Come, let’s worship and bow down,
Let’s kneel before the LORD our Maker.
For He is our God,
And we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand.
Today, if you will hear His voice,
Do not harden your hearts as at Meribah,
As on the day of Massah in the wilderness,
“When your fathers put Me to the test,
They tested Me, though they had seen My work.
For forty years I was disgusted with that generation,
And said they are a people who err in their heart,
And they do not know My ways.
Therefore I swore in My anger,
They certainly shall not enter My rest.” (Psalm 95:6–11 NASB)
Author, pastor, and preacher Mark Glanville speaks of the need for the Christian church to be a contrastive community – a community of people who show the world around us there is a different way to live.
In a world where divisiveness seems to be becoming the norm, one of the ways we are a witness to the world around us – and one of the ways we show unity with Jesus – is by examining the postures we take.
In Psalm 95, we are encouraged to embrace a posture of humility. Look again at verses 6–8:
Come, let us bow down in worship,
let us kneel before the LORD our Maker;
for he is our God
and we are the people of his pasture,
the flock under his care.Today, if only you would hear his voice,
“Do not harden your hearts as you did at Meribah,
as you did that day at Massah in the wilderness,
where your ancestors tested me” (NIV).
At the beginning of this passage, we are encouraged to kneel before the Lord our Maker. It is a posture that acknowledges our place in relationship to God; it is a posture that gives honour to God and offers our submission. As we come before him in humble worship, we are encouraged to keep our hearts soft. This is how we are able to listen to his voice and join not only in a relationship with him but also the work he is calling us to do in the world around us. And as we keep our hearts soft and stay open to his voice, I believe this impacts the worshipping communities we are part of. If we are going to bend knee and acknowledge that “we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand” – or, as the NLT phrases it, “the people he watches over, the flock under his care” – we need to take a posture of humility to those we worship with in our weekly gatherings.
More and more in a world that has become divided, we as the church need to be communities where we embody the characteristics we see in Ephesians 4:15–16. We need to be communities where we practice speaking “the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church;” where we acknowledge, “He makes the whole body fit together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love.” In his book Improvising Church, Mark Glanville describes this posture as being “like-hearted” and describes it this way: “In speaking the truth in love, we can be like-hearted, even though we disagree. We can be like-hearted by agreeing to be present to one another, in relationship for the long haul. We can be like-hearted in our shared commitment to shine the light of Christ to one another, within a particular neighborhood, into the years. [. . .] We are not called to a false unanimity but to like-heartedness.”
Living in a way that is “like-hearted” allows us to live in such a way that we, both as individuals and within our church communities, can be a contrastive and prophetic witness to the world around us. It shows that as we humble ourselves towards the Father that we are willing to say, in the words of Jesus, “not my will but yours be done.” We are willing to listen to his voice and trust that he knows what he is doing in the world.
In my own life, as I am able to embrace this posture more and more – and some days are a struggle – I have found that I live with more peace, both internally and externally. And as I live more like this in community with others, all of us together show the world around us that there is a different and more beautiful way to live.
Sara-May Cardy is the pastor of Groups and Missional Life at Greenfield Community Church in Edmonton, Alberta.
