Your Surrender - Psalm 32

Ok....so have you ever felt the pressure to repent for something are doing or have done. Like an overwhelming pressure? It keeps you up at night. You really can't seem to get rid of it. I really have come to realize over the years that, that is the Spirit. Jesus in John 16 says about the Spirit

"And when he comes, he will convict the world of its sin, and of God's righteousness, and of the coming judgment."


One of the primary roles the Spirit fills that of convicting us of our Sin. Kind of sounds like downer but if we remember the actual title for the Spirit that Jesus gives is The Helper. So if He says the three main rolls of the Spirit really function together as a warning to keep short accounts with the Lord and to look to Jesus, I would that qualifies as help. I really live in denial about my sin or just plain ignore it. My flesh wants to live an oblivious life of sinful bliss. The Spirit is in the world to bring us down to the ground and back into reality. In our Psalm, David examples for us what this looks like when the Spirit isn't [inevitably] ignored.

3When I kept silent,

my bones wasted away

through my groaning all day long.

4For day and night

your hand was heavy on me;

my strength was sapped

as in the heat of summer.

5Then I acknowledged my sin to you

and did not cover up my iniquity.

I said, “I will confess

my transgressions to the Lord.”

And you forgave

the guilt of my sin.

So I'm sure you are thinking "ok so what's the big deal and what does this have to do with worship?" I really get the feeling looking at all of that and it's like looking or talking about being happy about the nurse for pouring the painful hydrogen peroxide on your scrap. But it isn't some disinterested  nurse who doesn't know you, inflicting pain for your "good." It is really more actually like your mom doing it. Those two people are doing the exact same thing. What is different is the motivation, and the care that is informed by the motivation. Hebrews 12:6 says:

because the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and he chastens everyone he accepts as his son.

The Lord does it all because He loves us. All that He is and all He does for us is by and for His love. C.H.Spurgeon says that even the "sword of Gods justice is sheathed in the jewel encrusted scabbard of His love." When I look at it that way I can't help but want to sing His praises...even for His conviction. Let us welcome that pressure with glee and sing of His good work. Lord help this inform our praises this Sunday and every day.

In Christ,
paul




music for the week (as usual: no claim of being not "offensive" but it is really good):

This Is A Fire Door Never Leave Open - Psalm 31

Honesty and transparency is hard some come by. We can really hardly ever find it in others much less ourselves. We are so unwilling to open up and say we are at a deficit and are hurting; that we are struggling to move on forward. I even stutter when I know I need to be and reluctantly relent to the truth. David says:

9 Be merciful to me, Lord, for I am in distress;
my eyes grow weak with sorrow,
my soul and body with grief.
10 My life is consumed by anguish
and my years by groaning;
my strength fails because of my affliction,
and my bones grow weak.

Prayer is powerful. It helps us to understand ourselves in relation to God and pushes us to be honest. I find it harder to lie to myself when I'm praying than any other time. I really think it isn't possible to worship the Lord, to reach to grasp the master, until we have let go of ourselves. Pain and struggles have a tendency to show us ourselves. It shakes our foundations of self confidence. I believe it is there to wake us to conscientiousness, to wake us from our selfish slumber, in order for us to seek out something (really someONE) that is trustworthy to hold onto. Unfortunately in a society of defiant self-reliance, we are told to scream our uniqueness and toughness over the proverbial affliction. We wear shirts that say "I beat cancer" or post things about "proudly being an introvert" that subtly (or not so subtly) imply "I will gladly sacrifice my brothers and sisters in Christ on the alter of my self comfort." Is it awesome that you have recovered from a disease? Yes! Did you really beat it? Is it cool that you know something about yourself? I think it is. But is it really something to be celebrated? No. It has a set of strengths and a set of weaknesses that need to be overcome same as being an extrovert. When we celebrate impediments, or suffering we've "overcome" we really defeat the Divine purpose of it. I want to admit my failings and my need, thereby freeing my hands of myself to grasp on to Him. Think about this line of thinking looking at the concluding verses of this psalm.

21 Praise be to the Lord,
for he showed me the wonders of his love
when I was in a city under siege.
22 In my alarm I said,
“I am cut off from your sight!”
Yet you heard my cry for mercy
when I called to you for help.
23 Love the Lord, all his faithful people! (the call)
The Lord preserves those who are true to him, (the promise)
but the proud he pays back in full. (the warning)
24 Be strong and take heart (in Him),
all you who hope in the Lord

Let us abandon ourselves and grasp on to Him. Confess, repent and praise Him for He loves us and has forgiven us!

In Christ,
paul



music for the week (as usual: no claim of being not "offensive" but it is really good):

Last Call - Psalm 30

I think probably the single greatest praises we have come as a result of answered prayer. And particularly the prayer of helpless surrender brings salvation; starting the road that is narrow. It is almost the easiest time to sing His praise. Often we call back to our conversion to fuel our song.

1I will exalt you, Lord,

for you lifted me out of the depths...

2 Lord my God, I called to you for help,

and you healed me.

3You, Lord, brought me up from the realm of the dead;

you spared me from going down to the pit.

I think that is good but I think that is a bit shallow when it comes to singing to Him. I mean look at it, only singing about things we have received by prayer is the short end of the stick so to speak, because what happens when they aren't answered or they aren't answered with a comfortable response? Our worship subtly becomes about us and it takes more and more just to get us singing. Greater heights, more lights and eventually herecy. Manufacturing gold dust and feathers to be "moves of the Spirit" become the norm and claiming nonsense as our own. To appeal to ourselves is truly the lowest common denominator. It feeds our pride in order to do what we ought. Lewis puts this well in Mere Christianity:

"Teachers, in fact, often appeal to a boy's Pride, or, as they call it, his self-respect, to make him behave decently: many a man has overcome cowardice, or lust, or ill-temper, by learning to think that they are beneath his dignity—that is, by Pride. The devil laughs. He is perfectly content to see you becoming chaste and brave and self-controlled provided, all the time, he is setting up in you the Dictatorship of Pride—just as he would be quite content to see your chilblains cured if he was allowed, in return, to give you cancer. For Pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense."

It may be a more satisfying and subtle devil but it is still the devil none the less. I definitely lean more to our freedoms in Christ but knowing how sadistic pride is, even the music of those churches, divorced from their pastor's heretical teaching, still makes me uneasy. I'm not going to say people can't worship the Lord correctly by singing a Bethal or Hillsong song but it definitely makes me weary. My pride loves to be fed no matter where it comes from.

The best way to ensure we sing and we sing rightly is to sing of the works of the Lord. Not what we get, but rather what He has done. Making Him the focus of most of our worship songs fuels and reorients our hearts. So whether what comes is hard or easy, painful or pain relieving, it is all His work. We can get to the point where we can say as Job did, "though You slay me, yet I will praise you." Look for the work of the Lord in the psalms, and the songs we sing.

4Sing the praises of the Lord, you his faithful people;

praise his holy name.

5For his anger lasts only a moment,

but his favor lasts a lifetime;

weeping may stay for the night,

but rejoicing comes in the morning.

In Christ,
paul





music for the week (as usual: no claim of being not "offensive" but it is really good):

Deeper Well - Psalm 29

Ascribe to the Lord, you heavenly beings,

Ascribe to the Lord glory and strength.

Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name;

Worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness.

The Lord sits enthroned over the flood;

The Lord is enthroned as King forever.

The Lord gives strength to his people;

The Lord blesses his people with peace.

This psalm begins with a call to worship and then ends in actual worship. You would think it would be opposite. Paul talks on and on about theological topics, showing the length and breadth of the gospel. He then on occasion breaks into song. Here is the other side of the peak of praise. One side is stating the truth, the other side is singing the truth. We dig into truth, realize that we should praise Him, and then praise Him for/by the truth we have dug into. When I feel it is hard to sing, when I feel the motivation isn't there, I think my instinct like all of us, is to just try harder; that is if you even desire to try if the feeling isn't there. We dig into ourselves and attempt to muster more strength to sing. That is, much like our sanctification, the wrong way to do it. We must dig into the Lord and what He is and what He has done in order to grow in our fuel for praise. When we dig into ourselves for strength, direction, and motivation, we dig into a dead well. There is nothing there. It is the fallacy of Pat Robertson/fundy crowd. It is faulty logic that if I just hid from the world, and do things like "pray the bad spirits out of goodwill sweaters," I will have enough strength to remove all the sin in my life. It will somehow remove all temptation from my life and I can just stop sinning all together. This. Is. Wrong. Thinking. No amount of isolation, and strength of my own will make me sinless. It is again, digging into a poisoned well. We must dig into a deeper well. The well that has no end. 

13 Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life." 15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”

John 4

Dig into Him and sing.

In Christ,
paul




music for the week (as usual: no claim of being not "offensive" but it is really good):