Contentment, Joy and Confidence

"You must arrange to live with deep contentment, joy, and confidence in your everyday experience of life with God."

This is how Dallas Willard describes our first duty, in an interview that John Ortberg reports on in his excellent short article, "What I Learned on My Sabbatical".

Some things I learned from the article are:

1. Learning spiritual lessons happen best when we are "unplugged" for Sabbath (or sabbaticals). This is another reason Sabbath is important.
   
2. Simplicity is valuable - "I'd like to live in his time zone." What time-zone does God live in?
   
3. Fellowship with others is valuable, but only if we slow down long enough to listen.
   
4. "There is a large difference between having deep contentment in my everyday experience with God versus being in a good mood."

But there are two more points that relate especially to Inspiring Worship Service:

The first is "My main job is to live with deep contentment, joy, and confidence in my everyday experience of life with God. Everything else is job number two." If I live confident that God will do what's best, I will find joy and God's presence in even the most simple of worship experiences.

What surprised me most and made me realise that this was about Inspiring Worship was the in the last paragraph: "I do not want to have to receive from my congregation what I can only get from God." How often do I go to church expecting the sermon or the music to inspire me when it only God who can inspire. Simply put, to be inspired on Sabbath means doing my main job for the previous week.