worship

Scriptural Hymnal

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I went to a concert tonight at Christ Community Church that was a bit atypical. What made it unusual is that it was a Scriptural Hymnal Release Celebration — basically, the words of Scripture set to music.

I’m all for modern worship. I’m all for the classic hymns. But there’s something especially powerful about straight up singing the Word of God. Knowing that instead of singing words about God or words to God, you’re singing God’s words back to God is a mind-blowing concept.

I learned tonight that over the next year or so, there will be 100 songs released on 10 albums. How cool would it be if churches all across the country picked up on these hymns and incorporated them into their worship? I mean you can’t get better theology than that. You definitely can’t get more biblical than the Bible.

It reminded me more than a little of Handel’s Messiah, but with contemporary arrangements and using the NIV instead of the KJV. But I guess Messiah was contemporary for its time. It only seems antiquated because it’s around 400 years old. Not that I mind. I still love Handel’s Messiah and listen to it at least once every year.

But this was what I needed. What better way to get Scripture into your mind than having it become an ear worm through hearing the songs? What better way to pray and praise than singing God’s word back to God?

Much thanks to Randall Goodgame, A. S. Peterson, and the good folks at the Rabbit Room for this one. It was a truly spectacular night.

God in Unexpected Places

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Earlier today, I wanted some soothing background music, so I turned on a DirecTV channel called Soundscapes that plays vaguely new-agey music. Mostly, it’s instrumental, so I can read or do other things without being distracted.

Then they started playing a song called “If A Rose Could Speak, ” and lo and behold, a woman starts singing. I was definitely not expecting that. But it was mostly generic lyrics about love, so I didn’t really pay much attention.

Then the song went into a kind of counter-melody. I instantly recognized the tune, but I couldn’t place it. The more I heard, the more I knew that I knew it, but couldn’t remember where. Then the line hit me: “Lord of all, to thee we raise / This our hymn of grateful praise.”

It was the melody of the old hymn “For the Beauty of the Earth.”

I’m sure that it could also be the melody to another old song from ye olden days. Hymn writers were known to take familiar songs and add new lyrics to them so that people would recognize them and catch on faster.

But it was an odd moment for me in the middle of my day. It was also a gentle reminder that even with all the evil that seems to run rampant all over the world, the Earth still belongs to the Lord. Jesus is still in control. Even a broken and fallen creation can still glorify and bring praise to the Creator.

For those unfamiliar with the old hymn, here are the words in full:

“For the beauty of the earth, 
for the glory of the skies, 
for the love which from our birth 
over and around us lies. 
 
Christ, our Lord, to you we raise 
this, our hymn of grateful praise. 

For the wonder of each hour 
of the day and of the night, 
hill and vale and tree and flower, 
sun and moon and stars of light,

Christ, our Lord, to you we raise 
this, our hymn of grateful praise. 

For the joy of human love, 
brother, sister, parent, child, 
friends on earth, and friends above, 
for all gentle thoughts and mild,

Christ, our Lord, to you we raise 
this, our hymn of grateful praise. 

For yourself, best gift divine, 
to the world so freely given, 
agent of God’s grand design: 
peace on earth and joy in heaven.

Christ, our Lord, to you we raise 
this, our hymn of grateful praise” (Folliott Sandford Pierpoint).

Worshipping Through Weeping

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“Weeping may last through the night,
    but joy comes with the morning” (Psalm 30:5, NLT).

Today as a deacon, I attended the celebration of life service for one of our members who tragically lost his life at age 42. He had been married only 16 months when his life was unexpectedly cut short.

The funeral was beautiful and God-honoring. My favorite part of the entire service was when the worship leader sang the first song, the widow of the deceased stood up alone and raised her hands in worship, grieving and praising at the same time.

That’s an image I will carry with me as long as I live, I think. She had her world utterly wrecked like a rug pulled out from underneath her and still was able to declare like Job, “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21, ESV).

There is so much evil in the world and so much that makes no sense. If this life is all there is, then there is no hope, no future, and no reason to keep going. But if we have the promise of God for something better coming (and we do), then we know that this is what the Apostle Paul calls a light and momentary affliction compared to the joy that’s coming.

Not that grief is nothing. Not that the pain isn’t real. But the coming joy will overwhelm us and seem so much greater than any sorrow that went before, like a woman holding her newborn baby after the agony of giving birth only is thinking of new life and not pain.

My brain has no compartment for comprehending the level of suffering this woman is currently undergoing and how radically different her life will be from now on. There will always be a void where her husband should be and a dull ache that never completely goes away, but there will always be a Father’s love that grows deeper and sweeter with the passing of time.

“Yea, though walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.” The psalm does not pretend that evil and death do not exist. Terrible things happen, and they happen to good people as well as to bad people. Even the paths of righteousness lead through the valley of the shadow. Death lies ahead for all of us, saints and sinners alike, and for all the ones we love. The psalmist doesn’t try to explain evil. He doesn’t try to minimize evil. He simply says he will not fear evil. For all the power that evil has, it doesn’t have the power to make him afraid” Frederick Buechner, The Clown in the Belfry).

My Favorite Decade for Music

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If I had to pick a decade that had the best music, you’d think I’d go with the 80s because so many songs from that decade are tied to my memories and are part of the soundtrack to my life.

But you’d be wrong. My favorite decade for music is the 70s. There was such a diverse amount of artists and styles hitting the radio then, usually all on the same stations. So many genres were fusing with other genres to create new sounds.

I’ve been digging me some 70s Christian music, especially the early years when it was known as Jesus Music. That music has a vibe that’s both worshipful and relaxing. I honestly hope that music in heaven sounds a bit like the music from back then.

I think part of it is because I consider the 70s to be my womb years. It sounds weird even to me, but hopefully I can explain. I don’t remember much about the 70s and the memories I do have sometimes verge on the dreamlike. Sometimes I wonder if something I remember from back then actually happened or if I dreamed it.

I love the fact that there’s all sorts of new worship music being created currently. I really like some of it. But for me, sometimes it can have kind of a sameness to it and the lyrics can have a generic quality with all the references to storms and chains breaking.

So much of it is me-focused, as in “I’m gonna lift up my hands” and “I’m praising your name” and “I won’t be shaken.” I suppose that’s all well and good. But for me, it can turn into worshipping worship or worshipping the experience instead of worshipping the one true God.

70s Christian music wasn’t perfect, but it was God-honoring and God-centered. And yes, it does sound better on vinyl, which is good because most of it never made it to CDs or streaming. Maybe I’m getting older, but I do think that sometimes older is better. Not all the time, but sometimes.

Squinting in a Fog

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Today will go down in history as the Day of the Eclipse. Supposedly, today’s eclipse will be the last one I’ll be able to witness until roughly around 2044. So I definitely wanted to take advantage of this one.

There I was in a prime viewing spot with proper eclipse glasses in hand — later on face when the actual event took place. The only issue was the continual cloudy sky that prevented me from getting a really good glimpse of this solar event.

For a moment, I didn’t think I’d be able to see anything. But as the cloud covering moved across the sky, the eclipse peeked briefly though those clouds from time to time. I was able to see, but not very clearly, so the whole experience was not as good as 2017 when I experienced the whole thing from start to finish.

Life is like that. The Bible speaks about how we now see through a mirror dimly. We experience God through the haze of our own sin and the limitations of our own finite frailty. We are disconnected from the big picture, only able to catch brief glimpses that are sometimes obscured as if by fog or clouds.

But one day, the Bible says, we will see face to face and will know fully as we are fully known by God instead of only knowing in part. We will see our story as God sees it now. Then we will understand. Then we will worship.

“We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!” (1 Corinthians 13:12, The Message).

Never Getting Beyond My Need

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I was channel surfing earlier, and ran across a program called Better Together, where some speakers and authors were discussing modern idolatry and how we are all prone to it.

Basically, most of us think of idols as tiny statues made of gold or silver or wood. Most of us picture idolaters as people bowing toward some stone image that can’t possibly reciprocate.

The reality is that idolatry is taking something good, i.e. marriage, family, children, careers, success, and putting it in the place of God. It’s letting something other than God take the throne of our hearts.

The painful truth is that we are all idolaters. We have something else other than God that we put in front of God or place beside God. We never get past needing to repent our idols because our flesh craves something tangible to worship. Our flesh isn’t satisfied with God.

We will never get past our need of God because the more we grow, the more we see how far we are from the mark of God’s standard. The more we see our own faults in the light of God’s perfection and holiness. The more we understand that our good intentions rarely lead to good works.

But God is faithful even when we are not. God is faithful to His promises when we don’t keep ours to Him. God is faithful to pursue us when we so often pursue so many lesser objects instead of God. God is faithful to finish what He started in us and make us like Jesus.

Nothing Else Will Do

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I’m excited. My church is weeks away from moving to a permanent campus where everything will be brand new and shiny. I’m reminded of the metaphor Jesus used about believers being a city on a hill, because this new location is literally sitting on a hill over looking the intersection.

I’m super hyped, but I’m also smart enough to know that the honeymoon won’t last. More accurately, I’ve hopefully learned by now through lots of times where I got excited only to see the enthusiasm fade and normalcy fade in.

I can remember all those Christmas gifts that I was thrilled to get. I remember how I felt, but looking back, I can’t remember the specific gifts any more. They lost their luster and faded from my memory. Some of them even ended up in garage sales a few years later.

That’s how it goes with anything I set my heart on this side of eternity. Anything less than God won’t fill that God-shaped yearning in me. Or as C. S. Lewis put it, anything that isn’t eternal is eternally out of date and obsolete.

I look forward to our move-in date in late May. I hope I will always be grateful for this gracious gift on God’s part. But I know that at some point, it will be just a building. More than likely, it will require maintenance and updating and repairs. And at some point, it will be no more.

But what it represents and what our church is all about (and every true Bible-believing church is all about) won’t ever fade or get stolen or moth-eaten or rust. The hope of God-with-us revealed in Jesus will only get better and more wonderful and more glorious over time, past time, and into eternity.

Real Church

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“What if we take away the cool music and the cushioned chairs? What if the screens are gone and the stage is no longer decorated? What if the air conditioning is off and the comforts are removed? Would His Word still be enough for his people to come together?” (David Platt)

“Heresy of method may be as deadly as heresy of message” (A.W. Tozer).

I am the first to confess that I love technology. I especially love it when the church is able to incorporate talent and technology to advance the gospel in ways that were unthinkable even a generation ago. I love how we can reach all over the world with literally a tap of the finger and the power of social media and the world wide web.

But I wonder if sometimes we plan for talent and technology but leave no room for God’s Holy Spirit. I wonder that if the Holy Spirit were to depart from a church if it would cause the slightest ripple in the service that is pre-planned down to the second.

Again, I am all for worship not being all hap-hazard but well thought out. I just know that in many places around the world, people are worshipping without the comforts of padded pews or air conditioning or even buildings. Many of them meet in secret for fear of being arrested. Many know that to openly proclaim Jesus as Lord will cost them their lives. Yet they’re the ones worshipping in spirit and in truth while many of us here in America are worshipping in comfort and ease.

I’m afraid it will take the persecution of the Church in America to get us from lukewarm to faithful. I don’t mean the persecution of us getting our feelings hurt because people say things about us that are not nice. I mean persecution in the sense of some of us being dragged off to prison and maybe at some point people losing their lives for not denying the name of Jesus.

Lord, wake us up and make us faithful.

Why Church?

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Church is not about worship. I mean that anybody can worship at anytime in any place. You can worship God by yourself.

What church is about is worshipping corporately. It’s about gathering together in community because we are better together than we are apart. We are stronger together than we are apart. The old saying is true that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

I believe that in Acts 2 when the Holy Spirit came upon the early believers, He empowered and indwelled the collective church. That means that where two or more or gathered, Jesus is there and there is power — more power than if we each prayed or worshipped or read the Bible separately.

I also still believe that it’s more about being the church rather than going to church. Church isn’t a place or a time or an event that we participate in but it is us. We together are the church who meet together regularly because we need each other and we need God most of all.

The Bible never gives a reason for any of us to neglect the assembling together of believers. At least, I can’t find any good reason. When we isolate ourselves from the body, we open ourselves to falling into temptation and wrong beliefs. We are more easily prone to wander away from the Church and the truth.

I love the old joke that if you ever find the perfect church, don’t go there because you will mess it up. There are no perfect churches because there are no perfect people. There is only a perfect God who meets us where we are and leads us daily closer to being more like Jesus.

No One Should Be Left Out

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“Praise the Eternal!
Praise the True God inside His temple.
    Praise Him beneath massive skies, under moonlit stars and rising sun.
Praise Him for His powerful acts, redeeming His people.
    Praise Him for His greatness that surpasses our time and understanding.

Praise Him with the blast of trumpets high into the heavens,
    and praise Him with harps and lyres
    and the rhythm of the tambourines skillfully played by those who love and fear the Eternal.
Praise Him with singing and dancing;
    praise Him with flutes and strings of all kinds!
Praise Him with crashing cymbals,
    loud clashing cymbals!
No one should be left out;
    Let every man and every beast—
    every creature that has the breath of the Lord—praise the Eternal!
Praise the Eternal!” (Psalm 150:1-6, The Voice).

As I read the words to this particular Psalm, I was reminded of something that John Piper wrote. He said that worship is the ultimate purpose of the Church. Missions, he said, exists because there are places where worship does not. Missions exists because there are people who still have not heard of God’s saving power in Jesus and of His worth and value and of His redeeming love.

Missions will not always exist. The Bible says that one day there will be a multitude of people from every ethnicity and race and language gathered around the throne of God and that the whole earth will be filled with the knowledge of Yahweh as the waters cover the seas.

Until then, we have the Great Commission, so that no one is left out of the opportunity of an eternity with God.