Monday Morning Music Ministry

10-28-19

The most effort that Christians spend in their “walks” of following Him, I sometimes think, is not time in the Word or in prayer or doing as He would have us do in our interactions. Virtually impossible to compute, but I sometimes wonder if we spend more time making excuses to God, than any other activity.

I don’t mean, “Lord, You know I really didn’t mean to kill that man.” Or the old “comedy” line, “The devil made me do it.”

No, my thought is that there are countless ways that we hope or think that God understands us, and will let something slip by… even a minor sin. (See? Even that thought is what I mean, if we start believing it. There is no such things as a minor sin.)

– that He will understand the pressure we are under, and forgive us of something before we are even contrite. (That leads to assuming less and less that we need forgiveness.)

– that our faithfulness, our good works, the crosses we bear, will in some spiritually cosmic way earn us a Get Out of Jail Free card.

– that God knows our heart, in the big picture; and surely He cannot hold us to the same measures applied to unsaved people…

Surely? When you think about it – and this reflection can be a healthy thing for our souls – if we do not verbalize such thoughts, many Christians internalize the assumptions. Almost to the extent that our spiritual DNA is mutated. Not a good thing.

What is a good thing is that we do not have to correct these tendencies on our own. If the critique sounds familiar, ask your self one more question:

Why do you think God sent the Holy Spirit?

Jesus actually said that it was good that He “go,” because One would come who would enable, guide, strengthen us. The Holy Ghost. I also sometimes think the least employed member of the Godhead, the least known of God’s ever-present resources.

We don’t have to be “better,” or more mindful of God’s commands and Jesus’s example, on our own. There is no shame in calling on the Holy Spirit’s help. He pleads for you to reach out.

It is not a sign of weakness in a Christian to seek the Spirit’s help: it is a sign of strength and maturity.

I have told the story, perhaps true, of the great comedian W. C. Fields, in the last months of his life, in sanatorium, visited one morning by a friend. Fields sat in a corner, by a window with sun shining in, a Bible on his lap, which surprised his friend. “Bill, what are you doing? I’ve never seen you reading a Bible!”

Fields looked up and said, “Looking for loopholes.”

Godfrey Daniel!!! There are no loopholes in life. We might think so… we might fervently hope so… we might fool ourselves and think there must be, “if God is a loving God!”

But God leapfrogged over that definition of love. He sent Jesus to settle that question; and sent His Holy Spirit to remind us. We need reminders about, um, shopping lists and movie times. Why not about pleasing God and doing His will?

Remind me, dear Lord.

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Recorded at the Cove, Billy Graham’s retreat center in North Carolina, a place with special memories for me, having interviewed Bev Shea, Cliff Barrows, Joni Eareckson, and others there. A beautiful spot.

Click: Remind Me, Dear Lord

10-21-19

Recently I have visited churches, worshiping away from home, and have been reminded of when I lived in California. What rang bells in my personal belfry is not exclusive to the Golden State. (And Larry Gatlin had it right about all the gold in California, but that’s for another time…)

There is a “trendency” in the American church that probably began in California, probably with the “Jesus Movement” of the late 1960s and early ‘70s. It is the stranger side of the welcoming “Seeker” type of worship. Come as you are… God does not require three-piece suits and long dresses and heels (for women and men, respectively… although we do have the California context)… dress codes can be intimidating… God is interested in your heart, not your wardrobe.

You have heard these things; maybe even believe them or have been persuaded; or, of course, might bristle at the non-rules. The other extreme is formalism that makes formality a form of Godliness, more extreme than dress codes. I have been in churches where women (in head coverings) are segregated from male worshipers; where my son and I were forbidden Communion because we had not first met with the church’s pastor (our actual denomination, but a different synod).

As I say, God knows our hearts after all. But in the church I visited last Sunday, the pastor who introduced himself already stood out… as the person in the dirtiest flannel shirt; in the jeans with the most rips in them; in the most beat-up work boots. In many churches today, leaders nor worshipers dress formally, despite perhaps clean T-shirts or jeans. Many pastors perch on stools, wear Hawaiian shirts and cargo shorts. “Worship leaders” seem required to wear uniforms of grunge.

Is all this a reaction against a generation of pastors and televangelists who wrapped themselves in three-piece suits and blow-dried hair? Perhaps. Is it legitimate to resist formalism? I say yes… as long as it is not confused with formality.

Taking that further, there are differences between formalism, as I say, and formality… a difference between rules and the law, and legalism… a difference between liberty and license… a difference between unity and uniformity… a difference between reverence and rudeness… a difference between respect and dirty jeans when worshiping Almighty God.

The fact that God does not require you to wear ties and jackets, or modest dresses or slacks, does not mean that you have to dress in your cleanest dirty shirt, to quote Kris Kristofferson
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Will these things keep you out of Heaven? Of course not. But I just wonder at the level of respect – I despair at the disappearance of reverence – when we have lost the impulse to approach God, and God’s people, in a little different manner than we do people in the supermarket, ball field, or work weekend.

Does the Bible have a suggestion for a dress code? As with everything else… yes. Stick with me:

Take up the full armor of God so that you may be able to stand your ground on the evil day, and having done everything, to stand. Stand firm therefore, by fastening the belt of truth around your waist, by putting on the breastplate of righteousness, by fitting your feet with the preparation that comes from the good news of peace, and in all of this, by taking up the shield of faith with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. And take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

These are well-known words from the sixth chapter of Ephesians, and only partly are dispositive here. The advice is for a spiritual wardrobe, not how you would show up to church, clanging breastplates and swords. Metaphorically, what a well-dressed Christian will wear the remainder of the week.

However, there is one more item whose preparation is important to how we present ourselves before others… and before God.

How about your heart? Is it right with God? As Bennie Tripplet wrote in that great Gospel song,

People often see you
As you are outside;
Jesus really knows you,
For He looks inside.

Those are the rules for the Believer’s fashion show.
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Click: How About Your Heart

10-14-19

Some day I want to put together a new version of the Holy Bible. Ambitious, yes. But I believe that the Bible is a Book that many people know, but not everybody understands.

There is a human tendency to assume, to take for granted, things that largely are familiar to us. And you know what often happens when we assume. Familiarity does not always breed contempt… but it can lead to indifference. Hard truths, even when brilliantly expressed, can grow trite when we are intellectually careless.

My version of the Bible would be called the NSL Version – Not Saith the Lord.

If we can remind ourselves of familiar verses and passages of Scripture, and really – No: REALLY – think about them, and their meaning; their application to our lives… they can burst on our consciousness like thunderclaps. Sometimes as if we had never heard them before!

I know, because it has happened to me.

I will revisit this idea, going forward, and solicit nominations of verses and passages from you.

Here is one instance. “Give us this day our daily bread…” Yes, yes, “provide for me, please.” I think too many of us focus (if we focus at all as we rush through the Lord’s Prayer or the “Our Father”) on the “Give” and “us” and “bread” and what they represent.

But when Jesus outlined the perfect prayer, or topics to include when we approach God, I believe He wanted, in this passage, to remind us of the “daily.”

The Lord provides for us, we know and trust that. As with the sparrows, as with the lilies of the field. We seek it, and He indeed provides, spiritually as well as materially.

But how often does God provide? Not occasionally… not in crises alone… not only when we are desperate. But, daily. Daily “bread.”

That is not merely a petition of wanting, but is worded to remind us to be thankful that God does provide. Daily!

In fact, between spiritual and material matters, so much, so often, so “daily,” that sometimes we take His provisions for granted.

So when you next pray, “Give us this day our daily bread,” you can remind yourself of how much more than bread He hath provided (and we “shall not live by bread alone,” right?). But have your mind focus too on His daily, constant, reliable provisions.

His gifts… before we know we need them! Indeed, great is His faithfulness.

Our daily “bread”? Be bold to ask… be grateful to receive. Thus saith the Lord.

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Click: Great Is Thy Faithfulness.

10-7-19

I.

These weekly visits are called “Music Ministry,” and the thoughts I share usually lead to, or are inspired by, a song or a hymn. But they can be read independently and (sadly, to me) often are read without people peeking at the video clip.

Independent or not, whether you are busy or not, I urge you to click the music video here. You might, or not, have heard of Joey Feek, the beautiful female half of the duet Joey+Rory.

Joey Martin sang with her husband Rory Feek and made quite an impact on the country-music scene when she gave birth to a daughter, Indie, in 2014. They decided to take a year off from performing, and raise their daughter on their farm. Soon after the birth, Indie was diagnosed as having Down Syndrome. The couple, of course, doubled down on the love and attention… and so did their fans.

Soon after that, Joey herself received a diagnosis. Cervical cancer. Excruciating episodes of prayer, pain, surgery, radiation, chemo, “success,” return of cancers in many areas; more prayer; home treatments; “wasting away”… during which time Joey and Rory kept diaries in the form of written and video blogs. Their anxious and supportive friends and fans followed every detail of the trials, every loss of hair and pounds, every decline of health and strength.

When Joey died in 2016 at the age of 40, she had fulfilled some dreams – recording a Gospel album with her husband (sometimes singing from the sickroom), and seeing Indie turn two. When healthy and strong enough, she sometimes had held Indie in her arms on stage, mother and daughter dancing, the beautiful infant waving happily to audiences.

Another singer entered the lives of Joey+Rory, or vice versa. Bradley Walker has kept Joey’s memories alive in some of his own songs and videos. He has a handsome country and Gospel baritone, and has won awards, has performed around America, and has recorded albums (at Joey+Rory’s recording studio on their farm).

Bradley also has muscular dystrophy. He has been in a wheelchair since the point when most children learn to crawl, and has scarce use of his hands. But he sings when and where he can, which is often.

Joey+Rory and Bradley Walker each recorded the meaningful song In the Time That You Gave Me. What I recommend to you this week is that you click on the video of a special performance, Bradley singing the song in a duet with the previously recorded track of Joey’s performance, her beautiful voice accompanied by photos of the healthy Joey, cancer-battling Joey, and Joey the mom with sweet Indie.

II.

I could leave it there, surely touching hearts with the stories of these amazing people – strength in the face of horrible challenges, of life’s frequent frustrations (at best) and crushing disappointments at times. Faith. Bradley could be spending his days in non-stop pity parties. Joey could have hidden herself in anger… or shared her bitterness with the world.

If she had learned about Indie’s Down Syndrome before birth, she could have aborted that sweet baby.

Ninety per cent of mothers do, these days, in that situation.

That comes to the second part of this message. Life is cheap these days. In movies, on streets. In classrooms, in politics. In hospitals – or half of them: when medicine does not innovate and extend healthy lives, it develops more efficient ways of ending them. The elderly, increasingly; and babies. Babies before birth… during birth… now (this should be shocking) right after birth.

What sort of monsters have we become? I curse the culture for developing uncountable means to camouflage this perversion of values, this holocaust of millions, this triumph of calling good “bad” and bad “good.”

This week I attended a dinner for the Flint Pregnancy Resource Center, and heard speakers present statistics – for instance, the number of murdered babies since Roe equaling the combined populations of California and Florida – a litany that threatens to inure us from its nightmarish essence, not because we hear horrors so often, but because society shrugs its collective shoulders.

“It’s none of your business.” “You are you to judge?” “Whatever.” Those reactions seem louder than our arguments. They are more common than desperate pleas for help and rescue and support. They tell us there is no such thing as right and wrong… but these people will insist we are wrong.

Louder than the arguments on either side, however, are quiet, nervous voices like the mom who shared her testimony at the dinner this week. Guilty about past abortions, she recently gave birth to a daughter, and the mom’s palpable joy and acceptance of forgiveness, her redemption and new life (new lives!), and knowing that people love and value her… provides inspiration.

Even louder still are the tiny cries and giggles of babies – not blobs or tissue masses – who join the human family. They should drown out any other noise.

If you were moved to tears by the stories and music video of Joey and Indie and Bradley at their stages of life, stop and ask why the experiences of babies killed in the womb should be any less compelling, at their stages of life.

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Click: In the Time That You Gave Me