Holy Weak

Hungering for something,

enacting my scarcity.

Running lamely for strength,

and losing clarity.

Letting laughter be turned,

in the house of tears.

Surrendering my will

to kick against the spears.

It's Friday, I'm in love.

Sunday, don't come too late.

When new volition springs,

to kick sulphury gates.

Wisdom makes a home

and laughs at darkest fates.

The clear Word rises,

new legs alight.

Festival tables spread,

Hunger dances with delight. 

Hiding from God

Ever since sin brought shame into the world, we have had a tendency to hide from God.  Right after sinning, Adam and Eve hid from the presence of God behind fig leaf underwear and trees.

Israel did the same thing when God appeared to them in power on the mountain.  The first thing we read after the account of his words to them is that "the people were afraid and trembled, and they stood far off."  They told Moses they would hear from him, but they asked that God not speak to them, lest they die.  They stood far off while Moses drew near to the thick darkness. 

The same thing happened with Jesus.  Do you remember Peter's response when Jesus showed his power by miraculously causing him to catch so many fish that two boats could hardly hold them?  Peter fell down at Jesus' feet and asked him to get away from him because he (Peter) was a sinful man.

There is something fitting about these responses.  Through Jeremiah God says "'I will make him draw near, and he shall approach me, for who would dare of himself to approach me?' declares the Lord" (30:21).  If we understand the situation rightly, we don't dare approach God of ourselves.  And yet God is not content to let us run and hide.  Even though Adam and Eve hid, God drew near to them and clothed them.  Even though Israel didn't want to draw near, God was making arrangements to live in their midst.  And even though Peter asked Jesus to go away after seeing his power, that isn't the end of the story.  Jesus repeated the same miracle with Peter after his resurrection, and this time instead of asking Jesus to go away, Peter dove into the water, swimming to get to him as fast as he could!

Because of Jesus' death and resurrection we don't need to hide anymore.  

We are invited to draw near to God, being told by James that as we draw near to him, he will draw near to us.  Jesus was regularly inviting people to come to him and find rest.  Hebrews spells it out; "therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith..." (10:19-22a).

This drawing near to God is an inestimable privilege given to us through Jesus.  There is a new and living way opened.  Stop and consider that phrase for a minute.  

And yet we hide.  

We want to send someone else to God for us like Israel sent Moses, forgetting that the only one who needs to be sent for us has already gone to appear before God, and we can go freely in him.

We hide from God behind all sorts of things.  We hide from him behind overly formal prayers in order to avoid bearing our hearts fully to him.  We hide behind busyness, claiming that we just don't have time to draw near to God.  We hide behind Christian leaders, whom we send into his presence for us.  We hide behind commentaries and theologians so that we don't have to encounter God directly in his word.  We hide behind religious activity, so that we can work in his name without doing the one thing that is needed: sitting at his feet.  We hide behind our guilt, thinking that it is too great to allow us to approach him.  We try to hide everywhere, but we don't need to hide anymore.

The way is open.  Our sin is dealt with.  Our shame is over.  We are called and invited to draw near to God himself.  Stop hiding, take courage and dare to draw near to the Holy One of Israel, the Ancient of Days.  What we find is love incomprehensible and life everlasting.

"The Spirit and the Bride say, 'Come.'  And let the one who hears say, 'Come.'  And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price." (Rev. 22:17)

Uncool Worship Music

I have been more involved in the music of the church lately, and so I have been thinking about these things again.  Here are a few thoughts about music in the church.

We should aim for something higher than cool

I think that aiming for cool in church music can bring disunity both culturally and generationally.  The kind of people Jesus reaches are often not welcome at the cool table.  His love falls on the poor in spirit, the weak, the nobodies.  But when the church is built on the culture of cool, it can easily become exclusive along those lines.  The lines of exclusion from cool are very different than the lines of exclusion from Jesus.

But it can also be divisive generationally because cool has to be a moving target.  If you don't change quickly enough, you miss the bus.  For example, how cool is worship music from the 1980's?  The 90's?  Even the last decade (what do we call it, the ot's)?  Anyone still worshipping to Petra and Audio Adrenaline?

It grieves me the way we create and perpetuate a generation gap in our churches with our music.  If you can't keep up, then you are left behind and out of touch.  Rather than a rich, diverse, family of people gathering in the Spirit of Christ, we divide up decade by decade, each with our own gathering and our own music.  We need a music that expresses the unity we have in Christ rather than further serving our fragmentation.  We should sing ancient songs that have stood the test of time.  And we should sing new songs that are good, true, and beautiful.  

And what about style?  As Doug Wilson has pointed out, folk music is a music of the people.  It is not mass-produced throwaway pop, nor is it inaccessible elite art.  It is carefully crafted and accessible.  Folk music is inter-generational, and multi-instrumental.  It is music that fathers can play with their sons, music that is always evolving in freshness, but has a rootedness.  It is a music that we can unify around.  It is a music that invites others in, to pick up an instrument and grow as you play.  This is not just another cool thing to try, this is an opportunity to own, repent of, and reverse a massive evangelical trend of fracturing the church along cultural and musical lines.  We have the opportunity to work out musically the unity we have been freely given in Christ and in the Holy Spirit.  

This kind of thing takes time.  It takes musicians and artists who catch the vision and root themselves in the community of the church.  It takes people with the love and humility of Christ to listen to each other, to learn each others' styles, and to work together to cultivate something organic and beautiful and lasting.


Worship music should be music of the people

I was struck a few years ago when I attended a fairly typical evangelical church and embarrassed myself by standing and singing during the worship music time.  I wasn't trying to be that guy who has to sing louder than everyone to draw attention to himself, I just love to sing and was standing and singing in a loud voice like King David told me to.  People were looking at me.  Probably a majority of the other people were sitting down.  Some were singing faintly, I think, though I didn't actually hear anyone else singing.  Most people were gently swaying while watching the cool band up front.  
It reminded me of a Coldplay concert.  The musicians were singing for us, and we were enjoying it, and maybe softly singing along if we really liked the song.

I like concerts as much as the next guy, but they are not the same as what we are doing on Sunday morning.  On Sunday morning, the people are gathering to offer the "sacrifice of praise" together.  We don't gather to slaughter bulls and goats, but we do gather, and we do have sacrifices to bring.  Hebrews 2:11-12 tells us that Jesus is not ashamed to call us brothers, saying "I will tell of your name to my brothers; in the midst of the church I will sing your praise."  This is what the worship music is to facilitate, singing God's praise in the middle of his gathered people.  Songs of praise should rise from the whole people.  If what we do with instruments dampens rather than ignites the singing of the people, then we have taken a wrong turn somewhere. 

This is part of what we have inherited in the New Covenant.  Before Christ came, worship was something the priest did for you.  You went through him to get to God.  But we don't need an earthly priest, because we have a High Priest at the right hand of God that gives us access directly into the presence.  The music guy doesn't usher us into the presence of God, Jesus already did that.  For some reason, the church is always trying to slide back into a more mediated approach to God in worship.  We are content to pass notes through someone else, when God is welcoming us to behold his glory in the face of Jesus Christ.  This is part of what we recovered in the Reformation, but we give it away so easily.  When we gather for worship, we are not attending a concert that gives us the feels, we are engaging in a robust act of worship of the people, facilitated and lead by a group of musicians, aimed at the glory of God, inhabited by his Holy Spirit.  One of the specific things the Bible says people full of the Spirit do is sing.  It is easy to have a concert, but on Sunday morning we are doing so much more when we gather and sing together to the God of all grace. 


Worship music should strive to be joyfully reverent

God's presence calls forth a certain kind of response.  We have an entire book of Psalms, a rich heritage of worship music that will help to train us in what is fitting.  Psalm 2 tells us to "serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling."  Rejoice with trembling.  Have you ever experienced anything that brought about that kind of emotion?  Trembling rejoicing.  Happy fear.  Joyful dread.  Awful, awesome, reverent gladness.  Hebrews specifically tells us to worship with reverence and awe since God is a consuming fire.  Do our songs reflect who we are singing to?  C. S Lewis said it this way, 

You asked for a loving God: you have one.  The Great Spirit you so lightly invoked, the 'Lord of                 terrible aspect' is present: not a senile benevolence that drowsily wishes you to be happy in your own way, not the cold philanthropy of a conscientious magistrate,  nor the care of a host who feels responsible for the comfort of his guests,  but the consuming fire Himself, the Love that made the worlds.

  
There should be a dominant note of praise and celebration in our worship.  We are approaching the God who loves us, who conquered death, the devil, sin, and hell through the sacrifice of his Son.  This should move us more than it does.  We don't need to be all composed, like David wasn't when he danced before the ark.  But we need weight to our worship.  Celebration without weight is a pop concert or a pep rally.  It is not fitting for the worship of the God of the Bible.  On the other hand, weight without celebration is like a funeral procession of people who forget that we are free and glad children of light  We want weighty gladness, and as the Spirit fills us more and more, we will continue to grow into this.

More Empty, Nagging, Unrest

Friend: Hey Christian, how have things been going since the last time we talked?

Christian: Quite a bit better, thanks.  I have been working on daily confession, and finding a lot more freedom.  

Friend: Great.

Christian: I have been enjoying the experience of a clean conscience through confession, it is an amazing thing.

Friend:  It really is.  It is worth chasing after.

Christian:  I agree.  And I find that I do have to chase it.  It doesn't just automatically stay.  

Friend:  Haha, no.  Our acceptance with God through Christ's blood never changes, but our experience and enjoyment of it seems to get eclipsed by unconfessed sin.

Christian: Yeah.  When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.

Friend: Exactly.

Christian: Working on my soul like this has been really refreshing and eye-opening.  I find I am starting to sort out some of the things I feel but have tried to ignore.

Friend: Great.

Christian: It seems like there are other things at work in my unrest too.  There are things that bother me that are not directly my sin, but that trouble me.

Friend: Like what?

Christian: I guess they are things that are happening to me.  Things in my life that I worry about.  Situations where I don't know what to do?

Friend: What do you think the Bible calls what you are talking about?

Christian: Hmm.  That is a good question... I guess worry, and being anxious.

Friend: What kinds of things are you anxious about?

Christian: Different things at different times.  Sometimes my work.  Sometimes relationships with people I care about, or the future, or something else.

Friend: And what do you do with the anxiety?

Christian: I go around in circles in my mind about whatever it is, and don't really know how to get out.  I get nervous when I think about it, so I try to stop thinking about it.  I try to distract myself from it and ignore it.  I try to tell myself that worrying doesn't help, so I try to think about something else.  This puts me back in the constant search for a distraction, and the anxiety stays on the back burner with a constant faint nagging.

Friend: Is that what God says to do with your anxiety and worries?

Christian: No, he tells us not to worry, but I'm not sure how not to.

Friend: I know that he says not to worry, but I mean are you dealing with the temptation to anxiety in the way he tells you to?

Christian: Well, I am trying not to worry.  And I guess trying to think about other things.  Is that not right?

Friend: Well, think about what God calls you to do.  What does the Bible say about what to do with your cares and your anxiety?

Christian: Well, I remember "Cast all your cares upon him."  

Friend: That is a good one.  What do you think that means?

Christian: Not to worry.

Friend: I think it says more than that.  Think about what it says specifically.

Christian: Okay, I guess like throwing all our worries on God.  

Friend: Yeah.

Christian: So I guess like trusting in God.

Friend: Exactly that, but be careful you aren't reducing this to a Christian platitude.  How would you do that experientially?

Christian: I don't really know.  I guess by praying.

Friend: Okay, praying what?

Christian: I guess praying about the things I am worried about.

Friend: Yes.  Imagine a child trying to carry a backpack full of supplies that are too heavy for him.  He keeps trying, thinking that is what his dad wants him to do, but he is getting really tired.  He keeps stumbling and falling down.  Imagine his dad tells him to give all the stuff in the pack to him.  What should he do?  

Christian: He should give the stuff to his dad.

Friend: Right.  He should talk about it with his dad.  But he should also take off his pack, sit down, and put each individual item into his dad's pack.

Christian: Okay, so prayer is not enough?

Friend: I'm not saying that.  But I am saying God has more freedom for you than only talking to him about how heavy the pack is.  I am saying that - in prayer - you should sit down and unload your pack onto God.  You should sit quietly and ask yourself what is bothering you.  You should think about it, consider what it is, and then pass it off to your father.  

Christian: That sounds almost too good to be true.  Part of me feels like I need to be carrying the things I worry about.  Like it would be irresponsible to empty my pack.

Friend: Some of that is pride.  Have you ever noticed the first part of the verse you quoted to me?

Christian: I don't think so.

Friend: It says, "Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you."

Christian: Huh.  So casting my cares on him is part of humbling myself.

Friend: It is.  And you can see it now, right?  The kid who won't listen to his dad and unload his pack is thinking he can do it on his own when he clearly can't.  His father never asked him to.  Your Father never asked you to carry the weight of the world.  

Christian: Thankfully.

Friend: He carried it for you.  He took so much of your trouble on himself that it crushed him.  But he is not the kind of God that can stay crushed.  

Christian: And that is the last part of the verse: "because he cares for you."

Friend.  Yeah.  He really does.  So every day, like with confession, unload your pack on him.  Open your pack, see what is weighing you down, and give it to him.  Then you can run with endurance the race that is set before you.  

Christian: That sounds amazing.  I'm going to try that.  But I guess I have a lingering question, I don't want to be argumentative.

Friend: Ask.

Christian: Well, does this mean I don't do anything?  I mean, I am thinking about worries I have in a specific relationship.  Should I not try to make it better?  Should I not work at it?

Friend: That is a good question.  What do you think?

Christian: Well, it doesn't seem right to not try.  I mean, I love this person, I want to labor in love for their good.  Jesus loved me and gave himself up for me.  And I want to learn that.

Friend: That is beautiful.

Christian: But how does that fit with what you said?

Friend: Yeah, the backpack analogy maybe fails us a little at this point.  The supplies in the pack are not the things themselves, but our worry and anxiety about them.  We don't give up on life and on people, but we give our worry to God.

Christian: Okay...

Friend: I will tell you what I do when I am taking my own advice.  I get alone with God and I look at each thing I am worrying about.  I ask God what I can do in the situation.  Is there something I need to confess or repent of?  Is there something I can do to help that is within my reach?  I then commit to try to do that thing with God's help.  Then I ask God what part of the thing is out of my hands.  The answers generally seem pretty clear.  I entrust that to him, acknowledge to him that it is out of my hands, and spend some time praying that he will work good things in it for his kingdom and for righteousness.  And then I set it aside.  I do this until nothing else comes to mind, and my soul feels unburdened, and then I rejoice in God's care for me.  I rejoice that I have the kind of Father I have, and I enjoy the freedom and gladness of a child of God.

Christian: That sounds great.  Do you think if I regularly confess my sins and unload my worries on God I will be free from the empty, nagging unrest?  

Friend: Maybe.  It is a good place to start.  God promises that when you bring your requests to him with thankfulness, his peace will guard your heart and mind in Jesus in a way that is beyond what you can understand. 

Christian: I like the sound of that.

Exactly What Our World Needs

In order to get where we are trying to go in this post I need you to engage your imagination for a minute.  I want you to imagine yourself as a victim of oppression.  (I don't mean a victimista of our American culture; you know, the guy complaining that a few of the down feathers in his mattress topper sometimes poke through and irritate his skin, or the girl who thinks that her mild occasional headache or bloaty feeling entitle her to being coddled and catered to because of her "serious medical condition.")  I mean a real victim.  Imagine you are someone forced into slavery, or someone imprisoned by militant Muslims.  Imagine you are a journalist in a North Korean prison camp, catching and eating rats to keep you alive so you can keep suffering and carrying out difficult and meaningless tasks for the next twenty years.  Or imagine you and your family are painfully hungry every day because wicked rulers have seized control of everything "for the good of the people." 

Got it?

Okay, now imagine what your heart is longing for.  Imagine your prayer life.  Does it have to do with your nephew's cold, which blend of coffee to choose, or wanting to feel #blessed?

What do your prayers concern?  Love, perseverance, hope, justice.

It is the last one I want us to think about.

In this thought experiment, do your prayers include a longing for God to make things right?  Do your prayers sound like many of the Psalms? 

"How long, O Lord, Will you forget me forever?"

"How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?"

"Save, O Lord, for the godly one is gone; for the faithful have vanished from among the children of man."

"Why, O Lord, do you stand far away?  Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?  In arrogance the wicked hotly pursue the poor; let them be caught in the schemes that they have devised."

"For the needy shall not always be forgotten, and the hope of the poor shall not perish forever.  Arise, O Lord!  Let not man prevail; let the nations be judged before you!  Put them in fear, O Lord!  Let the nations know that they are but men!"*

The Psalms are full of prayers for God to arise and judge, because the oppressed rightly long for judgment.  But sometimes when I read these Psalms I get a little uncomfortable.  Do you?  We hear about God's judgment and we don't like it, or at least it makes us feel funny.  It doesn't seem very...nice.  After all, isn't the greatest command to be nice to your neighbor?  Something like that.  Can you imagine Rob Bell and Oprah sitting on her patio rejoicing in God's judgment?  They actually came kind of close.

I think part of the reason we are uncomfortable with longing for God's judgment is because we don't identify with the oppressed.  We don't really like to think about the oppressed.  We don't really think about abortion, because, what a downer!  We sometimes think about sex trafficking.  It is horrendous, and it is important that it has been brought to light.  But I wonder if we like talking about that one because we can still think about sex.  If the wild success of 50 shades is any indicator, we kind of like thinking about that sort of thing.  We don't think about real hunger and poverty and war, and when we do, we start thinking that something has gone wrong with God and we don't know what to do with all of this.  We don't make a practice of praying for those in prison as though we were in prison with them.  We don't like the idea of going to Jesus outside the camp, thrown away, rejected.

But when we identify with the oppressed, or when we are oppressed ourselves, we rightly begin to long for God's judgment, for God to make things right.  This is not a childish vindictiveness, it is a built-in longing for righteousness and justice.  This is a longing for a world in which things are upright.  This is a longing for people not to be taken advantage of, and for those who take advantage to be stopped.  This is a refusal to make peace with the rampant wickedness in the world, a refusal to acknowledge that this is how it will always be.  We need a judgment day.  We need a God who is powerful enough and just enough to rise up, to step in, and to set things right.  And we have such a God, but we are often embarrassed to admit it to ourselves, or to talk to others about this aspect of God's good character.

This path of thought raises (at least) one more serious question.  Once we realign our hearts from embarrassment about judgment to longing for judgment, another troubling question arises in us.  Why hasn't God done this yet?  Where is he?  Why is he waiting so long?  This is quite a different, but a related question.  If God is so good, then where is he in the midst of human suffering and oppression?

One answer is that he is prolonging his judgment in mercy.  Peter tells us that people will start asking this question: where is the promise of his coming (to judge)?  And the answer is that he is waiting because he has  made a way for the wicked to turn in repentance and be saved from their own wickedness through the death and resurrection of Jesus.  He has a plan to fix us with love, to remake even the vilest of us.  He is incredibly patient.  If you don't know the gist of the passage I am referring to, I encourage you to go read 2 Peter 3 again.  It will only take you a minute or two.  The point is that God is delaying his judgment in mercy.  God will fully and finally judge the earth because he loves the oppressed and he loves righteousness and justice.  God hasn't judged the earth finally and fully yet because he is the kind of God who loves the wicked and oppressors, and because he delights to show mercy even to us, by granting us repentance from our wickedness.

We twist this all in our rebellion.  We say he is going to judge because he doesn't love mercy.  And we say he hasn't judged yet because he doesn't love justice.  When we think this way we have it all backwards.  God is just and merciful, and that is exactly the kind of God our world needs.  If he isn't merciful, we will all be swept away in the judgment.  If he isn't just, things will never be made right.  

Praise God, he will uphold his justice and his mercy perfectly.  He will make all things right.  The King has come, the kingdom is coming, the gates are wide open.  Come in and find hope and pardon in Christ.





*These quotes are pulled from Psalms 9-13ish if you want to follow them up.