Monday Morning Music Ministry

9-12-11

The 9-11 commemorations are over, and perhaps America, now, will get back in the saddle she was knocked from a decade ago. I am afraid not, however. For 10 years I have been a pretty lonely man on this issue. I take back seat to no one in my love of country; I bleed red, white, and blue; and was as angry as anybody then who did not actually lose a loved one in Manhattan, Virginia, or Pennsylvania.

Someone recently asked, “Do you remember where you were on September 11, 2001? Did you wonder, then, how changed you might be 10 years later?” I have to admit that I thought ahead to Now, and I dreaded the premonition that in 2011 America would be engaging in self-pity instead of righteous anger; political correctness instead of correct politics; and the further ceremonialization of our culture.

I take nothing from the awe-inspiring service of first-responders who lost their lives on 9-11. But they were not heroes because they, in some instances, ran into burning buildings, in order to seek people to save. They were doing their jobs. They were brave; they were extraordinarily courageous. But – I am making a point about our society’s changing and confused values – a fireman is not a hero because he dies in a burning building. Firemen and police are heroes; and sometimes they have to do dangerous things. Heroes live among us, and should be honored now, not only in show-biz (usually, these days, secular) “moments of silence” ceremonies.

I hope I am being clear; and I mean to say that words are important, because essential values lie behind words. I recently spoke to a group about America’s current crises, and I asked various questions about the victims of terrorism, concerning 9-11. The group’s discussion addressed the three sites of attack; the number of people who were killed at one place, and another, and on the planes.

I told them, and I submit to you, that the people who died on 9-11 were not the victims of terrorism. They were, simply, murder victims. To call the perpetrators anything than murderers is to pay them a compliment. Using the word “terrorism” makes their crime somehow qualified, less than totally monstrous. The dead on 9-11 were murdered. We, the survivors, were terrorized.

We are the victims of terrorism. And we are losing that war. We have allowed our way of life to be altered, our rights to be restricted, and our treasury bankrupted. The hard questions about what has happened in 10 years cannot sufficiently be answered by a shrug of our shoulders and another question, “What else could we do?”

Here is what I mean about the ceremony-mad society. When Redcoats attacked citizens in Boston, the patriots did not meet for annual Moments of Silence – they grabbed their muskets. When Fort Sumter was shelled, a war commenced; and when Fort Sumter was re-taken, there were no plaques with every soldier’s name – the Stars and Stripes was proudly raised again. Pearl Harbor filled us with anger – not sorrow or guilt.

Abraham Lincoln once said, “My concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God’s side, for God is always right.” Franklin Roosevelt of all people, the president of the United States, led the nation in a public prayer on D-Day: “Help us, Almighty God, to rededicate ourselves in renewed faith in Thee in this hour of great sacrifice. Many people have urged that I call the nation into a single day of special prayer. But because the road is long and the desire is great, I ask that our people devote themselves in a continuance of prayer. As we rise to each new day, and again when each day is spent, let words of prayer be on our lips, invoking Thy help to our efforts.”

Back to the 9-11 Decade. Let the diplomats explain why America kicked into overdrive on a crusade for global empire. Let the politicians explain why personal freedoms were expropriated at a breathtaking rate. Let the financiers explain why criminal monetary and fiscal policies – prosperity that was too good to be true – was too good to be true, and they all knew what they were doing.

But we should all look for Christians to explain (and that means looking in the mirror, too) how the last decade has seen an unprecedented war on Christianity, a successful war, right here in America. To start a list of outrages – from high courts to low sitcoms, from the national Administration to everyday textbooks – would fill more columns than the web could carry. Babies killed; homosexuality sanctioned; God’s name banished from schools and the public place; prayers outlawed.

If the attackers were bent on kicking America out of the Middle East, they failed. If they wanted to bring down the government, it did not happen. If they intended to destroy the economy, it has bent but not snapped. But if they attacked America because we were a Christian nation, founded on biblical principles and inheritors of a Christian heritage… America has responded, in too many respects, by declaring a victory – for the attackers. Happy anniversary.

Anti-Christian prejudice is on the rise in places like Pakistan and Egypt – partly, I am sure, because of America’s post-9-11 policies – but there is one major difference: in those countries, and China, and North Korea, and elsewhere the church is under attack… the underground church is growing. However, not in America. Here, persecution seems to lead Christians to be even more apologetic to the atheists or Satanists down the street who are offended when they hear a Boy Scout recite the Pledge of Allegiance.

Christians must cease being confused about what Christ would have us do when His church, His children, are threatened. He put righteousness above “peace” in the Temple, and surely would not have His church dismantle itself. That would not be “love,” but camouflaged weakness; and to compromise with evil, guarantees the presence of evil. Once upon a time, the church was as militant about its turf as it was its faith, for one thing was necessary in order to exercise the other. Not only Christians but Christendom was muscular in its self-defense. If it were not for Christian warriors like Charles Martel at Tours; Charlemagne and Roland at Saragossa; and Jan Sobieski at the Battle of Vienna, Europe would long ago (1200 years ago) have been Muslim. And the Reformation, for all of its intellectual and spiritual force, only succeeded in Europe when princes identified themselves, and their armies acted, as members of one form of Christianity or another.

These Christian warriors, despite and subsequent to occasional zealotry, largely made Europe safe for the practice of Christianity. “Terrorism” is just the latest form of invasion. The invaders have discovered a society more concerned with opponents’ “feelings” than its own freedoms and children’s security. When the president of the United States declares in an Arab capital that America is not a Christian nation; and when the mayor of New York City prohibits public prayer at the latest 9-11 media ceremony… well, you can go back to, say, the epic poem “The Song of Roland” (circa 1050) and read of traducers in the ranks of the Franks at Ronceveaux, and what almost happened, in that stirring legend, to Christian Europe.

Christianity, in any society or country, cannot simultaneously assert its right to exist and surrender its prerogatives. We do not need to lead ugly crusades in order to affirm our traditional status in the United States of America, a Christian nation. But we do have to decide whether the 9-11 Decade was the last breath of a brief, misguided period of self-doubt; or the first dawn of extinction in this culture.

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From the ancient opera Dido and Aeneas by Henry Purcell, an allegory about William and Mary based on Virgil’s Aeneid. The hauntingly mournful “Dido’s Lament” is here juxtaposed with photographs of the traditional American landscape. Our homeland once and…

“When I am laid in earth / am laid in earth / May my wrongs create no trouble, no trouble in thy breast. / Remember me! Remember me! / But, ah, forget my fate!” The singer is Emma Kirby.

Click: Remember Me Lament

9-5-11

It is my observation that when Christians feel they have let God down, it is usually not because of some grievous sin, but more often a feeling that their faith was lacking… their trust has fallen short… that we have not put into practice what we know to be the truth. And we are aware that this grieves the heart of God.

(By the way, this has been my observation, not from eagle-eye examinations of other Christians, but of my own actions and inactions.)

Those feelings about the heart of God probably are correct. We have sinful natures, but God already gifted us with provisions for sin: grace, forgiveness, justification, salvation. We can know today that our sins can be transformed from scarlet stains to pure-white. But when we get to points in our lives, which we all surely have or will, when we just don’t have enough faith in one area… or we cannot summon enough trust in God’s promises… or we know those Bible verses, and God’s will for our lives, and Jesus’s 24/7 availability… but we don’t attain the answer or victory or peace – this doesn’t mean we are bad Christians.

It just means we are… Christians.

That’s right. Normal, flawed, struggling, doubting, hurting, Christians. The only kind there is, actually. We might be saved, but we still can be confused at times. Sometimes our hearts are together, but our heads get messed up. Or vice-versa. Welcome to the human race. We are forgiven, not perfect… remember?

What grieves God, I believe, is that He does not want us to go through these things, feeling alone. He sent the Holy Spirit to comfort us, strengthen us, give us wisdom. Too many Christians, at low points, feel the need to prove to God that we can make it. Yeah, we can pull it together. Watch: I’ll remember all those promise-verses. Maybe I’ll prove to my friends that my faith is getting me through. I’ll make You proud of me again, God.

But how many Christians say, “I just can’t do this, God! Help me!” or “I surrender! I need you!!” There is nothing shameful in that. Just the opposite. Christianity is the only religion in the world – in fact, the only system of any construction – where Surrender equals Victory.

When we were born again, we did not become Gods. We became children of God. What child, feeling sad, does not run and cry “Daddy!” (the translation of “Abba”) – and what loving father does not receive that child in love?

Confess, surrender, ask for forgiveness; such, I believe, is the essence of the law and the prophets. And the gospel. It is the reason, the very reason, that God makes Himself known to us in the person of the Holy Spirit. No fight left? No problem – Jesus is our yoke, our strong arm, our strength, our fortress, our deliverer. Our Savior. Would you have Him sit on the sidelines while you struggle?

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There is no fight left on the inside now… but maybe that’s where I should be. These are words from J J Hellers’s amazing song.

Click: No Fight Left

8-22-11

I currently am reading Timothy Keller’s book The Reason for God – rather overdue on my part – and enjoying his manner of sharing the Gospel with his congregation at Redeemer Church in Manhattan. “Enjoying” is an insufficient description – I am intrigued, challenged, provoked.

The book wastes no pages before listing Keller’s responses to contemporary culture’s main “problems” with what he calls his orthodox Christianity: hewing to scripture, stressing personal salvation, the centrality of Jesus. Many of the questions he confronts are variations of a basic challenge to the existence of God Himself. It is not new; it has been asked by skeptics, non-believers, and anguished doubters throughout history. “How can I believe in a God who…”. The sentences end with questions about “allowing” sickness, “overseeing” brokenness and hatred, “watching Christians kill each other.”

Keller brilliantly parries the arguments of those who claim a better, or “higher,” morality than the Bible’s; and who maintain that the natural state of the universe, and the universe’s inhabitants, can admit to no God of any sort.

I would like to linger a moment at what I feel is a proper response to the traps and trappings of a culture that tries to wash God out of the fabric of society, which is a related topic. Many well-meaning Christians are seduced by the argument that we are so inferior to a Just and All-Powerful God that we must, therefore, feel inferior to an indiscriminate degree, and adopt inferiority in all manners. This attitude is not humility, but error. It can make people insecure about their standing as children of God; it can make them susceptible to arguments for a more “logical” conception of God. And this, after all, is the oldest lie in the Book.

It could be that contemporary culture’s problem is not a faulty belief in God, but a mistaken understanding that He believes in US. Of course I do not mean that He has abdicated His throne. But He believes that we can overcome, we can be more than conquerors, we are citizens of Heaven.

We can know this is true because, when we have accepted Jesus into our hearts, God does not see us any more in our sins. He sees Jesus instead, the Jesus within us.

God does not look upon our dirty rags. He sees the blood shed on the cross, under which we are covered.

God does not dither over our quirks, transgressions, and shortcomings. If we are truly repentant and are born again, He sees the Holy Spirit that lives within us. That is why God sent the Holy Ghost!

When we spiritually see God’s viewpoint aright, we should be embarrassed ever again to do other than to boldly approach the Throne of Grace. Not to presume upon God, but to recognize our status as joints heirs with Christ!

How many Christians spend a lot of the their prayer life (or abandon it altogether!) reminding God over and over and over again of things He has already forgotten! For when we repent in the name of our elder brother Jesus, God has said He will throw our sins into the Sea of Forgetfulness.

Does God believe in US? The plan of salvation, the work of the cross, and the gift of the Holy Spirit, would be wasted if He did not! Strive to be worthy, and claim your inheritance!

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Click: God Believes In You

8-15-11

By Cheryl Hults Meakins

Recently it was reported that an online pedophile pornography community was shut down by the federal government, which also confiscated 123 terabytes of video, roughly equivalent to 16,000 DVDs of atrocities against children. The cancer of pornography has grown for decades and this giant seems much more powerful than Goliath ever was.

1 Samuel 17:4 “A champion named Goliath, who was from Gath, came out of the Philistine camp. He was over nine feet tall.”

I have a hard time watching the news every day. There are so many choices we have made in America that grieve my heart, even overwhelm me and paralyze me with fear.

It seems while I was growing up, so was sin on the increase in our culture. I stopped at 5’5” but our sins have grown like a cancer and loom before us like Goliath, mocking us, until we tend to live in fear. Will our children be swiped from our streets? Will a picture snapped on a passing cell phone be plastered on the internet? Must I help my children lose their innocence when warning them of the real “stranger danger?” Is this living in freedom?

Hollywood used to condemn movies with bare bottoms and curse words with R ratings. Now those are rewarded with PG-13 ratings. I remember in the ‘80s being disgusted at the mainline magazines that were boys’ rites of passage to manhood. Even worse is the rise of human trafficking in our own nation that is swiftly becoming more lucrative than drug sales for organized crime.

The giants that seemed so big in the ‘80s are dwarfs compared to the monsters confronting us today. The battles we once had to fight we now see were just the opening skirmishes in wars much bigger, and more deadly.

I look in the face of the giants that believers must fight… and I struggle to keep standing. I am overwhelmed with thoughts, even of children who survive sexual assaults, who grow up with pain their souls have recorded and their minds can barely contain.

I confess: often I become paralyzed; by the size of this giant but even more at the depth of healing needed for those who were forced to become victims.

You see, as long as I look at the face of the giant, I will fear, I will give up fighting, I will lay aside my weapons so my hands can cover my ears and dampen the noise of the helpless souls being ravaged by sin. I grieve that the sin we tolerated in the ‘60s, enjoyed in the ‘70s, humored in the ‘80s, and applauded in the ‘90s, has taken up residence in our midst; and now we know its full dangers.

The Church in America needs to know that there are giants in our land! And facing these giants builds a conflict in our focus. We need to attend to our personal godliness and obedience, but we must also tend to those who cannot fight for themselves.

Lift up your eyes, Church! Look to the hills! Where does our help and hope come from? He is our hope and our help (Psalm 121). His arms outreach the growth of any cancer in our nation. His blood will heal any wound and cover any sin.

Louie Giglio found himself afraid to go to sleep. Night after night he suffered as a cloud of panic or anxiety moved in to his mind. He spent months undergoing medical testing to diagnose his struggle but the turning point towards healing began with a decision he made in the face of his attacking giant. One night, as he was awakened again by this cloud he decided to praise the Lord.

Then he remembered Psalm 63:4 NIV – “I will praise you as long as I live, and in your name I will lift up my hands.” And in verse 8 “My soul clings to you; your right hand upholds me.”

Out of this desperate meditation came these words:

“Be still, there is a healer
His love is deeper than the sea
His mercy, it is unfailing
His arms a fortress for the weak”

Louie later shared these words with Chris Tomlin and a song of healing was born out of desperate obedience. Meditate on “I lift my hands.” And after you have found your peace, let your faith arise, pick up your swords and find a battleground to fight.

I have found mine!

Today’s Guest Writer:
Cheryl Meakins is an author and speaker who is passionate about women stepping into their callings as healers and warriors. More of her thoughts can be found at: www.MeakinsSpeak.wordpress.com.

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Click: I Lift My Hands

8-1-11

As I write this, as you read this, the “debt deal” – negotiations about the debt ceiling, the possible national bankruptcy, the gargantuan deficits, problems with the onerous tax code – are being solved. Or not. Or there will a crisis in the markets soon. Or not. Or America’s credit rating will be downgraded. Or not. If so, it will have long-term toxic consequences. Or not. Forget my dateline – I am certain that if you read this 10 years hence, or 25, the problems and the arguments and the crisis will be little changed. Except, perhaps, for the worse.

At best, the solutions of this “debt crisis” – and I don’t know the details, even if an agreement is signed; and I wonder whether the negotiators themselves really will understand what they hammer out – will be a tip-of-the-iceberg tinkering with numbers that represent a fraction of the problem. The monster has a foot in the door, and maybe we will clip a toenail. The choices in this crisis are like many of the choices in this contemporary world, this Brave New World, the post-modern and Post-Christian era: the choices being Bad and Worse.

So the long, gray twilight of interminable foreign wars, foretold by George Orwell and so many others as hallmark of national decline, will be reflected in endless scenarios of edge-of-the-cliff, floating over the waterfall, brink-of-disaster financial wars. To acknowledge such things is not to trust God less. He can ache for revival in our land, but it is not in His nature to force it. He will bless it, of course, if we bring it about.

To acknowledge such things, however, is to trust, not doubt, the Word of God. These types of events are prophesied in His Word, and have preceded the destruction of every civilization the Bible, and history books, have ever discussed. “American Exceptionalism” does not mean that we are somehow excepted from judgment, from the consequences of our own actions.

The blooming flowers of the Enlightenment (whose leading lights like Isaac Newton in science, and Johann Sebastian Bach in the arts, were devout Christian) and Constitutional Republicanism were beautiful and hearty in mankind’s garden for a time. Then the noxious weeds of Marxism, Darwinism, and democracy spread, seeking to choke out what they may. We are seeing them succeed, for most peoples are now complicit in the New Age proposition that the state can be God, that the state can play the part of God, that they state can judge like God, that the state should compel its subjects to a) subscribe to certain beliefs and b) respond to the state’s requirements anent those beliefs.

Literature’s grand portrait of the mordant but prescient skeptic, Vanya Karamazov, spoke the truth to our own times – Dostoyevsky saw it coming – “If we regard God as dead, anything is permitted.”

Implicit in the US and Europe today is the idea that there is no God. Oh, the modern State says, if you want to believe in a God, we will allow you to. Within limits. Never in history has there been such a complete but bloodless invasion and surrender of a culture. Western Christians have tossed away their crowns and affixed shackles to themselves in only a few generations.

Meanwhile, the reminders of the real New World Order will grow grimmer and closer to home every single day. The evidence is no longer abstract or theoretical. It is becoming things like deciding between medical bills and mortgage payments; like daily news stories of Christian persecution home and abroad; like a runaway ruling class harassing us in myriad ways. Once we worried about planes being hijacked to Cuba; now we fret about politicians hijacking our future.

More than a century and a half ago, the greatest American songwriter wrote a song, Hard Times, Come Again No More. It was not the most famous of Stephen Foster’s many popular tunes… but it has grown to have tremendous impact in our day. It has been recorded by a wide variety of singers and choirs, in different styles. Curiously – or not – it has taken on the status of an anthem in Ireland. Foster is being claimed as Irish-American, although he was born outside Pittsburgh. But we are happy to share him: this song, especially, speaks these days to our common reactions to hard times and hard news.

The Irish, put down for so long in their history, had a brief period in the sunshine with the “Celtic Tiger” of a business boom. Now the Irish are laid low again – economically if not in spirit, for I have been there and have seen certain seeds of rebirth. Even as the Church reels from shameful scandal, there is a revival afoot in small and home churches.

It is not pessimistic, not even fatalistic, but provides a sort of therapy to identify with the poor and downtrodden, and to know where we might be coming from… if we are, somehow, able to revive ourselves. This video is of the Irish singer Tommy Fleming singing Hard Times to an enormous auditorium. Watch the audience, more than him: holding hands, swaying, smiling – leave it to Irish to make an anthem of a dirge.

“Hard times, come again no more”? You know, this is at base not an economic question, but a spiritual one. Its answer is still ours to make.

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The video of the audience joining Tommy Fleming and band singing Stephen Foster’s Hard Times, Come Again No More.

Click: Hard Times, Come Again No More

7-25-11

“Where sin abounds, grace abounds even more.”

The horrific events in Oslo this week are different from similar atrocities, perhaps in severity and maybe in scope, than others in the news. These bizarre acts of violence occur with more frequency, but are inevitable in a decaying world culture where Jesus is less welcome all the time.

No doubt the news media and the “world system” will cite the gunman’s claims to Christianity as proof of this or that – not his own imbalance, but (watch, here it comes) something inherently wrong with Christianity. If he indeed includes “Christian” as one of his secret identities, it reminds me of Abe Lincoln’s characterization of an opponent’s tortured use of phrasing, that a “chestnut horse” bears no resemblance to a “horse chestnut.”

Norway, like other Scandinavian countries, indeed much of Europe and now North America, recently makes the news for episodes of anti-Christian persecution. This year alone, a Norwegian evangelist was arrested for evangelizing Norwegians during Independence Day and Pride parades. The prominent preacher Petar Keseljevic was careful not to block traffic or obstruct pedestrians; but sharing the gospel, louder than a whisper, on street corners, is an offense.

Earlier this year, a refugee from North Ossetia was deported from Norway. The region will be remembered as the site where a school in Beslan was invaded by Islamic militants, and ultimately hundreds died in the systematic hostage shootings and the storming of the school. The young lady, known as Maria Amelie, is Eastern Orthodox and was in Norway without papers. Unlike many illegal Muslims, she was deported, despite having learned the language, pursued an education, and written a book. Illegally Norwegian was a best-seller, and last year a major news magazine named her Norwegian Woman of the Year.

So illegal immigration, citizens’ rights, and social tensions have been rising throughout Europe. Norway is a small country. Back when I was writing comics, I was told that some of the comic books where they appeared sold 250,000 copies in the Norwegian market, which did not overly impress me until I realized that the country’s population was about 4-million. A good percentage.

A bad percentage, however, is “religious adherence.” About 20 per cent of Norwegians claim that religious faith plays an important role in their lives – a lower ratio (with its neighbors Sweden, Denmark, and Estonia) than any countries in the world. Only about two percent of the population attends church regularly.

Yet a remarkable group of Norwegians has been countering those trends. They gather as the Oslo Gospel Choir. They sing their own songs and gospel songs of the American church. They look like a blonde Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir. The leader, Tore Aas, assembled the singers from house churches and local fellowships about 20 years ago. The group performs locally, across Europe, and has been to America. They have released many albums and videos. Andrae Crouch and Albertina Walker have performed with the choir, and Princess Märtha Louise of Norway has sung solo with them on two Christmas albums.

Recent appearances in Switzerland and the Netherlands were before huge conclaves of Pentecostals, and were televised widely. Gospel? Huge? Tours? Sales? Audiences? Europe? Is there something new under the sun? – something stirring?

Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men. You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden.

So Matthew 5:12-14 reminds us. And we should be reminded that Oslo, the city called Christiana a century ago, where the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded, and identified with things like the Oslo Accords, is more than that bundle of associations; and cannot now be defined by the violent acts of a lone madman. It might be coming into the light; something new under the Midnight Sun. To a growing number of people around the world who are mightily blessed, Norway is becoming known as the home of that great Oslo Gospel Choir. Seeds can take root anywhere, even the rocky coasts of Norway.

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Here is a video of the Choir singing the classic God Will Make a Way in Oslo.

Click: God Will Make a Way

5-23-11

Well, the Rapture has come and gone, or at least Harold Camping’s itinerary for it. The news media took late and casual notice of it -– significantly, not with any focus on peoples’ last-minute confrontation with their own sinfulness, but an opportunity to paint Christians as kooks. Mr Camping is nothing if not sincere, and since there were no Kool-Aid packets in Family Radio International’s shopping cart (that is, no financial scam; maybe just bad mathematics, addressing biblical numerology) life goes on.

Or… has anyone considered whether Heaven held a rapture and nobody came? How many of us ARE worthy to meet the Lord in the air?

The question sounds half-kidding, but is totally serious. I believe the reason that the Bible is so ambiguous about all the questions regarding the Second Coming of Jesus, the End of Time, the Rapture, the End of the Age, the Great Tribulation, the advent of the Millennial Reign of Christ… is to keep us on our spiritual toes.

We should rejoice, as the angels would, for all the souls that would be “scared straight” by the possible end of the world, a week from tomorrow (or whenever). But for every one of those people I have a feeling there would be ten thousand others calculating a “Get Out of Judgment, Free” pass they can hold until five minutes to Rapture, if it is so knowable, and is well-advertised by spiritual guides like Brother Camping. I don’t claim to know God’s mind when He intends that such things are… unknowable. But I am sort of an expert on human nature, being a human and someone far too often displaying the less admirable traits of same. I am pretty sure that if the Rapture were on peoples’ to-do list of a date certain, it would be a disincentive, not an encouragement, to get right with God immediately. Most people would eat, drink, and be merry until it got too close for comfort.

I believe it is consistent with God’s will to cite a Bible verse that Brother Camping evidently overlooked. People think that we cannot know “when Jesus will return” and the saints of the ages shall be separated from the sinners. But it is there in every version of the Bible, and provides both long-term advice for our behavior, and immediate warnings about our standing with Christ; that is, our salvation.

Here it is, no billboards or radio marathons: I Thessalonians 5:2 — The day of the Lord so comes as a thief in the night. Another way God stated it: Matthew 24:44 — Be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.

There we have it: You want to know when Jesus will return? Answer: When we least expect it.

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Here is a song about that day – that moment, the twinkling of an eye, whenever it might be. BE READY!!! A humble Christian gathering in Zambia, singing an old American gospel song.

Click: When We All Get to Heaven

2-28-11

“Caring” is a buzzword that has become – as most buzzwords do – overused, oversold… and underappreciated, to the point of emptiness. In our society, Caring is a word that covers a multitude of sins: bureaucratic assembly-lines; government overreach; the tyranny of a minority. All in the name of Caring.

There is nothing wrong, of course, with caring. Quite the opposite. But it is a word that must be coupled with something, or else it is a disembodied emotional phantom. Abstract.

It has entered the realm of “Politalk.” A few years ago, some politicians received memos suggesting they insert the words “Caring” and “Children” every so often in speeches. We listeners were supposed to start wagging our tails like Dr Pavolv’s dogs at the words. Enough of us did. “Do anything to me, but just tell me you care.”

The inherent problems are more than emptiness of meaning. The Caring meme charts a steady course from compassion to compulsion to coercion. Next, the Compassion Police come knocking at the doors of our conscience, serving writs of Guilt.

Lest I sound like Scrooge, think of what the vulgarization of Caring has come to mean in the 21st century. In the name of Caring and Compassion, we have allowed governments to co-opt the role of individuals, and individuals’ consciences. The point of the parable of the Good Samaritan was that an individual was moved, and acted alone – in fact, out of character and social expectations. Jesus Himself healed, and empowered His followers to heal… notice that He never empowered or commissioned the government of His day. In fact it was “render unto Caesar,” not “demand from Caesar…”

Through history, the great agencies of Caring, after individuals and family, were more than governments. The authorities in ancient Greece and Rome did build public baths. But it was the church, in a thousand ways, that delivered charity and succor. Also, it was guilds and businesses. The Fuggers, bankers and merchants of Augsburg in the Middle Ages, established almshouses for the poor. In 1858, individual donors enabled a doctor to open baths and health facilities for the poor in County Cork, Ireland. By 1860, around the engine works of the Great Western Railway in New Swindon, outside London, the directors built worker’s cottages, libraries, and hospitals; they provided health care and free medicine.

The point of this history lesson is that in recent years, governments have co-opted care-giving functions from individuals and associations. To cite “efficiency” is to worship a false god, because in the process, individuals are being robbed of the option to emotionally notice; denied the challenge to intellectually consider; discouraged from the initiative to assist. In fact, when governments collect taxes in order to be the agents of Care, people eventually will feel less obliged to do charitable work themselves.

St Augustine (in his Confessions) speculated that the meaning behind the reminder “the poor you will always have with you” is that God desires to set before us circumstances to which we will be inspired to act charitably. Our broken hearts touch His heart.

Through it all (or despite it all), Americans still contribute more money and more missionaries and social workers than do most other countries to most world needs. But the relentless socialization of charity has brought us to a realization – confirmed as we watch the nightly news these very days – that regimes that ruled in the name of managing peoples’ fates, are having their true natures revealed: corruption, theft, oppression.

We give our lives over to institutions that care… but they crumble. Leaders who care… but they get turned out. Officials who care… but they play the system against us. Politicians who care… but they lie. Programs that care… but they run out of resources. Meanwhile, all the time, Jesus has been standing at the door, knocking. When Jesus cares for us, it is not because He has compassion, but because He is the essence of compassion.

And when He cares about us, and cares for us, something happens. He offers healing, provision, and the peace that passes understanding. Those things are not in the fine-print of anything the world’s “compassion” can deliver.

We should not suspect the motives of the compassionate in our midst; not at all. But we always need to remember that without the godly component, the world might care about, but truly cannot care for, its people.

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Does Jesus Care?

A powerful, simple song was written a hundred years ago around this question – and this answer: Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you (I Peter 5:7). It is sung here a capella by the Isaacs – brother and sisters Ben, Becky, and Sonya. From the excellent beanscot Channel on YouTube. It will stay in your heart all week!

Click: Does Jesus Care?

2-14-11

One of the only constant aspects of this old world is… Change. That is not irony; it is history. And it is not our dreaded fate; it is our lot to make of it what we will.

Two weeks ago we speculated, here, about the implausible, if not unthinkable – entrenched Arab leaders resigning and fleeing with their lives. But it has happened, and it might happen yet again. Hundreds of thousands of angry protestors, and their first act (after all-night jubilation on the streets)… was returning to Liberation Square in Cairo with brooms and garbage bags. Go figure. The predictable, in this new world, is the Unpredictable.

It is the case in America, too, down to the personal level. In a land of plenty, there is want; in the world’s most powerful economy, there is unemployment and insecurity. But the new security is not Insecurity – it does not have to be that way. And it is not a case merely of deciding to reclaim our personal destiny in the face of so many of life’s new challenges. It is a case of remembering that God is not only in control of our destiny – our careers, our families, our lives – but that He is our destiny. Our destination.

The singer Lynda Randle has pointed to the perils of accepting Jesus as Savior without making Him Lord. Two different things, each requiring a response from us. The first aspect affects our eternal destiny; the second can influence our everyday destiny, day by day, in this old world.

Mother Teresa put it another way: “God has not called us to be successful… He calls us to be obedient.”

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The songwriter Charles D Tillman popularized great Gospel songs like Old Time Religion, Life’s Railway to Heaven, and I Am a Poor, Wayfaring Stranger. Another of his classics is the song When I Get To the End of the Way, which beautifully reflects the message today. Its words are profound.

Here are the lyrics, after which you can click on a great version sung by Lynda Randle, sister of Michael Tait (of dcTalk and currently lead singer of The Newsboys).

When I Get To the End Of the Way

He loves me too well to forsake me,
Or give me a trial too much;
All His people have been dearly purchased,
And Satan can never claim such.
By and by I shall see Him and praise Him,
In the city of unending day;
And the toils of the road will seem nothing,
When I get to the end of the way.

Click: When I Get To the End Of the Way

1-3-11

The recent lunar eclipse is the last the northern hemisphere will see for a number of years. Its coincidence with the Winter solstice was the first in three centuries. Our New Year’s Day, 1-1-11, is the last such group of numbers until… oh, you get it.

If you think hard enough, EVERY day is the last of this or the first of that.

As Christians, we should see life that way. Every regret or painful memory, for instance, can be filed under “past” because we have forgiveness and a new life offered by Jesus. And no matter what else is going on, TODAY can be the start of amazing things you can do, and God can do through you.

There is a traditional Irish blessing (set to music and beautiful photographs in the link below) that is both appropriate for any day, between friends, as we are; and to think upon this New Year.

It set me thinking about Ireland’s role in Christian history. At one point, in Europe, Rome fell to barbarians, sacked and pillaged. The trappings of “civilization” and Christianity were put to flight. To a great extent, learning and biblical spirituality were pushed westward, until the Atlantic Ocean became a watery end-of-the-road. In Ireland, in isolated monasteries and abbeys, the Bible was copied by hand; faith was kept alive; Christian traditions were nurtured. There were pockets of believers elsewhere, of course, but largely it was a persecuted church. It was the “Dark Ages,” but things were not so dark in those places where the flame of faith was kept glowing.

I have a feeling that the decade we enter this weekend will be characterized as a decade of Christian persecution. It won’t be the last, but there is no reason to think that the attacks on believers we see in the news (and many we don’t), weekly and now daily around the world, will not grow in intensity or ferocity. These happen in Pakistan, North Korea, China, Iraq, Egypt, Russia, Cuba, India… and Western Europe and Canada and the United States.

Erosion of religious liberty, mockery of our Christian heritage, “legal” restrictions on the exercise of our faith and sharing our beliefs – classifying portions of the Bible as “hate speech” is only one of countless examples – confirm that no place in the world is safe from attack. Just as The Son of Man, we believers will have “no place to lay our heads,” spiritually speaking.

When the Irish “saved civilization” and preserved Western Christianity for a season, it was the geographical firewall. Today, in the global community with new media, each one of us – individuals who have received the Great Commission from Jesus Himself – will need to be virtual monasteries unto ourselves: Holding the Word close; keeping the flame of faith alive; nurturing Christian tradition.

I wish you not a path devoid of clouds, nor a life on a bed of roses,
Not that you might never need regret,
nor that you should never feel pain.

No, that is not my wish for you.
My wish for you is:

That you might be brave in times of trial,
when others lay crosses upon your shoulders.
When mountains must be climbed and chasms are to be crossed,
When hope can scarce shine through.
That every gift God gave you might grow with you
and let you give your gift of joy to all who care for you.
That you may always have a Friend who is worth that name,
whom you can trust and who helps you in times of sadness,
Who will defy the storms of daily life at your side.

One more wish I have for you:
That in every hour of joy and pain you may feel God close to you.
This is my wish for you and for all who care for you.
This is my hope for you now and forever.

— anonymous Irish blessing

Click:  The Best Possible New Year’s Wish

Have you ever called out to God in a moment of crisis? Or, better put, how often have you cried out to God in a moment of crisis?

Of course we have all been there, and it will not change. God, after all, did not promise to keep us from life’s troubles. He just promised to be with us through them.

Christoper Hitchens, in a lengthy profile in Britain’s The Observer newspaper, said, “What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.”  (  http://tiny.cc/cgsin ) Hitchens is dying of esophageal cancer, has written an atheist’s apologia against God, and has debated across the continent with the fervent Christian Dinesh D’Souza. None of us can evaluate his emotional wrestling-matches – he evidently was touched by a widespread “Pray for Christopher Hitchens Day” in September – but I shudder to contemplate if he is tempted to cry to God… but is deterred by pride.

If a reliance on God (please: no “higher being”; no “man upstairs” – I mean the God the Bible) is a basic yearning of every person’s soul, then we must admit that pride is a universal stumbling-block to exercising that reliance. How common is the realization that we turn for help… when we need help? The logic of it does not mitigate the embarrassment: “God, it’s me again. Sorry it’s been awhile…”

Too often we pray fervently in times of crises, and pray casually – or not at all – when blessings are flowing. Human nature.

God knows it is human nature. That is why He provided ways to counter that aspect. Communication, constant communication, which He calls prayer. And the testimony of our hearts, which He can read, and knows better than we ourselves do. God seeks communication with us – and half of that is hearing from us. He takes joy in every manner of our turning to Him. And He is grieved when we do not. In Micah 6:3 we have the picture of a God who is offended and hurt when we ignore Him: “O my people, what have I done to you? How have I wearied you? Answer me!”

So. If God receives pleasure when we seek Him and communicate through prayer, and if we generally tend to seek Him and pray only when things go bad… wouldn’t it be in the nature of a loving God to “allow” some “bad” things to buffet us?

I do not believe that He sends sickness or disease on His children – the Lord of the universe is not a child abuser – but for us to see Him as “an ever-present help in times of trouble,” there must be trouble. Following that, He will answer, and help, and communicate what we need to know: “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise” (Psalm 51:17); “Thou, LORD, hast not forsaken them that seek thee” (Psalm 9:10).

Is God at work in our lives when crises and problems beset us… if those are the only times when we seek fellowship with Him? Is this good theology? I don’t know. I’m just sayin’…

Here is a heartfelt spiritual song that briefly illustrates the anguished call to God we all experience at times. It is one of the very last songs that a feeble Johnny Cash recorded, but one of the most powerful of messages: “Help Me, Lord.”

Click:   Asking God’s Help

Have a great week. Chat up a storm with your Creator.

I once heard a prominent preacher in the “emergent church” trash one of my favorite old gospel songs, “I’ll Fly Away.”

“If I could, I would rip that song out of every hymn-book,” he said. He considered it irresponsible and against Christ’s teachings to want to leave this world, when there is so much to do here. So much poverty and injustice to fight… and so on.

That type of analysis is one reason I wish the emergents would become the submergents. Christ admonished us to look up, and wait expectantly for that day. Bible prophecy tells us of no sweeter promise than when we shall meet Him in the air. Yes, God has tasks for us here in this world, but it can be arrogant, not just irresponsible, to suggest that God cannot do things without us. And… there is a danger in putting too must trust in doctrines of works.

The whole Gospel must hold. Comfortable suburban (faddish) teachers who cannot relate to worshipers whose lives have been hard and challenging, those who hope for the Bible’s promised release, those who find comfort — and even perseverance — in songs like “I’ll Fly Away”… pity those teachers, or ignore them. They preach to each other.

Fasten your seat belts, because I’m going to share a very unorthodox (in some neighborhoods, anyway) version of “I’ll Fly Away.” Two decades ago I was writing a three-part biography of rock ‘n’ roll pioneer Jerry Lee Lewis, televangelist Jimmy Swaggart, and country singer Mickey Gilley. They are all first cousins, and grew up in Ferriday, Louisiana, attending the same little Assembly of God church.

I learned that for a brief time, Jerry Lee had attended Bible College, in Waxahatchie, Texas. I interviewed a fellow student, Charles Wigley (later a district superintendent of the Assemblies of God) who told me that a few students used to get together and play gospel music… and got in trouble for “juking it up.” Of course Jerry also got invited to leave the school because he used to sneak out at night and go to the Deep Elm section of Houston…

Be that as it may, the jazzed-up style of rock and country and the fervent evangelistic piano playing in Pentecostal churches sometimes straddled an indistinct line. Here is a video of Jerry Lee Lewis and his cousin Mickey Gilley performing “I’ll Fly Away” in what you might consider another installment in our “Doing Church Another Way” series! (Definitely NOT Baroque music)

This is how old it is: it was recorded, I think, the day after Reagan was elected president in 1980 (Jerry Lee throws in a reference to that fact)

To close the circle, see if you think worshipers in a little country church would have felt irresponsible about their faith after joining in with this song. Would you rip this out of a songbook?

Click:  I’ll Fly Away 

How often have we heard the story of the shepherd leaving the 99 sheep to search for the lost one; or the Prodigal Son welcomed by the father with a great feast… and wondered, in our hearts, what it must have felt like among the 99 sheep, or how the faithful son felt: Hey, what about us? Haven’t we been faithful and good all this time? Is this the reward of obedience, of doing good?

The truth is, of course, that Jesus wants us to see the complete story through the eyes of the lost ones, and the sinner. Because that is who we are. If truth be told, those 99 sheep and that faithful older brother in the parables were only “safe” and “good” at those moments. There, but for the grace of God, they too would have strayed or been prodigal.

But the best parts of the parables are what happens when the lost sheep, and the prodigal son (read: you and me!) are found! Feasts, rejoicing, and the JOY of Heaven awaits!

“I tell you that in the same way, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance” (Luke 15:7).

Christian music should be joyful, and here is a gospel song by Vep Ellis that mirrors the joy awaiting us in Heaven. Performed joyfully by the Vocal Band and Signature Sound at a concert in Louisville. Comedy (and some musical instruction) beforehand… words of hope… and a joyful noise unto the Lord!

Heaven’s Joy Awaits

When we leave this lowland, We will cross the Jordan;

Past the chilly torrent, Heaven’s joy awaits!

Just beyond the blue horizon, Just above the starry sky, starry blue sky.

Far above this land of sorrow, Way above each tear and sigh, every sigh.

Just a few more miles before us, Just a little while to wait, patiently wait.

Soon we’ll sing redemption’s chorus, Heaven’s joy awaits, Heaven awaits.

Heaven’s breeze is blowing, Gently to me calling.

I will soon be going, Through the pearly gates!

Just beyond the blue horizon, Just above the starry sky, starry blue sky.

Far above this land of sorrow, Way above each tear and sigh, every sigh.

Just a few more miles before us, Just a little while to wait, patiently wait.

Soon we’ll sing redemption’s chorus, Heaven’s joy awaits, Heaven awaits.

Click:   Heaven’s Joy Awaits

Christmas week approaches, and many of try to brush off news stories that Jesus was born in April or November, according to studies; and we also try to cut through the crowded shops and the gift-sale e-mails… hoping that, by focusing on the simple truths and modest imagery of Jesus’s birth, we can connect with the profundity of the Incarnation — God living amongst us. Coming first as a helpless baby.

Two thousand years later, Hallmark has us thinking that to be born in a manger was some sort of Green bonus, the happy family surrounded by squeaky-clean animal friends and shiny angels. More the truth was that the stable was a step up from a dung-heap. Swaddling clothes were essential, else the baby would have been delivered and lain on musty straw, animal spittle, and bugs.

Think of it: Jesus came into this world rejected and despised, and that is how, as a man, He left it.

Isaiah knew it would happen this way. Eight hundred years earlier, the prophet wrote:

“Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid, as it were, our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.”

The rest of Chapter 53, of course, foretells the Easter story. But I think it is significant, too (otherwise God would not have ordered its occurrence and recording) that we remember the challenges to Joseph, the abuse Mary endured, the difficulties of Jesus’s birth… and His entire life. “Despised and rejected of men.”

Yet this “undesirable” was also THE JOY OF MANKIND’S DESIRING. As sinners today, we still esteem Him not sometimes… yet we desire Him, our souls are only complete when He lives within us!

Here is a performance of that ethereally beautiful movement from Bach’s Cantata Number 147, “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.” It is sung by the group Celtic Women, in an arrangement that is both touching and revealing of how adaptable Bach’s music is. Here are the words the ensemble sings:

Jesu, joy of man’s desiring,

Holy wisdom, love most bright.

Drawn by Thee, our souls? aspiring,

Soar to uncreated light.

Word of God, our flesh that fashioned

With the fire of life impassioned,

Striving still to Truth unknown,

Soaring, dying, ’round Thy throne.

Click: Jesus, Joy of Man’s Desiring

On top of all the holiday busy-ness, this season seems, to me,  exceptionally intrusive. Do you have the same impression in your “space”? You don’t have to be a news junkie or a cable-news addict to be aware of economic hard times, health-care battles, political corruption, intrusive government, a war, another war, global “worming,” terror threats, runaway spending, and probably another war somewhere. And that’s just yesterday. Next week will probably have its new problems.

For friends outside the US, I’m sure there are the same and similar challenges in the news every morning and every evening where you are.

My son Ted is a TV news producer, and I don’t want to take any work off his plate, but…

This is an appropriate time — this is a good season — to remember what the really big news is. Here is a video of the great Russ Taff, singing with his daughter Madi at his side; and backstage with members of the Gaither musical family, a little song about “The Really Big News.”

Family, friends, life’s little pleasures. Stop the presses! Let’s all remember the big stories in our lives.

(And, at this season, the really good news, too. The gifts we will be exchanging began as a commemoration of God’s greatest Gift, Jesus Christ! May we all remember that initial impetus!)

Click: The Really Big News

Here is a tale about a not-so-happy Saturday I just endured… that got me thinking about current events as microcosms of larger issues in life.

I stupidly opened a blind link from a bogus e-mail address (“cloned” to be similar to that of a friend). Well, dozens of pop-ups popped up. I lost access to all my filters and cleansing software, my internet connection, even my Word files, proposals, unfinished manuscripts, research notes… and I went of my mind.

I pulled out the laptop and Googled everything I could. The pop-ups were phony ads trying to save me from viruses, but was itself a virus. “RansomWare,” it is called, because I was frozen unless I would purchase the program (and even at that, who knows?).

Frantic, I checked in with my new son-in-law in Ireland, a computer wiz. He has a Mac, so (all together now) “never has to deal with such things.” But he Googled too, and checked blogs of other victims, and on the phone and Skype simultaneously, we found a solution that worked. I am now free and clean. Six hours total of angst, three and a half solid hours on the phone with Ireland.

When I recovered, I got to thinking…

It shows how little — that is, not at all — human nature has progressed. People who cause these problems, whether for a little profit or pure malice, are no different than highwaymen hiding behind trees along forest pathways a thousand years ago, or urban pickpockets of Dickens’ time.

It’s the same thing with, say, abortion. Forty million dead babies today since Roe vs Wade — how is this different than “human sacrifice” or babies on pagan altars, in ancient or “primitive” societies? In fact, it might be worse today, in terms of the blackness of our souls. In ancient and primitive societies those people were mistaken, grievously, but at least believed they were serving and appeasing their gods. A murdered baby is still a murdered baby, but in American today, abortion (and so many other sins) are sacrificed to the “gods” of selfishness, greed, laziness, hatred. That’s not progress.

Is there a spiritual lesson? Yes. Human nature has not changed. Human nature won’t change. Human nature can’t change. One of the 700-billion reasons to resent politicians’ assault on freedom and responsibility these days, is that they nurture the lie that human nature is perfectible… and that government can bring perfection about.

Only Jesus can change humans’ nature. And do we despair that the world, without Jesus, is as rotten as it ever was? No… because we are not without Jesus. That’s the plan.

Sometimes this walk seems so dreary, life’s problems seem so challenging. God never said He’d keep us from troubles… just be with us through troubles. A friend wrote the other day, “Life isn’t about how to survive the storm, but how to dance in the rain”!

So, we go through this ol’ life, in the words of this week’s song, “While I’m here I’ll serve Him gladly, and sing Him all my songs”…

… because we know at the end, we’re headed  Home, Where I Belong

I’m not sure I’ve ever known a time when so many people — so many Christian friends — are distressed, hurting, facing challenges, as right now.

Of course it’s the economy. Of course there are political crises. Of course when a culture loses its moorings, the ship is going to be tossed around. And the people in it will be buffeted.

The Bible not only warns about such travail… it assures us its part of the package: raining on the just and unjust; but also that the faithful will experience persecution.

Yet we are not without a Friend, and surely not without hope. A new precious friend, Becky Spencer, has a CD out with a wonderful song of hers, “The Coldest Winter (Always Turns to Spring),” and it got me thinking… spring always follows winter; life replaces death, the sun always shines after the storm. And isn’t the most beautiful Spring the one that follows the hardest Winter? and the most amazing sunny day the kind right after an awful storm has swept through?

There is hope, and even in hard times (not SPARED from hard times, but THROUGH hard times) God’s promises are true. This song sung by Cynthia Clawson reminds us, even further, that even when the storm is at its worst, behind the clouds the Sun is still shining!

Click:  It Won’t Rain Always