By J.D. Walt
Prayer of Consecration
Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.
Jesus, I belong to you.
I lift up my heart to you.
I set my mind on you.
I fix my eyes on you.
I offer my body as a holy and living sacrifice to you.
Jesus, We belong to you.
Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Scripture
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 (NIV)
Consider This
Growing up in the First United Methodist Church of Dumas, Arkansas, meant a number of things, but one thing you could set your clock by. Every single Sunday, every single month, of every single year we were going to sing two of the exact same songs at almost precisely the same moment in every single worship service. The songs were called, the “Gloria Patri,” and the “Doxology.”
Here’s the first one:
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost.
As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be.
World without end, Amen. Amen.
And here’s the second:
Praise God from whom all blessings flow.
Praise Him all creatures here below.
Praise Him above ye heavenly host.
Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost.
Amen.
If you look up the word “doxology” in the dictionary you get this:
doxology: a liturgical formula of praise to God
If I’m honest, (and I can only speak for my own experience) those 936 Sundays of my growing up years were just that, “a liturgical formula of praise to God.” Time to stand up and sing. Now sit down. Now greet your neighbor. Now stand back up and sing. Now sit down. Now listen and try to stay awake.
And I thank God for all 936 times. They formed me. They shaped my liturgical memory so that in time I would cultivate a doxological imagination. These songs gave me the muscle memory of looking up; forgetting any shred of myself; and singing words exclusively unto the God of Gods.
Here’s how I define doxology. A doxology is a series of combustible words that, when lit, create fire in the sky. To sing a doxology—to really sing it—is to light a fire in the sky and allow yourself to become caught up in it.
That’s what happened to Paul in today’s text. After a stunning eleven-chapter exploration and exposition of the glory of the grace of Abba Father in the Lord Jesus Christ through the incredible Holy Spirit, he could do nothing else. He lit a fire in the sky and got caught up in it.
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.
Yep, he lit a fire in the sky and got caught up in it.
Doxology. This is what I want to happen in my life every single day. And I want it to happen in yours. What we do in church on Sundays is good, my friends, but it’s only practice. It’s developing the muscle memory for the real game of the other six days.
It would take another thousand words, but isn’t that the very essence of the day of Pentecost—the day he lit a fire in the sky over our heads and caught us up in himself?
I talk about carrying seeds a lot and I will continue. I think we should also carry matches.
Prayer
Abba Father! “Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!” Thank you for sending your Son, for lighting up the sky with the glory of grace and mercy; for lighting up our lives with all the possibilities of the kind of faith that moves mountains and the kind of love that raises the dead. Thank you for showing us who we actually are and are meant to be in Jesus. Thank you for sending your Spirit to make it burn for the glory of it all; for the glory of you alone. Praying in Jesus’s name, amen.