DAY 25

LITURGY OF LOVE

KYLE SCHNEIDER, BOARD MEMBER, THE WOODS CHURCH

ChatGPT and AI could write this better than I can.

I’m going to set that idea, and honestly an ever-increasing reality, right at the top of today’s devotional.

I work as a product manager at a mid-size technology agency. My job is to keep our products and teams updated with the latest technologies and AI has and will continue to drastically alter our industry but also increasingly our daily lives.

The reality is that we already live in a world and cultural moment where ‘normal’ is distracted, desensitized dysphoria. The instability of world events and the anxiety of today’s tasks or tomorrow's unknowns are no longer just a “bad day” but the status quo. Our minds and our bodies are demanded to oblige to packed calendars and keep to the pace of our phone’s pixels. What was once deliberate scrolling and spiraling to get a small hit at the end of the day has sadly become normative in order to regulate us from the waves of our personal and collective storms.

Then stir AI into the mix. I’ll spare the nerdy details but it’s simply technology using data and words which it then uses to generate text, images, videos, code, etc. All of this is packaged with a personalized bow, however you type it in.

I’m not condemning technology (it’s my day job!); however, working in the field, discerning our time in history, loving the church, and living the 9-5 three kids packed-pace right alongside you, I can sense the temptation and slow slide we’re slipping into (on many fronts). We’ve curated in ourselves a demand for immediate information and are now subtly soothing our soul’s deeper desires for security and intimacy. The problem is, those desires can only ever be satisfied by Jesus Christ. As I’ve observed and waded in the tides of these tendencies (admittedly even myself), these past years, the Holy Spirit has thrown me a rescue and practice that’s become a daily life preserver. I’ve discovered an eye in the middle of the hurricane of hurry, hustle, and the humming insecurities in my head: “how can you ever keep up,” “you don’t have time for that,” “someone else or AI can do it better anyway.” As the winds of this world howl, as my enemy rattles off ridicules, and my flesh fixates on artificial alternatives; the Holy Spirit has brought me to the ancient time-tested life-saving practice of liturgy.

Liturgy at its simplest is a structured repeated form of worship, often involving a set order of prayers, scriptures readings, or songs. For millennia, the church of Jesus Christ has led corporate gatherings through liturgies such as the Lord’s Prayer, sharing of Communion, or reciting the Apostles Creed, etc.

As I’ve devoted myself to a daily secret place of prayer, meditation, and intimacy with God, we’ve together crafted a personal liturgy that is specific and unique to my day's demands and the story of my life. Jesus Himself confirms the reality that we are intimately known by Him and will speak to us.

My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me. John 10:27

He later goes on talking not just about his disciples but those who’d believe their message (that’s us!).

I have given them the glory you gave me, so that they may be one as we are one. I am in them and you are in me. May they experience such perfect unity that the world will know that you sent me and that you love them as much as you love me. Father, I want these whom you have given me to be with me where I am. Then they can see all the glory you gave me because you loved me even before the world began! John 17:22–26 (emphasis added)

Ground-shaking, rule-breaking, limit-lifting realities are in these verses. Through faith in the full work of Jesus Christ and his life, death, resurrection, ascension, and seal of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit we’ve been perfectly unified with Father, wrapped in love, and given His glory. That is the same sun-setting, star-sparkling, wave-crashing creative glory that through words spoke existence into actuality. We have unity and access to partner with Jesus to co-create glorious realities. Our words and actions sourced in that splendor have power.

I’ve co-created with the Lord what I’ve dearly come to know as our love liturgy. It’s a love language soaked in hours together and built on His promises that I’ve seen hold true and others I’m still sowing and tilling into as I anticipate the taste of their fulfilled fruit.

You too are destined for this; but what does it look like?

I’ve already mentioned a few corporate liturgies well-known in the church but you can see raw examples of personal liturgies right in the Psalms. These chapters are David’s heart and prayers poured out into words. I’ve found a sure sign of powerful liturgy is repetition on truth. In a world oversaturated in new (and now AI-generative) content; my soul finds respite in repetition. Just look at all the instances of one example of David returning to a foundational truth. 

I love you, LORD; you are my strength. The LORD is my rock, my fortress, and my savior; my God is my rock, in whom I find protection. Psalm 18:1

The LORD is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and he helps me. My heart leaps for joy, and with my song I praise him. Psalm 28:7

The LORD is my strength and song, and has become my salvation. Psalm 118:14

Where did David source this solace for his spirit when he was afraid, on the run, and stalked by his enemies?

The LORD is my strength and my defense; he has become my salvation. Exodus 15:2

David’s personal liturgy is seemingly birthed in the promise written by Moses hundreds of years before God’s strong deliverance of Israel from slavery in Egypt.

Power is unleashed when we partner to meet with God in His presence, meditate and wrestle on His words, and then put His promises to work in prayer. Not as merely requests but as refrainsof love in devotion as we trust His will and anticipate fulfillment in our lives. 

I’m convinced and now committed to live out daily and leave behind a legacy and liturgy of love. That my kids know and pass on the written and spoken words of my prayers. ChatGPT, AI, or anything of this world cannot generate for you a love liturgy with the Lord. The words that inspire and sustain your days can only be birthed from time spent kneeling and tear dripping in love at the feet of Jesus, sown into and sourced by the Holy Spirit, and radiating from the nearness of Father’s creative glory. It’ll cost you to sacrifice immediacy for a pace of slow meditation. It’ll require you to curb from generative to the repetitive prayers on the promises. It’ll yield in you deep roots into the current of the Spirit and a life and legacy that overflows bearing fruit in every season. 

PRAYER: Lord Jesus, teach us to pray. May we be united in Your creative glory to craft with You a liturgy of love. Amen.