Adorez Adonai Dance Team

At Half Mast

When I saw a flag at half mast for the first time, I asked my mom right away what it meant. She explained that when an American soldier or politician died, they would put the flag at half mast to respect and remember what good they did for our country. I have glanced at flags everytime I pass them now, and it seems that they are always at half mast. I was puzzled at this, since it hadn’t occured to me that so many soldiers and politicians would die every day. So I started looking it up online. And yes, every time I saw a flag at half mast, I would see that a Senator or soldier lost their life. My research also showed me that 4,690 American soldiers have died in the past seven years. I was astounded.
So what can we do about this? Obviously, we can’t keep people from dying but we can support the troups and congressmen through prayer. We need to pray for our leaders and all of these men and women that risk their lives for us. Start a prayer group in your church. Pray with your family. And when you see a flag at half mast, stop and pray for whoever’s family is going through a trial. Prayer is the most powerful thing we can do. Let’s pray.

God leads the dance

LET’S IMAGINE THAT you want to learn to dance. Being the rational, cerebral person you are, you go to a bookstore and buy a book on dancing.

You take the book home and get to work. You do everything it says. The book says sway; you sway. The book says shuffle; you shuffle. The book says spin; you spin.

Finally, you think you’ve got it, and you invite your wife to come in and watch. You hold the book open and follow the instructions step by step.

You continue to read, then dance, read, then dance, until the dance is completed. You plop exhausted on the couch, look at your wife, and proclaim, “I executed it perfectly.”

“You executed it, all right,” she sighs. “You killed it.”

“What?”

“You forgot the most important part. Where is the music?”

Music?

We Christians are prone to follow the book while ignoring the music. We master the doctrine, outline the chapters, memorize the dispensations, debate the rules, and stiffly step down the dance floor of life with no music in our hearts. We measure each step, calibrate each turn, and flop into bed each night exhausted from another day of dancing by the book.

Dancing with no music is tough stuff.

Jesus knew that. For that reason, on the night before his death he introduced the disciples to the song maker of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit. (John 16:7–9).

Of the three persons of the Godhead, the Holy Spirit is the one we understand the least. Perhaps the most common mistake made regarding the Spirit is perceiving him as a power but not a person, a force with no identity. Such is not true.

The Holy Spirit is not an “it.” He is a person. He has knowledge (1 Cor. 2:11). He has a will (1 Cor. 12:11). He has a mind (Rom. 8:27). He has affections (Rom. 15:30). You can lie to him (Acts 5:3–4). You can insult him (Heb. 10:29). You can grieve him (Eph. 4:30).

The Holy Spirit is not an impersonal force. He is not Popeye’s spinach or the surfer’s wave. He is God within you to help you. In fact John calls him the Helper.

Envision a father helping his son learn to ride a bicycle, and you will have a partial picture of the Holy Spirit. The father stays at the son’s side. He pushes the bike and steadies it if the boy starts to tumble. The Spirit does that for us; he stays our step and strengthens our stride. Unlike the father, however, he never leaves. He is with us to the end of the age.

What does the Spirit do?
He comforts the saved. (John 16:7).
He convicts the lost. (John 16:8).
He conveys the truth. (John 16:12).

Is John saying we don’t need the book in order to dance? Of course not; he helped write it. Emotion without knowledge is as dangerous as knowledge without emotion. God seeks a balance. “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth” (John 4:24).

What is essential is that you know the music is in you. “If Christ is in you, then the Spirit gives you life” (Rom. 8:10). You don’t need a formula to hear it. I don’t have a four-step plan to help you know it. What I do have is his promise that the helper would come to comfort, convict, and convey.

So think about it; have you ever been comforted? Has God ever brought you peace when the world brought you pain? Then you heard the music.

Have you ever been convicted? Have you ever sensed a stab of sorrow for your actions? Then you’ve been touched by the Holy Spirit.

Or have you ever understood a new truth? Or seen an old principle in a new way? The light comes on. Your eyes pop open. “Aha, now I understand.” Ever happen to you? If so, that was the Holy Spirit conveying to you a new truth.

What do you know? He’s been working in your life already.

By the way, for those of us who spent years trying to do God’s job, that is great news. It’s much easier to raise the sail than row the boat. And it’s a lot easier getting people to join the dance when God is playing the music.

Wait and Trust

In your walk with God two things will always be true: You will be receiving from Him and you will be waiting upon Him. Your faith must trust Him for both. You need to receive from Him what is yours for today and wait upon Him for what will be yours tomorrow.

What are the things that are yours today and your faith can receive? Here are a few—you don’t have to wait for His peace, His grace, His mercies, His forgiveness, His cleansing, His truth, His salvation, His strength, His presence, His life, His blessing, His love.

Even though there are many things that are yours today because you are in Christ, there are also things that require your faith to wait. They include prayers you are waiting to see answered, promises you are waiting to be fulfilled, bible prophecies you are waiting to see happen, God’s timing in relation to your personal guidance, clarity to take the next step, and the coming of the Bridegroom returning for His bride.

What should your faith do in response to what is yours today? Receive! What should your faith do in response to what will be yours another day? Rest! As you wait upon the Lord, wait with a quiet heart, not an anxious one; with a thankful heart, not a complaining one; with a peaceful heart, not a striving one; with a hopeful heart, not a discouraged one; with a confident heart, not an uncertain one; with a steadfast heart, not a wavering one; with a patient heart, not a hasty one.

You do not need to try and control or manipulate your future. God is able to fulfill all that He has said and all that He has promised. As you wait, continue to pray, continue to trust, continue to believe, continue to hold hope in your heart, continue to obey, and continue to rejoice every more. You have a God who cannot and will not fail!

His timing and His timetable are always perfect. He knows what He is doing and He does it well. Remember, all creation testifies to the wisdom of His ways—in time the green fruit ripens, the wheat becomes golden, the baby bird takes flight, the sapling spreads its branches, the peonies flower, the gardenia gives its fragrance, the sunflower brings forth its abundance of seeds.

Wait patiently for the LORD. Be brave and courageous. Yes, wait patiently for the LORD.
Psalm 27:14 NLT

Are you free?

So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. (John 8:36)
The Oxford dictionary defines the word “free” as: not a slave, not in the power of another, having liberty, having private rights which are respected, not fixed or held down, able to move without hindrance, and unrestricted.
John 8, just prior to verse 36, is talking about the fact that we are no longer to be slaves to sin. So if the Son sets us free, we are truly, totally free from ALL our sins.
Shackles by MaryMary is a great song about freedom of dance.
Take the shackles off my feet so I can dance
I just wanna praise you, I just wanna praise you
You broke the chains now I can lift my hands
And I’m gonna praise you, I’m gonna praise you
Let God take the shackles off of your feet so that you can dance a dance of freedom for His glory; a dance the the Lord will use to:
…free captives from prison, and release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness. (Isaiah 42:7)

Dance of Worship

Worship is first and foremost a verb, an action. It is motivated by a desire to honor another. The bible includes a wide range of physical movement and expression in its images of worship, including bowing down, lifting hands, dancing, processions and singing. The meaning of the Hebrew and Greek words translated “worship” in English are for the most part movement words. In the Old Testament, the Hebrew word most commonly used, “sahah”, means to bow self down. In the New Testament, the Greek word used most of the time, “proskyneo”, means to bow down or prostrate and to kiss.
Worship dance is not primarily for those lost in worship, or for those people capable of reaching that level of intimacy in God. It is for God. It is not enought that the singers bring their gifts, or that the musicians bring their gifts. If the dancers don’t bring theirs, the worship is incomplete. It would be like the wisee men bringing the gold and frankincense, but forgetting about the myrrh. It doesn’t have to be in every service. The gift just has to be offered. If never used in worship, then dance’s highest purpose – the worship of the King – is not being attained.
I know that the beautiful heart of the worshipping church is bowing down on the inside, but it’s not often coming through their physical bodies. The dancers can bring this aspect to the worship, so people are truly bowing before the King of Kings, lifting up holy hands, and dancing their worship with all their strenght. It is an offering that pleases the heart of God.

Giving to God

Worship is giving God the best that He has given you. Be careful what you do with the best you have. Whenever you get a blessing from God, give it back to Him as a love gift. Take time to meditate before God and offer the blessing back to Him in a deliberate act of worship. If you hoard a thing for yourself, it will turn into spiritual dry rot, as the manna did when it was hoarded. God will never let you hold a spiritual thing for yourself, it has to be given back to Him that He may make it a blessing to others.
“And he pitched his tent having Bethel on the west and Ai on the east: and there he built an alter.” (Genesis 12:8)
Bethel is the symbol of communion with God; Ai is the symbol of the world. Abraham pitched his tent between the two. The measure of the worth of our public activity for God is the private profound communion we have with Him. Rush is wrong every time, there is always plenty of time to worship God. Quiet days with God may be a snare. We have to pitch our tents where we shall always have quiet times with God, however noisy our times with the world may be. The three stages of spiritual worship doesn’t go one by one; Worship first, then wait, and then work… some of us go in jumps like spiritual frogs or something; we jump from worship to waiting, and from waiting to work. God’s idea is that the three should go together. They were always together in the life of Our Lord. It is a discipline, we cannot get into it all at once.

Wasted

There was a man who was converted in old age. The church had prayed for this man for decades. He was hard and resistant. But this time, for some reason, he showed up. At the end of the service, during a hymn, to everyone’s amazement he came and took the pastor’s hand. They sat down together on the front pew of the church as the people were dismissed. God opened his heart to the Gospel of Christ, and he was saved from his sins and given eternal life. But that did not stop him from sobbing and saying, as the tears ran down his wrinkled face—and what an impact it made on everyone who heard—“I’ve wasted it! I’ve wasted it!” As his sobs echoed through the church building, everyone was given a new understanding; an old man weeping that he had wasted his life.

How should we then live? Shouldn’t we live the Christian life and lead a godly example so “…that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 5:16)? We should always strive to “Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation.” (Mark 16:15) This is one of the greatest commands that Jesus gave the disciples. And we are Christ’s followers. We must tell others about Him. If we go through our lives only to look back and see that we have not lived a legacy; then we have wasted our lives.

I want to leave a legacy
How will they remember me?
Did I choose to love? Did I point to You enough
To make a mark on things?
I want to leave an offering
A child of mercy and grace who
blessed your name unapologetically
And leave that kind of legacy
Nicole Nordeman

Dancers or Ministers?

Can dance be a ministry? Yes!
Matthew 28:19-20 “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” All children of God are called to be ministers of the gospel. It doesn’t matter in what way you minister; as long as the message is that of the Bible.

How to be ministers:
– Who is God in your life? He is everything. Look to Him for every need that you have. Draw close to Him and He will be shown through what you do.
– Be encouraging. Optimisticism is the tool for a great team of dancers or ministers.
– Read your bible daily. This is important. If everyone is reading the same message, there is no friction.
– Unity. In order to be unified, you all have to be in unity with God.

James 4:8 “Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.” (God’s prescence)

Romans 12:2 “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.” (Renew your mind)