him.
Speaker 1:How was it for you, as someone who was leading us to that place of worship? What did it feel like for you?
Speaker 2:We have worked really hard to cultivate kind of heart postures where we don't get distracted so easily by kids being kids and babies being babies and people entering the room.
Speaker 1:What was it like? I know, at one point, you got choked up. You started to cry. That can even be a distraction, true, you know, but yet you were able to still sing out a spontaneous song that you hadn't planned on singing. That one, you didn't know if you would even remember the lyrics. So what was going on in that moment, when you could have been distracted by your emotions, by the possibility of not being able to recall the song you wanted to sing?
Speaker 2:I was just reminded that worship doesn't have to sound beautiful all the time like to human ears, but it matters like if it's beautiful to his ears, and I think that, um, when you worship through emotion and through tears and through shaky voices like, he takes that as pure worship. And I mean I could hear other people singing and getting choked up and I think for sure, um, that helped me to realize that, um, it was important yeah, you said, worship doesn't have to be beautiful like to the ears for it to be beautiful to him.
Speaker 1:How would you describe what beautiful worship is to Jesus?
Speaker 2:he looks at the posture of our heart and doesn't really look at the sound of our voice. So if our hearts are pure and if they're facing him, I think he hears a beautiful sound in that. And I mean that all points back to how worship isn't just a song and it's not a performance. Performance, but it's your heart, posture, and that's why I think we're able to worship through distractions, because we've gotten used to like a lifestyle of worship yeah more so than like 30 minutes of just songs he said that's how we were able to worship through.
Speaker 1:The distraction is we've cultivated a lifestyle of worship and it's not just a 30-minute window on one day a week, like we were saying earlier. Like you're cultivating worship in that building, hours before we even come together throughout the week. We're cultivating worship in our own relationship with lord, our own, our own walk with Him. We're cultivating a lifestyle of worship. It's a great statement.
Speaker 3:And I think, in approaching it that way, it shifts from this 30 or 45 minutes in a corporate gathering is for me to receive from Him. It shifts from that to know. This is something that I give you know and that makes it completely different. It's an offering that you get to give him instead of oh, how am I receiving? Because everything sounds right and things are perfectly curated for this experience.
Speaker 3:I think it just takes building new spiritual muscle memory to come into worship with that heart position is which is like I'm here for you. I'm here to give you what I have instead of give me what you have, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:I want to point out a couple instances from Scripture where somebody worshipped through distraction and just show quickly what the result was. So I have well, really four instances that I can think of Mary at the feet of Jesus. There's the distraction of the pressure she feels from her sister to come and help in the kitchen. So there was that distraction of I'm doing something that is culturally shameful right now, but I'm going to worship through that distraction. Jesus receives what she's doing as a precious gift. This will not be taken from her. She's chosen the right thing.
Speaker 1:The demoniac man filled with so many demons they refer to themselves as legion A man filled with so much chaos. You want to talk about distraction. You've got a legion of demons inside of you, but yet that man was able to press through the distraction. Mark 5 says that he fell at Jesus' feet and worshipped the leper. In Matthew chapter 8, there's multitudes around Jesus, multitudes of people. Think of all the commotion, the sounds, all the distraction that's going on. But that leper, pressed through, fell at Jesus' feet. Verse 2 says he worshiped and jesus received his faith for the miracle as worship, and then the gentile mother, the woman whose daughter is demonized, comes to Jesus. So here you have again cultural distraction.
Speaker 1:Shameful for her to even approach Jesus. Jesus is ignoring her so that you have the distraction of her internal self-consciousness, fear, shame, condemnation. What she's doing is not okay. He's not even acknowledging my me being here. She presses through that distraction and and uh, matthew 15, 25 says she worships jesus. So none of these people were singing songs. This had nothing to do with instrumentation. It was all heart posture that was pressing through the distractions going on around them and Jesus receives their act of faith as worship. These were not obviously carefully cultivated and scripted congregation halls with perfect lighting and sound systems. This was real life interaction with Jesus, filled with chaos and distraction, but yet they pressed through and worshiped him.
Speaker 3:One thing that's really important. I think even that the Lord is doing like in this generation and in this season. I love high praise, I love when the instrumentation comes to like these are wonderful moments, but they can't be what we build our lives on. While they're beautiful and they're important and they have value, it's the daily giving ourselves over to a heart position of worship that sustains us for a lifetime of following him. It's figuring out how to meet him in the midst of you know, diaper changes, business meetings, traffic that's driving you nuts, Like he's in these moments, and he wants to encounter us in those moments and teach us how to have a life devoted to worshiping him. It just requires that we lay our own preferences down.
Speaker 1:Tell that story of how the Lord taught that to you back in the day.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so when we first moved to the Middle East, I was having a really hard time. You know where we were. There wasn't really corporate worship. We were a small group of people. Even when we were gathering, some was in Arabic, which I didn't understand. So I'm trying to find my way through it. And I remember one day you know the kids, the boys, were up very early in the morning. So I don't have my morning time like I was used to Everything changed for me. I don't have my morning time like I was used to Everything changed for me. I don't have my morning quiet time. I can't get my plug in at a worship set that sounds beautiful.
Speaker 3:It's like, all of a sudden, all of this is gone, and so I'm asking the Lord I don't know how to meet with you. I can't live like this. How to meet with you? This isn't I can't live like this. And the Lord said why can't you meet with me when you're mopping the floor? Why can't you meet with me when you're washing dishes? I'm here, you're the one that's over there waiting for me to show up in some big moment, but I'm here in the daily, and it really became a challenge of my life, like I was. Can I keep talking?
Speaker 1:Keep going, man.
Speaker 3:I was reading, as I was thinking about this conversation. I was thinking about this, this thing that happens with Isaiah before he enters into that powerful vision with the Lord that we all have heard. Woe is me, I'm a man of unclean lips but prior to that, he sees this vision of the Lord sitting on a throne, and he's high and lifted up, and above him are the seraphim. And the seraphim go out and they call to each other Holy, holy. Holy is the Lord of hosts, the whole earth is full of his glory. Holy is the Lord of hosts, the whole earth is full of his glory. And at that moment, the foundations of the threshold shook at the voice of him and the whole house was full of smoke.
Speaker 2:What.
Speaker 3:I love is this acknowledgement that the whole earth is full of his glory, and I think sometimes we don't stop to think the child that's making a noise, he's part of the earth that's full of his glory.
Speaker 3:It's available to us if we would get over our preferences and get over ourselves and see. This whole space is full of his glory, the voice that's like choking back tears. Full of his glory. If we can see things that way, it makes space for the room, for the foundations to shake and the room to fill with smoke. So good.
Speaker 1:So good.
Speaker 1:In fact, the language that we use a lot in our church family is building him a house that he can recognize, that he fills with himself the thing that he first recognizes as his own. He's building a house made of living stones family. So when we come together in the real mess of family, when it's real, genuine life and there's preference for the one whose kid is maybe fussy, there's preference for the one whose kid is maybe fussy, there's preference for the one who couldn't arrive on time because they had car trouble, there's preference for the other in the moment of worship, and instead of becoming offended at the distraction, instead you worship through that. I believe there's something about that that Jesus recognizes as authentic family, and so he draws even closer, he draws nearer, and then begins this beautiful cycle of oh my goodness, the king is in our midst on his throne in his house.
Speaker 2:Takes all the pressure off when you realize that existing is worship and that the earth worships and that babies worship Us. Humans are the ones that put pressure on it. It wasn't designed to be hard or scary.
Speaker 1:It should be the easiest thing that we do. It's true.
Speaker 3:When we yield to the Lord and allow Him to address our hearts during the week and even to make adjustments, then we get to come together as a community and offer Him something that's authentic. And I don't do this perfectly. I mean, you can attest to this. I for sure do not do it perfectly. But how you can, in one minute, be harsh with your children in correcting them and then the next minute, worship is trying to come out of that same well, it's that salt water and fresh water.
Speaker 3:Exactly, and so it's. You know, if during the week, I'm allowing the Lord to examine my heart and I'm saying I want even the way that I correct my children, it's making a sound. I get to choose which sound that it makes. Is the sound that it makes when I correct my children worship? If so, when I build this through the week and I come on Sunday, what the Lord's receiving from me is not made up. It's not put on for a day, it's authentic. This is an outflow of the way that I live my life. We have to get to that place because he deserves so much more from us.
Speaker 1:He deserves more than Sunday for 30 minutes.
Speaker 1:That would be a good definition of worshiping in truth. Jesus says the Father desires those who worship Him in spirit and truth. That authentic, truthful worship is springing from a source that throughout the week has remained consistently worshipful. I had one more thought last night when we were at the meal, I had this realization okay, we're still at worship right now. Worship didn't end when the piano stopped. Worship continues through to the table. We are still worshiping in our conversation. That's why. That's why we pray God even when we speak over the table. May we speak spiritual things discerned by spiritual people. Let us speak prophetically to one another. Let it be an act of consecrated worship, even in our fellowship. So maybe that'll be the.
Speaker 1:The next stage of our worship journey is really collectively having this sense of okay, this is holy. Yes, we're having fun over food and we're fellowshipping and we're getting to know one another and catch up and all that stuff, but it's still sacred. God is receiving what we're doing right now at the table as a sacred fragrance of worship. If he could receive a man filled with a legion of demons falling at his feet as praise, then how much more redeemed born-again children of God gathered around the table together he's going to receive that as worship too. Yeah, that's good Pop quiz, layla. When's the first time worship is mentioned in the Bible?
Speaker 2:Your face. Hold on, I don't know.
Speaker 3:Layla, don't put that in, tell her and then do it again, start over and ask more.
Speaker 1:Abraham going up the mountain with Isaac. The lad and I will go and worship Now. You'll remember that forever, especially when we put that on the video.
Speaker 3:Why don't you ask again no, because it won't be authentic.
Speaker 1:This was good. Thank you for joining us.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having us.