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

7-8-19

Many well-meaning agnostics, and ill-intentioned atheists, and clueless friends who think they are being “welcoming,” showing they can meet Christians half-way, will intone that they regard Jesus as a “great man,” surely a “great teacher.”

Close on the heels of such specious arguments often come the “open-minded” assertions that every religious tradition has great teachers… that all of these teachers must lead to god (whatever they think god is)… that all the teachers all preached peace. And taught how to get along. Didn’t they?

Regarding the chief attributes of Jesus as being a good man and a great teacher: these are worse insults than outright denial that He was God incarnate. Blasphemy. (Blasphemy, by the way, is the one “unforgivable” sin spoken of in the Bible.)

An incomplete God is not God at all.

A “shadow God” is one or the other, not both. Jesus casts shadows. He is the Light Of the World. He is “the image of the One True God; the first-born of all Creation.”

Other “teachers” of other religions did not claim to be more than teachers or prophets; does everyone know that? Jesus, however, claimed to be the Messiah – “I and the Father are One” – literally, God-with-us.

Other religious leaders died. Alone of them all, Jesus rose from the dead, and physically ascended to Heaven.

“Oh, I respect Him as a great man, a wise teacher.” Your friends who say that to you are in effect calling Him a liar – funny thing for a Holy Man to be! – because Jesus was the Son of God who taught; yes. But He also healed. He read minds and convicted people of their sins. He raised others from the dead. He performed a multitude of miracles, recorded not only in the Bible but in contemporary accounts. Miracles.

He taught love, yes. But, more, He was love.

Can mere teachers transform lives; heal families and their pain; redeem the desperate among us? Can a mere teacher have turned my own heart from inclinations toward sin to seeking forgiveness, redemption, and holiness? Teachers can try – religious and secular teachers both – but only Jesus, come to earth for these missions, can do these things, be these things.

You say Jesus was a good man, a great teacher? Let me say in love: shut up – I have got some life-changing details to share with you. Good man, great teacher… are the first two of uncountable check-boxes in the list that describes my Savior and Friend, Jesus.

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Click: Yes, I Know

2-3-13

It seems that every innovation and new device that jumps out at us from aisles at electronic departments is, yes, wondrous and miraculous (until next year’s Consumer Electronics Show convinces us how outdated and useless they are) but all seem to share a few aspects. Yes, they tend to be smaller than the toys they replace; and, yes, they usually are more expensive than their predecessors. But I am thinking of something else.

New phones, new computers, new bells, new whistles, every i-thing that comes down the pike all tend to isolate us more and more. “Personal” is the common adjective in the descriptions, if not the brands. We can talk faster, do extra things, command more, multi-task… ultimately hunched over, closer and closer to the screen of each new device. At almost every restaurant I visit these days, I see a family of four or five who are all absorbed by their phones, smart or otherwise. They communicate only to place their orders and, perhaps, offer a belch or two. Otherwise, dinner is the screen and whatever.

Curious. We communicate more, but socialize less – ultimately, communicate less in the traditional and, I believe, worthwhile sense.

The “Friends” mania is analogous: similarly confusing and seemingly self-contradictory. Facebook now opens my home page with a question up top: “How are you doing, Rick?” It is relatively obnoxious to me, because I have a sneaking suspicion the question is insincere. If it is Jeff Zuckerberg himself who invites the response, I seriously doubt that he would much care either way how I answered. (For the record, I am tempted to reply, “How am I doing WHAT?”)

And Facebook Friends largely are an odd species to me. People I knew before Facebook was spawned, well, they ARE friends. But I constantly get “friend requests” from people I never heard of, which could be flattering except that I have heard that some people assemble numbers of Friends like Chicago politicians assemble voting rolls: neither acquaintanceship nor even pulses matter. Now there is a company that markets an application that informs us when somebody DE-friends us. Neologisms atop irrelevancies.

Somewhere, someplace, someone is writing a research report on an American culture that has become so desperately lonely that society finds comfort in manufacturing friendships that are immune from human contact; people obsessed with maintaining such artificial interaction; and a form of paranoia that fears the suspension of such counterfeit “relationships.”

Like a king, I may live in a palace so tall, With great riches to call my own.
But I don’t know a thing in this whole wide world That’s worse than being alone.

We are not merely being seduced by the novelty of toys, I think; nor engaging in faux-communication that will pass after a season. Given the chance, contemporary Americans deal with relationships in a new manner that, in fact, suits us just fine: somewhere between wary and disdainful of human contact. The New Normal is the Old Abnormal.

Sooner or later solitude, whether voluntary or forced, will catch up with our souls. We are not meant to fly solo. Before that time comes, our culture will cripple itself and interrupt the dynamic emotional flow that once characterized the American spirit. And eventually we will discover that it is not about the difference between being, say, a social animal and an introvert. Nothing so superficial.

Some time we, as individuals and as a culture, will confront the difference between being alone and being lonely. Even in the midst of multitudes.

Once I stood in the night with my head bowed low, In a darkness as black as the sea.
My heart was afraid and I cried, Oh Lord, don’t hide Your face from me.

The coldest emotion we can ever experience is the sense of loneliness, of no one nearby – no one to understand, no one to listen, no one to care. But to BE alone? That is a state of mind as much as physicality. You can have memories and books and music – things that are prized comforts – but they take you only so far. Then you have family and friends; they can be the most precious , and irreplaceable, blessings imaginable. The only thing better is the knowledge, and the perceived presence, of God by your side.

I learned something about the value of friends some years ago, and I will bring it forward, re-cast to recent events, because the lesson is the same. And it is one I need to remind myself of, every so often; too often. Through tough times, friends will call, friends will write, friends will pray, friends will send cards, friends will visit, friends will even communicate on those new little e- and i-devices. So another friend, a skeptic, once taunted me – “You talk about Jesus all time, how He helps you here, and ministers to you there. But listen to yourself – all your comfort has been coming from friends, not your Jesus!”

And my reply – as all our realizations and replies should be – “That IS Jesus bringing me comfort. My friends are just His messengers.”

There is a place where we may overcome loneliness, a place where no one stands alone. Let us all find it, and all realize it, and all embrace it.

Hold my hand all the way, every hour, every day, From here to the great unknown!
Take my hand, let me stand, Where no one stands alone.

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The poetic lines above are verses from the classic gospel song by Mosie Lister, full of profound meaning, lessons for us all in troubled times; and an emotional tune with majestic chord structures and modulation. Performed here by the Gaither Homecoming Friends – yes, “friends”! The composer is in the audience, introduced at the end of the song.

Click: Where No One Stands Alone