We were very blessed to have our good friend Julian Adams in Derby this weekend just gone. Julian is a gifted prophet and a great gift to the church. The Heaven touches Earth conference we held on Saturday was attended by around 230 people from across Derby and the wider area. I will post a more detailed review of this later in the week I hope.
Julian also joined us on Sunday morning at Jubilee. He felt he should speak about extravagant worship. Personally, I was both really encouraged and very challenged by this.
I was encouraged because I love enthusiastic worship. Public worship is indeed an overflow of our personal life with God and I love to be in a corporate setting where worship is enthusiastic and passionate.
I was challenged because of a comment he made which was, “Isn’t it funny how extravagant worship of others produces a judgmental spirit in us…?” I have certainly been guilty of this myself, sometimes being irritated by a passionate noisy worshipper in a meeting! When this happens, it reveals the true condition of my heart – not as in love with Jesus as I would want to be. There is a challenge here not to judge others but rather to look at my own relationship with God. (A story about not judging the speck in another’s eyes when there’s a log in your own comes to mind!)
As with all prophetic ministry, what Julian brought needs to be weighed. In fact, that is true not only of prophetic ministry but biblical teaching also. I would be the first one to encourage people to read scripture for themselves and compare what is being taught in church on a Sunday to what the Bible says. We need to be both feeding people with truth and teaching them how to feed themselves with truth.
This Sunday at Jubilee I will follow on from what Julian brought. We will look at what it means to weigh prophecy and how you do that in a God-honouring way. We will consider how all of us can grow in the prophetic, and we will look at the fundamental issue of receiving or being baptised in the Holy Spirit. I do hope you can join us!
Graham Pyman 
What is true is that our exuberant displays of corporate worship will rarely match the heartfelt outpouring of hospitable, honouring, humbled affection that the sinful woman poured out on the feet of Jesus…
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That’s probably true but I think Julian’s point was that it was extravagant – and it clearly was! The issue for us isn’t the volume, it’s the heart. She clearly realised what Jesus had done for her and this was her heart response. I guess the questions for us are to do with whether we really understand all that Jesus has accomplished for us, are we living in the good of what He wants to do in and through us now and is our worship coming from a heart full of love for Him? At least they’re the questions that I need to answer for myself..
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