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):
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...
2Lord 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):
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):
It's so ridiculous that we are still having to have these discussions. We do not have to sacrifice lyrical content to have good music, NOR do we have to dumb down the music to validate the words. It's maddening to me that anything outside the normal musically is dismissed as being a "rock show" or what is above the normal lyrical baby food is responded to like "Um...I don't get it...there are too many words." This isn't to say that few words are bad or a simple song is either, but the idea that either side is promoting, i.e. a wholesale dumbing down of either music or lyrics, is completely preposterous. There is no grounds for the "holiness" of simple music or simple words. You can prefer either of those but please, let us stop putting on airs that our preferred area of simplicity is more holy. God created us in His image. Part of that is that we imitate Him in His creativity. By saying we have too many instruments or volume, words or ideas is so ignorantly void of the context of God's creation that glorifies Him, I am usually left to wonder if people even look around them once in a while. Even in the simplicity of the seeds, there are complex levels of dna, potential energy and systems designed to get a plant started. I think we have the wrong idea that God only speaks in the "still small voice" of 1 Kings 19. But do you think when the Psalmist declares in 148 "Praise the LORD from the earth, you great sea creatures and all ocean depths," that they do it in a whisper? Do you really think a subtle and simple noise is spoke of in Psalm 98 "Let the sea resound, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it." Of course not. We can not assume simple words or music 100% of the time is even acceptable by scriptural standards. There are no grounds for that. We can not be stagnant. We must continue to respond to the greatness of what God is, what God has done, and what God has promised He will do in like manner. Let us consider these two passages and ask ourselves these questions: does my worship sound like this, and does it even attempt to match the grandeur He has made to surround Himself to bring Himself glory?
Psalm 150
1Praise the Lord.
Praise God in his sanctuary;
praise him in his mighty heavens.
2Praise him for his acts of power;
praise him for his surpassing greatness.
3Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet,
praise him with the harp and lyre,
4praise him with timbrel and dancing,
praise him with the strings and pipe,
5praise him with the clash of cymbals,
praise him with resounding cymbals.
6Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.
Praise the Lord.
Revelation 4
1After
this I looked, and there before me was a door standing open in heaven.
And the voice I had first heard speaking to me like a trumpet said, “Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this.”2At once I was in the Spirit, and there before me was a throne in heaven with someone sitting on it. 3And the one who sat there had the appearance of jasper and ruby. A rainbow that shone like an emerald encircled the throne. 4Surrounding
the throne were twenty-four other thrones, and seated on them were
twenty-four elders. They were dressed in white and had crowns of gold on
their heads. 5From
the throne came flashes of lightning, rumblings and peals of thunder.
In front of the throne, seven lamps were blazing. These are the seven
spirits of God. 6Also in front of the throne there was what looked like a sea of glass, clear as crystal.
In the center, around the throne, were four living creatures, and they were covered with eyes, in front and in back. 7The
first living creature was like a lion, the second was like an ox, the
third had a face like a man, the fourth was like a flying eagle. 8Each
of the four living creatures had six wings and was covered with eyes
all around, even under its wings. Day and night they never stop saying:
“ ‘Holy, holy, holy
is the Lord God Almighty,’
who was, and is, and is to come.”
9Whenever the living creatures give glory, honor and thanks to him who sits on the throne and who lives for ever and ever, 10the
twenty-four elders fall down before him who sits on the throne and
worship him who lives for ever and ever. They lay their crowns before
the throne and say:
"There is no blacker mark of decadence than the kind of idolatry which is expressed in the phrase 'art for art's sake'. It is the decadence of art when it is separated from the life, just as it was the decadence of religion when it was separated from life. So long as religion meant, as it did in its vigorous days, that the whole nature of man must have an outcome & sublime climax it was strong. Religion rotted away into musty theology and mad ethics precisely when people began to say 'piety for piety's sake'. And just as decidedly exactly as the old ascetic pitted religion against life, so decidedly does the new decadent pit art against life. Aestheticism seeks to stand alone, and it will fall as Puritanism fell."
GK Chesterton
Regardless of any auxiliary connotations, he points out that art (and for my emphasis: church music) divorced from a higher motivation actually becomes divorced from any value or life. If people are to be engaged and connect with it in any meaningful and lasting way, it must be connected with that motivation first. People can find meaning in meaningless things by finding experiences and situations in their life and correlating those to that particular art, but that is contingent on the art "consumer"(the one taking in and experiencing the art). I have always operated under the truth that once art is created, the meaning is no longer owned by the author. People attach meaning to art that never existed before. That is the nature of art. That is why I, as a Christian, can attach a positive and profound meaning to the art of an ardent atheist that is contrary to the artist's intention. But as authors (both in composition of the song or in the momentary translation) we can narrow that variance. As church music leaders and artists, we can buffet that openness by communicating. When we share a song on mp3 or live, we have the express opportunity to connect that, either with the original motivation of the song, or another greater truth/idea. Like the variation in angle of a pool cue can change the angle the cue ball will go, it still has the same pivot point (the song). For our purposes though, you really can't deviate and ANY direction because the words create some boundary to that. There isn't a ball in every direction for the cue ball to strike. Some deviation can be utilized to cohere with an over arching theme in a service. Even leaving that aside, many parishioners are more likely to be lost in a sea of noises and words, unable to see the thread through it without explanation, unless they are very artistic or avid art consumers. That is really where the communication comes in. Whether in liner notes, or during a worship service, communicating to the body "the thread" before going through a song/service, can really attach the higher meaning, and therefore life, to the song(s).
Most particularly I have been immersing myself in the Psalms every week. I read the same 3 everyday for the whole week, in order to absorb them and then look for gospel themes. When I sit down to make a set list for Sunday, I apply that gospel application to a section of one of the Psalms I've been reading all week by orienting the whole set to express that idea. To tell the "drama" arc (as Erik Routley would say) of that aspect of the gospel or characteristic of God that you see in that Psalm or section of Psalm is a great way to both: orient the service and give you a foundation to relate the theme. I like to read a section of the Psalm before starting (the service and after the message), explain the connection to what we will be singing and the gospel, and pray through that section applying it to our hearts/lives. After that, THEN sing. The people who will be worshiping our savior with us, sitting in the seats, will be on the same page and will be well on their way to applying the gospel to their hearts; singing like they mean it out of thanksgiving. There are many ways to communicate that larger meaning that begs our hearts to sing like Psalmist's emplor.
The upright see and rejoice,
but all the wicked shut their mouths.
Let the one who is wise heed these things
and ponder the loving deeds of the Lord.
Psalm 107:42, 43
They sit and ponder the Lord. The more efficiently you get to that, the more time in song they will take ownership and take on the heart that is being sung. Sing and mean it, explain it and they will join you. All of this applies art of any type. Painting, photography, novelists, and sculptors, you must attach a clear meaning to what you are expressing in a way that connects to your heart and what the Lord is doing and has done in you. Glorify the Lord, be real and people will see it.
"People wonder why the novel [as art] is the most popular form of literature; people wonder why it is read more than books of science or books of metaphysics. The reason is very simple; it is merely that the novel is more true than they are. Life may sometimes legitimately appear as a book of science. Life may sometimes appear, and with a much greater legitimacy, as a book of metaphysics. But life is always a novel."
GK Chesterton
Here is a beautiful example. Please imagine if you will: seeing the Lord from a distance, in fear being drawn closer seeing your own sin clearer and clearer, feeling the righteousness of the Father and knowing its demand for your death being just, right and necessary. As you draw closer and closer the fear, dread painfully sucking the air from your lungs so you could not bring yourself to even speak. Right at the moment you thought you would surely be destroyed, He breathes one word....mercy. He has paid your penalty and washed you clean. Like Isaiah, He has cleansed you with lasting heat of the sacrifice from the alter, that is Christ. What would come from your lips? "All hail Your wonderful majesty, Jesus who died, the king above all kings!"
