A Review on Worship: Our Launching Point for Season 2! | Ep. 21

WELCOME BACK to Season 2 of the Instruments of Worship Podcast!!  I hope you have had a great summer.  My break from the podcast was very refreshing, but I'm really looking forward to what awaits this fall! 

Today we kick off things by hearing about what the Lord reminded me this summer and then we take a dive into the importance of worship in our lives as musicians.  

Discussion Questions - Try discussing with a group or in our Facebook Discussion Group

• What did the Lord teach you over the summer? 
• What does it mean to worship God?  
• How can we worship God as classical musicians with our instruments? 
• Have you thought about worship being more a heart posture than a genre of music? 
• What does offering yourself as a living sacrifice to the Lord look like for you today?
• What do you think it means in Revelation that the Living Creatures fell down and cast their crowns before the throne? 
• Can you think of why God (meaning the entirety of the trinity - God the Father, God the Son, and the Holy Spirit) – why are they worthy of our worship?  What causes you to worship them?  Parts of their character, attributes, or what they have done?
• How can we be musicians who live life on mission to worship the Lord? Think for yourself – How can you make much of God, not self today? How can you lift Him up, lift His name high?

Check out recordings from Ruth: The Musical if it would be an encouragement to you!

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Transcript

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Introduction

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hi friends, long time no see. My name is Casey Rinkerberger and I am so excited to welcome you to the Instruments of Worship podcast season two. This is a podcast dedicated to encouraging and equipping classical musicians to tie the name of Jesus with their instruments, but also their lives. So welcome back. Welcome to season two of the Instruments of Worship podcast. Man, I am so thankful for this summer to have taken a break from the podcast. It was so needed. But I am really excited to be back. This summer has given me more time to set up interviews and come up with a game plan for this fall. So I'm really excited for what the Lord has in store for season two. So today's episode will be a launching point for that and will remind us all of the reason and the heart behind this podcast and a few things that I learned over the summer that the Lord taught me. So I don't want to get too ahead of myself. So welcome to the kickoff of season two of the Instruments of Worship podcast. I sure hope you guys had an amazing summer. I know I did. It was jam-packed busy, but also super fun. But it's always so exciting for me to get back into more of a routine when fall starts. The crisper weather, the caramel apples, the pumpkin fest, the pumpkin smells, everything. I love so much about fall. So there's so much exciting that was behind us this summer, but so much to look forward to this fall. And I hope that you feel the same

Reminded of the Gift of Music

SPEAKER_00 1:29

way. When I look back at my summer musically, for me it wasn't as busy orchestrally because The symphonies I'm in follow just a normal season schedule, so there weren't many orchestral playing opportunities. It was mostly gigging, playing at weddings and such. But one of the fun opportunities that I had was that I got to play in the premiere of the orchestrated version of Ruth the Musical. Now, if you've listened to all of season one, you've probably heard of Ruth the Musical before. It came up in episode seven where I had a conversation with Dave Goetz, who is my old high school director and also a local composer and friend. He wrote Ruth the Musical over a 15 year span. And the concert that we performed twice this summer was just the culmination of all this work of this musical based on the book of Ruth from the Bible. And why I want to bring this up is when you think of the gift that music is from God. and its ability to move the soul in a deep and meaningful way. I was reminded of that when I played Ruth this summer. It reminded me of the gift that music is and the gift that it is to be a musician tasked with bringing it to life. It's of course the Holy Spirit that uses it to soften and mold the heart. And I just hope that it's a reminder for all of us that God is awesome to gift us with music and he uses it to call people to himself for the first time or even back to He uses it to reveal himself more clearly and to show himself as the glorious king that he is. So, if you have been feeling burnt out and that you've just been playing music to check a box or just for music's sake, let's pray that the Lord would soften our heart and remind us of his goodness through music. Let's pray that the Holy Spirit would work through the music we play to move people to be in awe of our Savior and our Creator. I'll link the website to root the musical in the description in case it would be an encouragement to you and I just pray that there are moments in your playing coming up that the Lord would use to just remind you of the gift that music is and how he can really work and touch the soul through music it is an absolute gift Sometimes music can feel more like a burden when it's all about accuracy and perfection. And I just want to remind you of the gift that music is from the Lord and that he uses it. He genuinely uses it as a way to bring people closer to him and to move and soften their hearts.

What Else the Lord Reminded Me This Summer

SPEAKER_00 3:56

Anyways, moving on from that, I thought I would share a little bit of what the Lord has taught me over this summer. And I'd love to hear what he's taught you also. So be sure to let us know in the comments or on our Facebook discussion page. But But essentially, He's just reminded me of how important my dependence on Him is. It's so easy to get away from that simple truth, but it is one that is so foundational. Trying to depend on anything other than Him will always lead to frustration and sadness and confusion. We all want to feel satisfied, but if we look anywhere other than Him, it will leave us always feeling empty. I love the verse John 6 35, it says, Then Jesus declared, am the bread of life whoever comes to me will never go hungry and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty so of course he's not talking about physical hunger we may experience some physical hunger or some thirst in this world but what he's talking about is spiritual hunger that hole that in our soul that leaves us feeling empty that can only be filled by Christ. It is only the Lord that can cause that drought to become a flood or your hunger to become a feast. It is only satisfied in the Lord. And so I just keep coming back to that. It's something that I often need reminded of. A song that I discovered this summer is What a God by SEU Worship. And it just also emphasizes the need for only Jesus. So I'm going to read some of the lyrics here and give a little bit of how I interpret them. So starting off with some lyrics, it says, if the highest place I reach is at your feet, then I've done it all. And for a musician, I think that It can be so easy to want to climb the ladder and to get a higher seat in orchestra or to become more famous or more popular or more accepted in love because of the work that you do on your instrument. But it's saying here that if the highest place I reach is your feet, God, being nearer to you, Lord, then that's all that I want. I don't want a higher standing in the world. I just want to be close to you. The next lyric says, if the best thing that I've seen is your glory, then I've seen it all. And again, as a musician, we can want our own glory, but all that we should seek is his glory. If we do, then we've seen it all. There's nothing more that we need to see. We've seen his glory and that's the best. going on it says your love has changed my life forever satisfied god you are my everything so many times people seek love from other people in this world but that will never satisfy only the love of god is perfect and will fill that hole in our soul we don't need anything or anyone else and sometimes if you're someone who's grown up knowing the love of god praise god what a grace in your life but we need to be mindful that it doesn't become dull to us Next it says, Next it says, So I feel like this part is saying that even when we don't know exactly what God might be doing, or even when we can't hear super clearly, or we don't see answers yet, even if we never see his hand, we still have it all because we have Jesus. One word from him is even enough. It's that filling. And being near to him is even more what we want than to see his hand move in our lives or our circumstances. Lastly, it says, satisfy God you are my everything so I love this song because in so many different of the instances that it walks through it keeps coming back to the fact that we have it all if we have Christ he is all that we need but I need reminded of that and I wonder if you do too that when this world tries to tell me I need more all my needs are met in Jesus and I pray that I never deviate from that however Even when I do deviate, even when I do fail to make Him my everything. Psalms 145.8 says, He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. So He continues to be patient. He continues to be gracious towards me when I constantly fail. And the fact that He does that, it just continues to draw me back to Him even more, continues to draw me back towards worshiping Him more fully.

Instruments of Worship: Definition and Purpose

SPEAKER_00 8:49

I think this ties so well, honestly, with the meaning behind the name of the podcast, Instruments of Worship. And I wanted to go over that today as we kick off season two. So the meaning behind the name, Instruments of Worship. Worship is so important because it's what God created us for. I think that's a key idea. God created us to worship, but he created us to worship him. The world and the devil are vying for us to worship anything other than him. And sometimes it feels really good and very natural to worship ourselves, our life revolving all around us. But when we worship anything other than him, it is not how it was supposed to be. So one, we will never feel satisfied or fulfilled. And two, it's just a disordering of God's original design. It's a broken replica of the beautiful original masterpiece. We were intended to worship God and that is the only place where we can be truly fulfilled. And that is a beautiful thing. Another key point I think in worship is that worship is not just a genre of music, it's a posture of our hearts. So yes, worship can be a term we use to describe what we as Christians do on Sunday morning, but it is also so much more than that. It is something that's kind of hard to put into words sometimes just because worship is all about our hearts. It may express itself externally sometimes when we sing worship songs at church, but again, worship is all about what's in our heart. The Hebrew word for worship comes from the root word hawa, hope I pronounced that right, which can also mean to bow down. And to me, I picture this as bowing. the idea of he must increase and we must decrease so he must increase arrow pointing up we must decrease it's a lifting him high that's worship so psalm 57 11 says be lifted up oh god higher than the heavens let your glory be over all the earth So to me, worship would look like the desire of our heart is to lift him high, give him the glory and the honor of the praise, not keeping any of it for ourselves. Now, the other part of the name is the term instrument. So we can worship God with our instruments as musicians, of course. Many people associate worship with instruments and singing, and that's totally fair because God gifted us with music, as we already talked about, as a greater means of engaging our hearts in worship. but an instrument can also be defined as a tool used to help accomplish a task like a surgical instrument or an instrument to measure something so i think the meaning of instruments of worship is twofold we can use our instruments to lift high the name of jesus And we can offer ourselves to be used by the Lord as an instrument in His hands to accomplish His purposes. For a classical musician, they're really one in the same. One of the main verses that spearheads this podcast and can be found on many of our bios or descriptions is Romans 12, 1. and that says therefore i urge you brothers by the mercies of god to present your bodies as living and holy sacrifices acceptable to god which is your spiritual service of worship So it says in that verse to present your bodies as a living and holy sacrifice. So to present the people Paul was talking to would have not been far removed from the old way of presenting slain sacrifices at the altar in the temple to cover for their sins. Sacrificing of animals, presenting that at the altar. But Jesus freed them from that. His blood now covers their sins and our sins once and for all. We are made right with God and can have personal relationship with him now. Praise God. So now he doesn't ask us to offer a dead animal at the altar, but to offer ourselves as a sacrifice. Not a dead life, but a life that is living and sold out for the Lord. So in whatever we do, it's an offering to him. And it says this is our logical response to all that he is and all that he has done for us. The right response is worship. So in whatever you do. If you're listening to this podcast, you're likely a classical musician. But in whatever you do, whether that's being a mom or being a dad or being an aunt or an uncle or a friend, or you may have another sort of job where you do music in the evenings and you do something else during the day, whatever role you might have in life, whatever your career path might be, whatever you're doing, if you have worship in your heart towards the Lord, it is worship towards him. So as classical musicians, we just have worship in our hearts and we happen to have instruments in our hands. So I hope that helps define kind of the twofold meaning of the instruments of worship, being an instrument in the hands of God that he can use for his purposes. But also we as musicians get to be a part using our instruments in a unique way to lift high the name of Jesus Christ. So why is worship so important? Why did I even create this podcast? Why are we going to talk about this? And I would say it's because God is worthy of it. He's more worthy of it than anything else. He's in a league of his own. He has really no competition in this field. He is the only one truly worthy of our worship.

An Example of Worship

SPEAKER_00 14:24

So I want to look at an example of this, which can be found in Revelation 4. In the fourth chapter of Revelation, we get a sneak peek into the heavenly throne Psalms 103.19 says, So it's saying that this is where the Lord has ruled and is continuing to rule. His throne room. He is the king who has always been on the throne and always will be. And I'm so thankful for that. So in the throne room, there is incredible worship going on even right now. And even divine heavenly beings that we can't even comprehend or fully understand in this life are praising and worshiping the Lord. so revelation 4 9 through 11 gives us a peek into that when it says and when the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to him who sits on the throne to him who lives forever and ever the elders will fall down before him who sits on the throne and will worship him who lives forever and ever and they will cast down their crowns before the throne saying worthy are you oh lord and our god to receive glory and honor and power for you created all things and because Because of your will, they existed and were created. So from that, the Lord is worthy of any and all of the recognition that the living creatures in heaven might have received. Any of the glory and the honor and any of the good they had done, it was because of the Lord anyways. And he is worthy to receive that. So that's why they were casting down their crowns. Anything that they might have been recognized for, they said, it's not for us. It's all for you, God, because he is worthy of it. And they're saying that he is worthy because he created all things. Is there anything else or anyone else you know who created all things? Anything you can think of was either made by God or is made by something or someone who is created by God. So of course, God has no competition here. He's in a league of his own. He is holy and set apart and he created all things. We can't say that about anything or anyone else. So he is worthy of our worship. A little bit later in Revelation, Revelation 5, 9-10 says, So what are they saying the Lord is worthy because? It's salvation. He has saved us when we could never save ourselves. Jesus provided a way for us to have relationship with God by paying the price we deserve to. Not only did God create everything, but he wants to have a relationship with us, his creation. He's not a standby God. He is actively involved. Whoa. very very worthy of worship in my mind and through jesus no matter the ways we fail or fall short or sin or don't worship the lord like we should we stand in the righteousness of jesus and that is always a reason to worship the lord in heaven they are constantly ascribing worth to the lord for all he has done and who he is so may we join the worship going on in heaven there on earth today so clearly worship is so much more than what we just do on a sunday morning Amen. Amen. Amen. Even those things are worship towards him. So as classical musicians, we have worship in our hearts and we just happen to have an instrument in our hands. Alrighty, so that's how we are going to kick off season two of the Instruments of Worship podcast. Next week, you will not want to miss my conversation with Haley Swanson. She is the coordinator at the Sight and Sound Conservatory, and I am so humbled that she took the time to share her wisdom with me and share about the incredible work going on at the Sight and Sound Theater and also the Sight and Sound Conservatory. So I just want to thank you so much for spending part of your day with me today. I hope you're as excited about season two as I am, and I just want to encourage you to check out the description for discussion questions that you can reflect on by yourself or with a group. And we actually have a Facebook page that you can join where we talk about these discussion questions. We answer them and we can encourage and equip one another as we walk this road of being a Christian in the classical music world together. So please feel free to leave us a five-star review if you liked this episode, and I will see you next Monday.