Nightline Face Off - Does Satan Exist?

I came across an excellent show online which was a debate about whether the devil exists or not, but really of course turned into more of a question of whether Biblical Christianity is true. If you get a chance, check it out here, even if you only watch pieces.  I think its important for us to be able to take stuff like this in and not be afraid to have beliefs challenged or feel angry afterwards.  Here's a clip.

It is sad to me that the man who is called Bishop Carlton Pearson in this debate has fallen from the truth, but yet also sad that his Christian upbringing was such that He saw God in a way contrary to how God has revealed Himself.  It is also interesting to hear what the philosopher Deepak Chopra said in trying to take away the glory from God in regards to Annie Lobert's testimony and instead give her the credit for getting out of prostitution.  I believe that as we grow as students of Jesus, we will become more passionate about God's glory and will be just as disgusted with pride and trying to take the praise from God as we are with the more obviously awful sins.  At least that's how I feel when I hear people trying to take glory from Him.  But we also have to be careful not to try and prop God or up or think that we have to defend Him.  We're the ones that need help, not Him :)  

Major props to Mark Driscoll too for how he represented, I really appreciate him more and more these days.  He and Annie Lobert were good representatives of Christ, I don't think they were arrogant or insensitive or closed-minded towards the other two panelists.  I pray that God does something with this program in the hearts of those who saw it.  The false views heard on this show remind us that the world is still very blinded and needs to hear the true story and be set free from the father of lies.  Thank God for sending Jesus to conquer evil and death and give us life everlasting now and in the world to come. 

Covetousness - Desiring Something More Than God

How would you define the sin of coveting?  I've typically understood it to mean desiring things that you don't have.  The dictionary definition says to covet is to "desire something eagerly, especially something belonging to another person."  Exploring the origins of this sin of coveting brings us to the issue of contentment.  Back when I was reading through the study book on the Westminster Shorter Catechism it spent some time talking through the implications of coveting, saying that coveting begins with a dissatisfied heart.  The biblical requirement they say is to have full contentment with what God has given us.  The passage used to support that statement (which I agree with) is in Philippians 4 where Paul says, "I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am... In any and every circumstance I have learned the secret of being filled and going hungry, both of having abundance and suffering need..."

The study book continues to elaborate on how coveting can lead to all other sins.  If you want some material thing bad enough, but can't buy your own, you steal it.  If you want your neighbors wife more than your own, it can lead to adultery.  If you really want your country to be governed in a radically different way, you start a revolution and harm and kill everyone who gets in the way of that to get things how you want them to be.  

This morning while reading Future Grace, John Piper went even farther on the issue of coveting and how it relates to unbelief in everything that God is for us in Christ.  Piper says that "Covetousness is desiring something so much that you lose your contentment in God."  I think putting it that way carries even more weight than simply being discontent with our circumstances as we usually think of them.  And if you think about it, Adam and Eve's original sin caused them to forsake the contentment that they had in God as they experienced it in the Garden of Eden.

In America, contentment means that we have everything we want (which is never enough).  We think that our wants and often times our lusts are things that we are entitled to.  Our concept or picture of what it looks like to be taken care of and have everything we need to be content is totally flawed.  This problem in our perspective taints how we interpret God's promises.  Take a passage like 1 Corinthians 10:13 for example.  "My God shall supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus."  If we're looking through American lens, contentment to most people probably means having at least a decent paying job with an average benefits package, a dwelling with enough room for everyone to have their own space, we get to eat pretty much whatever we're hungry for, and if we're Christians we also have a freedom to worship how and where we choose and our faith doesn't conflict with our desires.  Piper does a great job of clarifying what "all your needs" really means in that context in Philippians.  It means "all that you need for God-glorifying contentment."  

I wonder what "God-glorifying contentment" looks like, and how we can pursue and maintain that (which would include letting God help us with that) in our lives?  Certainly it starts with a change of heart and perspective (contentment in God could look very different than my list in the last paragraph).  If we take Jesus and Paul's warnings seriously we will be sure to flee coveting or anything that leads to it and stay content in God, or we could find ourselves wandering away from the faith and impaling ourselves with many pains (1 Tim 6:10).  I'll try to think and study a bit more on what we need to do to keep from coveting and more importantly what it looks like in a practical way to be content in God.  Feel free to share what you think this might look like.

Hymns Project - I Cannot Tell

Something that really started concerning me when I got more serious about my faith as a younger Christian was how certain people, based on their "doctrines" seemed to think that they could explain everything about God and how He worked.  Even though they might say that God is God because He can't be fully known and His ways are beyond comprehension, they still had to have everything fit inside their systematic, theological box.  They don't have much room for mystery or for people's ideas or beliefs that don't fit with theirs (even if the other person's thoughts have as much or more biblical backing than theirs).

Well I admit that as I've grown in my walk with Christ, I think I have more answers than I used to, and I am definitely the kind of person that doesn't like to be wrong (hence I think I'm right most of the time).  Thankfully God and people that are close to me have continued to remind me of this so that I can try to keep it in check.  In the last year or so, God has really helped me with this by challenging me with the concept of mystery, and how that is crucial to our faith, since after all, how could God be God if we could explain everything about Him.

I've been working on a bunch of hymns to bring into our church's repertoire, most of which I've had to give a more contemporary feel for us to be able to play it in our context.  One of those hymns is "I Cannot Tell" by W.Y. Fullerton.  It really meditates on a bunch of things that we can't explain or really know from our position where Christ is concerned.  Like how amazing His love is that that He would humble Himself to come to earth  to save us.  Or how He is going to return and make all things new and reign forever (I'm pretty sure the Left Behind books are not the answer to that question either).  

Each verse then contrasts what we "cannot tell" with what God has made known to us.  Besides the fact that it emphasizes mystery and keeps us in a humbles place where our theology is concerned, I noticed today that it really connects with the book Future Grace that I wrote about in my last post.  We don't need to know the answers to all the things we "cannot tell" about, but we have the promises of God to cling to that He has done what He said He did or will accomplish what He said He will.  A song like this can help us to be comfortable and even rejoice in the mystery of our God, but also help us to recall some of God's promises in worship.  Maybe I'll post the mp3 of this when I finish the recording, but in the meantime here's the words in case you aren't familiar with it.  The music is to the Irish tune "O Danny Boy."  

I cannot tell why He whom angels worship,
Should set His love upon the sons of men,
Or why, as Shepherd, He should seek the wanderers,
To bring them back, they know not how or when.
But this I know, that He was born of Mary
When Bethlehem’s manger was His only home,
And that He lived at Nazareth and labored,
And so the Savior, Savior of the world is come.

I cannot tell how silently He suffered,
As with His peace He graced this place of tears,
Or how His heart upon the cross was broken,
The crown of pain to three and thirty years.
But this I know, He heals the brokenhearted,
And stays our sin, and calms our lurking fear,
And lifts the burden from the heavy laden,
For yet the Savior, Savior of the world is here.

I cannot tell how He will win the nations,
How He will claim His earthly heritage,
How satisfy the needs and aspirations
Of East and West, of sinner and of sage.
But this I know, all flesh shall see His glory,
And He shall reap the harvest He has sown,
And some glad day His sun shall shine in splendor
When He the Savior, Savior of the world is known.

I cannot tell how all the lands shall worship,
When, at His bidding, every storm is stilled,
Or who can say how great the jubilation
When all the hearts of men with love are filled.
But this I know, the skies will thrill with rapture,
And countless voices then will join to sing,
And earth to Heaven, and Heaven to earth, will answer:
At last the Savior, Savior of the world is King!

Looking Back for the Sake of the Future

Last year I spent some time writing about the book Ancient-Future Worship by Robert Webber and made the case for why our worship needs to intentionally remember God's story and help us find our place in it.  It has been interesting that since I started down that path of thinking, God has continued to bring different books and articles, passages in scripture and real life examples to me in a way that solidifies this conviction of needing to bring God's story to the center of worship, and also grows me in what that can look like.

The latest example of this is in John Piper's book Future Grace.  Early in the the book he states that "you will search the bible in vain for explicit connections between gratitude and obedience."  In other words, the bible doesn't call us to me motivated to live in obedience to Christ because of the good things God has done for you.  Piper suggests that, "... gratitude was never designed as the primary motivation for radical Christian obedience, perhaps that is one reason so many efforts at holiness abort."  Notice he doesn't say gratitude for what God has done doesn't play any part, but that it can't be the primary driving force for continued surrender to Christ.  You might think that so far what I'm quoting seems to work against the idea of how critical it is to remember God's story, but several chapters later a connection is made.

In the chapter entitled "Looking Back for the Sake of the Future," Piper makes a case for the significance of looking at the history of God's faithfulness in order to trust in His future reliability.  Jesus is the Yes and Amen to all of God's promises.  Everything that He promised He would do was fulfilled in Jesus' work here on earth, or will be fulfilled in Him since God's grace is now poured out through Jesus to the world, forever.  To bank on God's grace though, you've got to know what the promises were, or are, so that you can see that God's grace has always been faithful, and thus live in faith that He will continue to be.  If we never knew about God's past grace, or forget about it, then we will not have a foundation of what God has to rest our future on.

The issue of forgetting God's past grace is what often plagued Israel and led them into a  life of disobedience and no faith in the one true God.  Here's an example in Judges 8:33-34.  "The sons of Israel again played harlot with the baals."  They turned to follow after idols instead of the living God.  Why did this happen?  Simple,  "... the sons of Israel did not remember the Lord their God, who had delivered them from the hands of all their enemies on every side."  As Piper puts it, "They forsook their faith in God's future grace because they stopped remembering his past grace."  

I like how he says they stopped remembering (instead of forgot).  I may have mentioned this before, but the hebrews and the ancient church understood their act of remembering in worship to be more than just bringing something to mind, but it was to make it real, to remember in a way that would solidify it in as reality (which it is, but this world tries to give us a different reality).  So if we, like Israel, stop remembering God's saving deeds and His fulfilled promises, and especially how that is all culminated in Christ, it will eventually cease to be the reality we live in.  We might still have the head knowledge, but that will not guide our lives into holiness and enable us to overcome unbelief when the arrows of evil are shooting at us, trying to shake us from relying on God's future grace.

The need to remember what God has done historically as well as recalling His personal work in our lives (all through Christ) is critical in worship.  The point I think God is making to me right now through Future Grace is that it is also critical that worship proclaims His promises for the future that He has made to those who love Him.  It is the hope of the future promises that justifies through faith and causes God's people to stay the course.  May this passage be true of us.  

"Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised."  

Romans 4:2o-21

  

Worship and Study

I am nearing the end of The Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard, and have continued to enjoy it and be challenged by it.  I would consider myself to be a pretty heavy thinker, but I don't think I am always a great articulator of my thoughts, observations and analyses, so I love it when someone is really good at that, and especially when they work through things that I have been thinking about, but really carry the ideas to completion (which includes steps for application of these ideas).  Willard has really done that with the issue of true discipleship and the need for it in the church today which is plagued by a consumer approach to Christianity.

I came across a statement while reading today that had special significance in regards to worship, our primary topic on this blog.  Willard is talking about spiritual disciplines and how they are a huge piece of the puzzle in growing as a student of Jesus and actually putting the flesh to death (the sinful patterns that live in our bodies) and truly living in The Kingdom of God.  He emphasizes two different types of disciplines, disciplines of abstinence (where we have to give something up in some way for a certain period of time) and disciplines of positive engagement (thing we actively seek to do, to add to our regular way of life).  Study is one of the fundamental disciplines of positive engagement.  Study helps us to "place our minds fully upon the kingdom and its peace and strength." 

The statement that brought worship into the picture said that "... study is brought to its natural completion in the worship of God."  I found this particularly affirming for me because I just filled in for my pastor here at Christ's Church to preach a sermon, and my message had a lot to do with our worship gatherings being an intentional time for us to set our minds on things above and model the kind of behaviors that Paul describes in Colossians 3.  In the consumer Christian culture, worship like that usually requires discipline.  Willard speaks to that as well (I wish I would have read this chapter before my sermon).  He says we must not worship without study, quoting Romans 10:2 which talks about people that have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge.  That might look like people emotionally getting into worship music like a rock concert, but who could care less about the theology they are singing (and half the time those songs are even about God anyways, they're all about singing about what I'm doing to worship God).  

On the flip side, Willard says that "Study without worship is also dangerous," because then it becomes nothing but academic, and Jesus didn't train his disciples to be nothing but a bunch of brains (that would lead us down a gnostic path I think).  The knowledge we gain from study finds its expression in worship back to God, where the reality of what we've studied gets imprinted on our whole being, disrupting the powers of evil that are all around us in this world. Worship as the completion of our study flows into a life that will "hear and do" what Jesus taught.

I haven't really heard a lot of statements connecting worship and study in this way before.  Even the studying we do of God's word during a worship service is in my opinion, not viewed as a part of worship by many people, its like it is a separate entity.  I almost wonder if people did make this connection, and didn't just have zeal without knowledge that maybe more people would recognize the issues in worship and the lack there is in so much worship music in particular.  The ancient church definitely viewed hearing God's Word as worship in the same way that singing songs or praying was, if not more.  Do you?  Is your study finding its completion in worship?  What does that look like?

   

Tired of Worship Just Being about Music and Products

I just felt like blowing off a little steam and since I haven't posted in a while I though I'd do it here on the blog. I just set up a login on a website that is supposed to offer worship resources (which they do have some good worship music resources, I'll give them lots of credit for that). But as I look at their main page and the links, its all about selling different "worship" artist's CD's, and how to play such and such an instrument. Way too much music overload for a site that is offering worship resources (funny that someone like me who loves music so much has a problem with this). There are literally three different link buttons with the word SONG in it. What about prayers? readings? creative ideas to meditate on God's word?  What about talking about the functions songs serve in the grander context of worship, and what you should look for in a good worship? 

One article talks about mentoring and the need to bring young people into mentoring opportunities in leading worship, which is such a great article to write. However, most of the content is just about how he got his son to play on the worship band and had to help him remember what guitar gear to bring and try to get rid of his stage fright. I think there's a lot more to worship mentoring than helping them do well at playing in a band, don't you? I'm not judging the heart of the guy who wrote this article, he probably has a much deeper well of understanding of worship to draw from and give to others, but this article doesn't say anything about growing people up in their faith while they interact with the worship band. It doesn't talk about other roles you could get young people involved in other than music.  So does that mean young people can only be mentored in worship if they want to play music?

I had the opportunity to preach yesterday morning, which I didn't actually feel very good about while I was doing it.  I didn't think I had all my thoughts clear, or that they were working together towards one clear idea, etc.  But regardless of whether it went well or not, I spent a bit of time talking through different elements of worship gatherings, those elements included fellowship, Word, song, and prayer.  All of those are elements of what we do in worship.  However, isn't it true that in a lot of churches today, worship is the time of music and the time we're in God's Word is the sermon?  The ancient understanding and practice of worship is that all the elements are worship, and the sermon time is as much worship as the singing time is.  When we got to the part in the passage that mentions songs, I made a point of reminding the congregation that worship and music are not synonymous, and that when we use song in worship it can't be approached the same way we would approach going to a rock concert, which is coming to be a spectator and to get a good feeling out of it.  

Forgive me if I was too negative in this post, I'm just a little passionate about this stuff. I truly don't want to be a whiner, I want to be a part of the solution.  Influential websites like the one I just mentioned are not helping us to have a well balanced understanding and practice of worship.  I think the first thing that will lead to the solution is to change the mindset of what worship is.   I am thankful that I've had people in my life that have helped me to work towards a more complete understanding of worship and challenged me to lead more complete worship experiences.   So I brought this topic up today to share with anyone who might be stuck in the mindset that worship is just when we sing spiritually flavored songs.

Here's a couple of links to some sites that based on the few times I've visited them, seem to be working towards a more balanced approach to worship services, or if they are focused on music, are trying to write to the fill important gaps in our contemporary worship song content.  Check em out if you get a chance and see what you think.

http://www.engageworship.org/
http://www.resoundworship.org/
http://www.liturgy.co.nz/index.html