A Taste of Glory

It has been a full week for team Morales - filled with tax prep, changing phone numbers, preparing for Other Desert City's upcoming show, as well as Good Friday and Easter Sunday.

Each rehearsal we grow in anticipation for the big Easter celebration this Sunday.  Things are coming together so well and the music sounds epic.

I feel so very honored to to have been invited to join the fun with Hannah Moreno of Kenosis, Chris Bristol of Barcelona, and Cam Huxford and the guys from GhostShip.  What a great privilege to lead the church in worship of our great God alongside such gifted musicians!

I'm anticipating seeing the crowd of 2,000+ people singing God's praises and hearing the roaring sound booming throughout the building - but even more - anticipating the taste it will give of the day when we will gather with an even greater crowd of saints from every generation, language, ethnicity, and nation to sing before God on His throne.

Ashes and Headdresses

A little while ago, Maurice and I took the day off together, went out to breakfast, and spent a few hours chatting over our americanos at a Caffe Vita in Greenwood about the works of God the Holy Spirit.  I was impressed with the thought that the same Spirit that was on Jesus Christ while He was on earth is the same Spirit that is alive in us ever-faulty Christians now.

We landed in Isaiah 61, which is the passage Jesus read at His first sermon - the sermon that would commence His 3-year ministry.  It begins, "The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me to bring good news... to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives... to comfort all who mourn... to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit; that they may be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, that he may be glorified."

The picture of the garment of praise burned in me and brought to mind another image - of the robe of righteousness that Jesus gives. My garment of praise, Christ's righteousness.

I was still thinking on this after we finished our coffee and when Maurice asked what I wanted to do next, I knew I wanted to go home and respond. I needed to sing or paint or something.

When we got home, I picked up the guitar and began playing. I called the song "Garment of Praise." Maurice and I worked together to make the guitar part and we recorded it on garage band.

The next few days of processing through it all, I saw that I was identifying in my dead ugliness more than my living righteousness in Jesus' works for me. As I began meditating on how I was a new creation, how I've been cleansed and am no longer hated by God, I felt a lot of deep peace and rest. I saw that it was crucial that I speak truth about my true identity as a child of the one true God to myself - and daily. I am not a sinner anymore. I may sin, but that is not not who I am.  

Really early on Sunday, I began by reading the daily devotional My Utmost for His Highest. The topic of the day? Romans 6, Christ's righteousness.  Appropriate?  It delved into how it is Christ's righteousness alone that atones for sin. It is not our own merit, but Christ's alone that God received as sufficient payment for sin.  Because of what Jesus did for me, that heaviness from sin does not weigh on me anymore.  After I read the section in Romans 6 (and took a nap), I woke with a melody in my head to sing with the guitar part that Maurice and I had worked on together a few days before. I recorded the melody and pulled out a hymn book that Maurice had given me when I began helping with worship at the downtown church.

In the book are lyrics from some hundred hymns with the inspiring stories behind them. After all these thoughts on righteousness, I flipped to the index in the back, looking for a song about righteousness. There was only one. Appropriate again? I love how God leads me. I had never heard the song before, so I sang it to the melody that had come to my mind when I woke. The lyrics fit the melody perfectly.

Later, I read the opening in an old book I've had for several years and never finished by Neil Anderson. All about wrapping our identity up in Christ and nothing else.

Then the sermon at church. It was a rough one. It should have been a rough one. But I found such comfort in it. It was like the icing on the cake of truth: God hates sinners, not just sin. I am the problem, not the solution. God doesn't hate what I do, but who I was - without Jesus. So much focus was on the work of Christ and on an identity rooted in what HE has done, and not what I have done.

The morning following all this, before I processed through it, I opened to the passage from that week's sermon and read the weekly pamphlet from our church. Pastor Mark's wife, Grace had written on, get this, the same. exact. topic. Aaaaapropriate, Lord.

So I would be pretty daft if I were to say the Holy Spirit himself did not direct this song in part.  He gave it to me, so I share it with you (now with piano)!   I hope it is a blessing to you:
Garment of Praise by fancyteresa

Sammamish Sparkles Like Snow

This past Sunday I was honored to be invited to lead worship at the official launch of Mars Hill Sammamish alongside a team of musicians pulled from Celestial City, Ghostship, Citizen, and Thunderoso - some of the Mars Hill Church bands at Downtown Seattle and the University District.

The Sammamish church has a very familial atmosphere - something which, sadly, evoked memories of starch church environments I grew up around.   Lots of affluent white collar families with young kids, teens, and even grandparents - all of which were very put-together, nice, and moral.  At first glance, the look of the building and the people who filled it brought memories of the years I spent in religious churches where I never knew Jesus, never really saw who Jesus is, or how who is ought to move us to respond to his calling.  In a 1st world nation that often claims Christianity as its religion, I think many of us are all too familiar with these psuedo-Christian churches with friendly messages void of challenge or responsiveness from the congregation.

This was not that kind of church.

Toward the end of the service, the band and I collected ourselves at the back of the auditorium to go back up on stage.  I stood behind some 300 plus people who were being beckoned by Pastor Mark on the screen.  He asked the men to stand and identify themselves as Christian men and to audibly vow that their wives, children, and church would be served and loved - by them.  My tears and throat swelled; the men didn't miss a beat.  They stood firmly when prompted and gripped the hands of their wives and children as they proclaimed their vows - loudly!  One man in particular caught my eye, as he turned to his wife and proclaimed the vows as he looked her in the eye.

As I stepped up on the stage and collected myself to lead the people in song, I saw a flurry of snow whipping around outside the windows.  The men prayed over their wives and served them communion,  the people responded with zealous clapping, many singing with joyful tears, and adults and children being baptized.

We closed the morning singing Jesus' praises in the old hymn "Jesus Paid It All" together.  I praised God for melting my heart of stone and washing our crimson stains as clean as the sparkling powder collecting on the trees, and the all God's people sang in unison:

Lord, now indeed I find
Thy power, and Thine alone,
Can change the leper’s spots
And melt the heart of stone.

Jesus paid it all,
All to Him I owe;
Sin had left a crimson stain,
He washed it white as snow.

We kicked off the new Real Marriage series strong with shy of 750 people and 11 baptisms between the two morning services.  It was truly a blessing to see God moving in Sammamish, calling men to lead as God had designed them to lead, and absolutely blowing my assumptions to pieces.  Thank you for having us, Mars Hill Sammamish, and for responding to Jesus' calling on your lives.

Happy Old and New Year

Maurice wrote this blog for the Downtown campus blog - so I thought I'd share it with you!