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 "The Meeting of Our Lord", Russian Icon (Courtesy of Wikipedia) In Luke Chapter 2, when Joseph and Mary went to the Temple to be purified according to the Law of Moses, they met two heroes of the faith – Simeon and Anna. These two people were devout followers of God who listened to the Spirit and noticed an unassuming couple holding a little baby. They got to see the Messiah before anyone else because they listened to God!
As followers of Jesus, we too can hear God. All we need to do is simply open our ears and listen.
To that end, this post outlines part one of a two part mini-sermon series on listening to Jesus. You can listen to the first part online at the Payette River Vineyard Christian Fellowship website... the second part should be online something this week, but regardless of the audio file, I will be posting my notes from the second part tomorrow. So stay tune. 
Public Reading
Luke 2:21-40
Simeon
• Here’s a man who was devoted to God
• Waiting for the Lord to come
• God told him that he would not die before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah
o Can you imagine that?
o Waiting for years, asking God each time a “messiah” figure showed up in they were the one
o Now, out of the blue, he walked up to this baby…
• Talk about a chance encounter
o Simeon was not supposed to be at the Temple
o But the Spirit promoted him to go…
o What if he had refused?
* Too tired…
* Too old…
* Too busy…
* Too whatever…
o But he didn’t and as a result he got to see Jesus….
 Preaching in DryBuck in an old church building I was marveling Sunday evening about the way the Holy Spirit moves in a church service. It doesn’t matter how much or how little I have prepared for that sermon that week, there is always a time in the service that everything changes.
I can’t really explain it…or even describe it…
But it is like the stillness before a storm. Or the way in the which the world stops moving after a snow storm.
There is just something in the air that shifts…the faces of the people around me change…the rhythm of words flowing out of my lungs shifts…the atmosphere itself seems different…
Then it happens.
The Spirit of the Lord comes in power. You can see the dancing hand of the Spirit jump from person to person as the King of Kings touches them. It could be something said or mentioned…it could be a Bible verse or a doodle on their notepad that jumps out at them… whatever the trigger, the Lord uses it at that moment to drive something home to them.
You can feel it. You can see it.
It is almost tangible but at the same time fleeting like smoke on the wind…
All of a sudden the service FITS. Things falls into place and everything from the worship in the beginning to the passage of the Scriptures to the words out of my mouth as the preacher all fits together. Sometimes it is in line with what the Lord showed me beforehand while other times it is totally different. There are times like this last week in which I stood up and beginning talking without really knowing what God wanted to do or how the passage at hand really impacted our lives today…
Yet when it happens, you know.
Continue reading Catching the Wave of the Spirit
 James Tissot, Saint Luke (Courtesy of Wikipedia) Three questions to ask before reading any book:
- Who is the author?
- When was the book written?
- Why were they writing?
Answers concerning the Gospel of Luke:
Author: St. Luke
- Traveling companion of St. Paul (“we” passages during the latter part of Acts)
- Gentile follower of Jesus
- Most likely a doctor
- Medical language found within the Gospel
- References of Luke by Paul
- Colossians 4:10-14 – Luke is Paul’s doctor while he is in prison
- Philemon 23-24
- 2 Timothy 4:9-11
Date
- “Luke the Historian”
- Left ‘date markers’ in the text to date
- Names of Roman and local governmental officials, events, etc.
- The difficulty is that these ‘date markers’ are hard for us in 2012 to date as we don’t have all the details concerning that time period
- Scholars have three proposed date ranges
- 60-62 AD
- 80-85 AD
- The Second Century (100-199 AD)
- Each have some difficulties, however the first date range has the least problems and is backed up by tradition and the early Church Fathers
- It also allows for Volume Two (i.e. the book of Acts) to be written before the fall of Jerusalem
Continue reading The Gospel of Luke Introduced
 This month at PRV we are going to kicking off a study of the life of Jesus as seen through the eyes of St. Luke, a physician and Gentile (i.e. non-Jew) who traveled with St. Paul. However before we do that, I’ve been asked to talk about the Bible:
- How did we get the 66 books included in it?
- Can we trust it?
- How does it differ from other ‘holy’ books?
- Why do we have all these translations of the Bible?
These are all big questions that need to be answered before we go on.
The Unique of the Bible
The Bible is a unique book – in fact, it is a collection of 66 ‘books’ written by over 40 authors across 5,000 years. These authors, who include kings, peasants, philosophers, fishermen, poets, statesmen, scholars, etc., wrote different:
- Historical works
- Legal documents
- Poetry
- Biography
- Prophecy
- Personal correspondence
The words of the Bible were written in three different languages:
- Hebrew: The language of the Old Testament and the Jewish people
- Aramaic: The “common language” of the Near East until the time of Alexander the Great (6th century BC – 4th century BC)
- Greek: New Testament language; also the international language at the time of Christ
Furthermore these 66 books were written at different times (peace, war, happiness, sadness); different locations across three continents (Africa, Asia, and Europe); and different places (in the wilderness, prison, dungeon, hillside, palace, on the road while traveling, military campaign, etc.
Continue reading The Reliability of the Bible
 Last night a bunch of us from PRV went to the Rock and Worship Roadshow in the Boise. For those of you not in the know, the Roadshow is a collection of eight bands from a variety of musical genres:
- Mercy Me
- Tenth Avenue North
- Lecrae
- Hawk Nelson
- Disciple
- Sidewalk Prophets
- Rend Collective Experiment
- Moriah Peters
While the headliners of the show were Mercy Me and Tenth Avenue North (both contemporary rock bands), it was Lacrae (hip hop) and Disciple (metal) who really bought down the house! Disciple was exceptional with an energetic front man, Kevin Young, and a guitar player who did a back flip off a six or eight foot tall box while playing his guitar… yeah, they were fun to watch!
The Hawk Nelson band had a rough night of it as their front man, Jason Dunn, as wasn’t feeling good with a sore throat and an injured hip. Not to mention that their bass player got delayed by US customs while trying to fly in from Canada…accordingly their bus driver filled in last night on the bass and did a great job (talk about a shift in duties!).
Continue reading Rock and Worship Roadshow Recap
 Yesterday marked the last of a four part series (part 1, 2, and 3 that looked at the theology of worship and why we do what we do. I don’t know what God did with you guys in cyberspace or those at PRV, but for me, I defiantly feel like this has been a powerful series. In fact, it was a hard series as there were things that I didn’t want to hear let alone share with you all…but God’s hand guided us through it all:
- The definition of worship – to bow down before God in total submission (part 1)
- Trusting God, the One we worship (part 1)
- The intimacy of being in His presence (part 2)
- Singing to God versus simply about Him (part 2)
- How worship differs from culture to culture (part 3, guest speaker Shelton Taguma)
- Worshiping Jesus through our actions – living sacrifices (below)
My prayer now is that we don’t forget the lessons we have learned. I pray that we will take what we have learned and go with God, transforming our minds so that we can work out God’s will in our lives, our community…
Worship, Part 4
Good morning. God has been so good to us this week…
I was driving home Wednesday evening after work when I saw the most wonderful rainbow ever! It was a full double rainbow declaring God’s peace for He has hung His war bow on the wall. He has made a covenant with the earth, humanity and the animals never to destroy the earth with water again. What a powerful promise! =)
As I stared in wonder at this rainbow, I couldn’t help but worship the Lord for all that He has done. He created the heaven and the earth – He has given us everything we have and are – He died for us so that we may be set free from sin and death. He gave us eyes to see and ears to hear – feet to walk and hands to work.
He is good! Amen and amen!!
Doxology
This reminds me of end of Romans 11 and the beginning of chapter 12:
Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable his judgments,
and his paths beyond tracing out!
“Who has known the mind of the Lord?
Or who has been his counselor?”
“Who has ever given to God,
that God should repay them?”
For from him and through him and for him are all things.
To him be the glory forever! Amen. –Romans 11:33-36
What a powerful doxology or statement of the faith! How unsearchable is his judgment and His paths? That we might all follow the Wild Goose of the Holy Spirit into the unknown places of the world to share the Love of God to all!
And to Him be the gory forever! Amen.
Today I wanted to post the second part of my short sermon series on worship (part one can be found here). The full audio version can be found on the PRV website along with the audio file of part three presented by Shelton Taguma from Zimbabwe.
Core Values
I was re-reading our core values this past week when I ran across a beautifully written statement about this:
“God is eager to be known and experienced by all. We believe that God is searching for lost humanity in order to draw us into intimate relationship with Himself. In response to God’s initiative, we value the life-changing power of the experience of His presence.
The primary place where that relationship is nurtured and developed is in the act of worship – both private and corporate. So, experience-based worship is the central activity of all that we do in the Vineyard. It is worship that causes all else that we do to become an act of worship. We experience God’s presence as a palpable reality when we worship. As we worship we become increasingly sensitive and response to the Spirit’s presence so that we can do as Jesus did: “See what the Father is doing,” (John 5:19) and support His work with our lives.”
We are a people of the presence of God. We seek His presence as a child seeks their parents – as a calf is drawn to its mother, so we are to be drawn to the presence of the Lord.
This desire to be in the presence of God affects how we worship as a community for it must be:
- Regular
- Real
- Non-religious
- Relevant
- Contemporary
- Simple
- Love-song-oriented
- Honest
- Free
- Warm
- Open
- Personal
- Tender
- Non-manipulative
- Non-hyped
- Sincere
- Intimate
- Music
(the above list was drawn from Alexander Venter‘s book about the Vineyard called “Doing Church”)
There is just something powerful about music as it has a way of uniting our mental, emotional, and spiritual parts into one. It connects with us in a way that is deeper than our mind – we remember songs more so than sermons (which is why we need to be careful about the songs we sing and/or listen too)….
Continue reading Worship: The Heart of Worship
 The church/school bell had just rung, calling everyone to worship (the school we met in has a pair of old bells that we ring seven times before church each Sunday). And there I was pacing outside, asking God what I was to do as in a few minutes I would have to walk into the gym, pick up my bass guitar, play a few songs and then teach on intimate heart of worship – a topic that is close to my heart and one that I wish every Jesus follower would/could grasp.
It was in that moment of silence before the activity of the day, I heard two words spoken to my heart from my Lover:
Trail broke
In the colloquialism of the American West, a trail broke animal, which is usually a horse, cow or donkey, is one that is used to walking down a trail either as a lead animal or as one following the lead critter. In the case of a horse, being trail broke normally refers to a horse that can be counted on to follow a trail rather than always trying to get of the trail and into the ‘wild’ areas.
For a cow the phrase normally refers to a one that is used to being driven in cow drives and is content to follow the lead cowboy wherever he takes them. A trail broke donkey is similar to a trail broke cow, only a donkey is usually the lead animal in a herd of sheep, who will follow the donkey wherever it goes. In such a case, the lead donkey has the unique task either following the shepherd in front of the herd or, in the case when the shepherd is off corralling a renegade sheep, it follows the trail the shepherd left until otherwise directed.
Continue reading Trail Broke
 We are in between two major studies – the Story of God, which we just finished, and the life of Jesus, which we will be starting in March.
This month, however, we are going to be looking at worship:
• What is worship?
• Why do we worship?
• What does worship mean?
The general outline we will be using these next few weeks in answering these questions is as follows:
- Trusting God - We have to really trust God before we are willing to surrender everything to Him in worship. For example if you don’t trust God then you are less likely to really let go and enjoy Him during musical worship. Instead you are going to try to maintain a certain demeanor while sings the lyrics.
- The Heart of Worship – Is there a difference between praise and worship? How do you worship God amidst distractions? Why do we signing songs for half an hour?
- How Worship Changes Us – Shelton Taguma will be teaching us from a Zimbabwe perspective. When I originally asked him to speak a month ago, all I knew was that he was a lover of worship – I didn’t know that he recently finished teaching a series on worship in Zimbabwe before he came to the States with this wife to have their second child. God really set us up… =/
- Non-Musical Worship – Worship God goes beyond the musical song service into everyday life. True worship is an ongoing daily relationship with Jesus that is real and personal.
I must warn you though… as I’ve been studying this topic, I have to say that it may sting some of you… worship can be a touchy subject full of emotions, so I just pray that you all while open your hearts and minds to Jesus as I’m sure I won’t be able to have all the right words or phrases… But I know that His Spirit will guide us all – individually and corporately as that is what Jesus told us in John 16:13-14:
13 But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. 14 He will glorify me because it is from me that he will receive what he will make known to you.
Amen?
This past Sunday was the last week of our eight month journey through the Bible tracing the metanarrative or grand story of God. Being the last sermon in the series, this sermon served two purposes: 1) a recap of the entire eight months and 2) an arrow pointing forward to our part in The Story.
Five Act Shakespeare Play
Along this journey we used N.T. Wright’s outline of a lost Shakespeare play with the final act missing. This ‘newly discovered’ lay is wonderful, full of drama, passion and amazing insight into the human soul – this play is destined to be a classic on par with Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet. The only one problem is that missing last act….
So what do you do? Well, you pull together the best Shakespearean actors and actress on the planet – the ones that know all of Shakespeare’s other plays – you give them all the acts that you have – the first four acts – you have them study them, to enter into the story – to learn and know the characters in the play – then you put on the play with the actors living out the last act within the theme and direction of the first four acts.
This is us – we are in the fifth act of God’s story.
We have the first four acts recorded in the Bible – shoot, we even have the first and last pages of Act 5! We just don’t have the pages in the middle… so what are we going to do? I pray that we learn the first four acts with all our hearts, mind, soul, and spirit – let us enter into the God’s story with all that we are so that we can live out our part in the story in line with those who have gone before us – the cloud of witnesses as the author of the book of Hebrews says.
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Who Writes This Mess? My name is Joshua Hopping and I am a Son of the Most High journeying through a foreign land following the Wild Goose (i.e. the Holy Spirit) one step at a time.
As I journey along the Way, I have the privilege of serving as the bi-vocational pastor of the Payette River Vineyard Christian Fellowship. I am also a voracious reader who loves studying church history, theology, and world missions.
This blog, "Requisite Danger", is a record of what God is teaching and showing me as I try to follow Him wherever He leads as well as occasional random thoughts. I pray that you will join me in this journey through online/offline interaction as this life is lived in community.
May His grace and peace be upon you.
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