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):