More than I ask or imagine. . .

A Demonstration against Secularism: The "Natural" Healing of Music

Secularism is "the negation of man as a worshiping being, as homo adorans: the one for whom worship is the essential act which both 'posits' his humanity and fulfills it".  Alexander Schmemann said this in his famous book For the Life of the World.  Every now and then, there are items in the news or on the web that testify to humanity's fundamental desire to worship. 

Below is a video that has been shared on Facebook and Twitter from a documentary about a Music Therapy treatment.  An elderly man with Alzheimer's Disease or Dementia, begins listening to music and he is brought to life.  The doctor says "Henry is restored to himself, he has remembered who is, and reacquired his identity for a while through the power of music".  Although the clip ends with a praise of technology, the real healing was not from drugs or therapy but the "music of the spheres", a gift of God Almighty who sang life into being. 

Oftentimes, I forget that I am a beloved son in Christ.  When I forget this, my anxiety will take over as the fruit of my selfishness.  Through the ages, music calls us out of the selfish abyss and brings us back to ourselves.  We remember who we are.   The Call to Worship every week in Church is a call to die to myself and live as part of a new humanity as the Church.  In myself, I am in exile, and every Sunday is a homecoming.  

Enjoy the video, remember who you are and worshiping the God from whom all blessings flow. 

 

For a Merry Christmas Day: God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman/ We Three Kings

One of my favorite songs of all time, and so good to hear it this year.  O Tidings of Comfort and Joy to you today. 

 

Have some Christmas Blend too!

 

Grieve for Renewal: A Work of the People Short Film feating @ScottyWardSmith

As I finish a sermon series on Lamentations, I have been reflecting on the nature of prayer and hope.  It seems that there is something inherent in prayer that would include lament and grief over the way things are longing for renewal and transformation.

Here is a film with Pastor Scotty Smith, my pastor in college.  I still remember after Easter in 1996 he was grieveing the loss of his mentor, Jack Miller. I remember how that impacted me so greatly, though I did not even know it at the time. I ended up at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, PA and being a called pastor at one of the church's of the movement that Jack Miller had begun.  Here, Scotty calls the artist or the one "living the artful life" as he calls it to grieve for renewal.  I hope you enjoy!

Steve Jobs on Leadership and Imagination.

 

With the passing of Steve Jobs, I admire his leadership and his imagination in leading.  He is a great example for anyone in leadership positions. The day before he passed the new iPhone was presented a new software called Siri.  Below is a video of Apple's future vision a device that is a personal assistant, face to face calling, and touch screen interface.  The video was made in 1987. This is leadership knowing where to go and giving motivation to get there.

The other video was Steve Jobs first address when he came back to email in 1997.  He begins telling the crowd around minute 14:30, he casts a vision for iCloud, calling a giant hole in computing.   He even mentions making apps for something like flash memory building on devices that only Apple makes. He also talks about how focus is saying no which is why he cleaned house when he first came.  His language is locker room for the conference, so apologies beforehand.  But here he is raw and leading his company.

How Can I Change the World? It begins in the Sanctuary of the Lord.

I have always been a big fan of the idea that you live how your worship.  I firmly believe that worship services train us as God's people to live for him.  Below is an article by Mark Horne on How to Change the World?  Hope you enjoy it.

10 things a church can do to change the world

by Mark Horne

The principle to keep in mind is that we have to change ourselves first.

1. Participate in the Lord’s Supper Every Sunday in Worship
The Kingdom is again and again a feast. The Church is the beachhead of the Kingdom. Does Jesus ever tell a parable comparing the Kingdom to a lecture hall? Does he ever compare the Kingdom to a music concert? Then lets not stop up the Kingdom at the source. Lets get it right. Lets eat and drink.

2. Drink Wine in Church
Duh. How else would you worship a glutton and a drunkard? The Gospel is New Wine that bursts wineskins–not grape juice that sits there inert. You want to know if God can forgive a sinner like you. Get it in a cup and drink it down and you will know. That changes everything.

3. Sing the Psalms
By sing, I mean chant. Don’t remake the Psalms to fit a rhyme scheme. Sing the words that are there according to an accurate translation. What would happen if we did this? For one thing a ton of bad theology would be exorcised.

Arise, O Yahweh
O God, lift up your hand;
forget not the afflicted.
Why does the wicked renounce God
and say in his heart, “You will not call to account”?
But you do see,
for you note mischief and vexation,
that you may take it into your hands;
to you the helpless commits himself;
you have been the helper of the fatherless.
Break the arm of the wicked and evildoer;
call his wickedness to account till you find none.
Yahweh is king forever and ever; the nations perish from his land.

4. Pray the Psalms
Arguably this is redundant with the point above. But I want to stress that God wants us to pray things like:

judge me, O Lord, according to my righteousness
and according to the integrity that is in me.
Oh, let the evil of the wicked come to an end,
and may you establish the righteous—
you who test the minds and hearts,
O righteous God!

There are people and whole churches who claim to be Bible-believing who think this is sinful to pray. You can’t change the world for God if you think He is really a Pharisee unless he has the help of your styleguide by which to edit his prayers.

5. Tell people in church that God has forgiven them.

Don’t preach that God forgives some people somewhere some time. Tell the professing Christians in front of you, and their children, when they confess their sins together, that God has wiped each one of their slates clean. The good news that is going to change the world is not that God forgives someone somewhere at some time.

(Yes, God forgives them at other times, including when they pray apart. But these things are not opposed. Rather, one helps the the other. Those who are trained to believe that God hears and forgives them will be encouraged to trust God for the same at other times and places.)

6. Believe the whole Bible and teach it like God really meant it.

Because saying, “You’re getting too much of your theology from the parables” mostly means, “Jesus was a stupid peasant who told misleading stories that we have to carefully strip down to a single point that we found in Paul’s Epistles”–or rather, “that we found in Westminster Confession” (or, “… the Councils of Trent” or whatever). I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that God isn’t blessing churches who don’t like the Bible.

7. Preach Jesus as King but Avoid Petty Politics

Jesus is Lord and he wants a visible unified entrance to the Kingdom (Church) as a witness to that fact. We have to obey what Jesus says, but we also have to recognize how divisions and arguments actually can undermine the theocratic Faith. So find some highly obvious points in the public square to harp on (i.e. abortion), but try not to get bogged down in minutia (don’t preach Christian libertarianism, socialism, or whatever from the pulpit).

8. Let the Great Commission be your commission

If you think you know what this means, go read it, and ask yourself what this says about being “born again,” “faith,” or “evangelism” compared to what it says about obedience, theocracy, baptism, and ongoing teaching/training of everyone.

9. Worship like the Bible matters

Does it not strike anyone as odd that, if you want to attend a worship service that took you systematically through Scripture, you would be better off in an Episcopal, formal Lutheran, Roman Catholic, or Eastern Orthodox service rather than a Baptists, conservaitve Presbyterian, or “Bible Church” assembly? Is God supposed to speak to us in the Church or not? If not, how are we supposed to see anything change, let alone the world?

10. Live Corporately like Matthew 18 is in the Bible

I mention the whole chapter on purpose, by the way, because it is obviously focused on humility and forgiveness, and in that context gives directions for accountability and purifying the Church. I think that is important because, while not one church in a hundred includes Matthew 18.15-19 in their real canon, some that do can be so zealous (I’m using a euphemism) about it as to reinforce the temptation to neglect it. But it is in the Bible and it is an operating instruction from the Lord Jesus. So obey Him.

An Invitation to Lament: The Bible "Rolling in the Deep"

I am beginning a sermon series on Lamentations this Sunday.  Many of our hymns or songs in Evangelicalism have no room for lament.  Lamenting is part of life and reflects the glory of God in whose likeness we are created.  I find that the only place in our culture we can lament is break up songs.  Country songs do this too.  What happens when you play a country song backwards?  You get your wife, car, and dog back, as the old joke goes.  But this morning I was thinking about our lack of lament in our culture and heard this song, Rolling in the Deep.  Adele reminds me of Dusty Springfield, and the song reminds me of the Stone's great anthem, Gimme Shelter.  In the video, a city is destroyed, a warrior stirs up the dust that is settled, and plates are broken. What a great picture of relationship loss and struggle. Enjoy the video with the song as an example of modern day lament.

My Credo Part Two: I Believe in God the Father Almighty

 

This is my opening paragraph on my statement of faith. I followed the Apostle's Creed, and as always being anchored in History always wins.

"I believe in God the Father who created all things invisible and visible.  I believe that God’s Creation was good revealing the way things are supposed to be in Peace (Shalom), comprehensive human flourishing.  Every human being lives in God’s world with a longing to know the Creator behind all beauty, pleasure, love, and goodness.  I believe that humanity committed cosmic rebellion, sin, against God’s created Peace.  This rebellion infected every part of humanity and left no part of the human heart or mind untouched, thus we are totally depraved.  God began putting this beloved Creation back together through Abraham, Isaac, Israel, and ultimately and finally, Jesus and his people, the Body, which is his Church."

It is a very simple story, but one that we often forget.  Being a story teller, I wanted to embellish and say more about the Creation Narrative and poetry.  I wanted paint the picture, but then I could have turned in the Bible and just highlighted the whole thing. 

In these types of statements, what you do not say also speaks volumes.  In the area of science and faith, I do think you do damage to force the text to say 6-24 hour days.  I believe the notion of everyone saying that is has to be is already living in the Scientific world and submitted to it.  Science does not give me my values, my worth, my purpose, my family, or my story.  So why would I want to put science there in The Story.  Science is supposed to be about hypothesis and repeatable events, but this is difficult with history. The question of origins is about values.  Is this God's world? Yes  Do we owe him honor and worship living lives in obedience because this is his World and he calls the shots? Yes.  We are not animals helpless to our appetites, and we are not clocks knowing precision.  The Story is accurate and qualitative and its authority wants to do more in us and through us than just tell time. The Story, God's Truth in Scripture, wants us to worship and love with a full thankful heart.

NT Wright on the Sweep, Scope, and Beauty of Scripture. Makes me want to read a whole Gospel.

The above video is from NT Wright interviewed about the practice of reading the Scripture.  Whatever you think about the man, you must admit he is passionate about Scripture and wants people to know it.

Take some time today and read a whole book in one sitting.  Let me know if you take the challenge and what book you read.  I will read Mark.

The Chris Henry Legacy. A woman who lost her Son and gains a New Family. Amazing Story!

Yesterday, Hesed and I were waiting for football to start when we saw this feature on CBS sports.  It was so moving, James Brown is speechless.  May you know the power of giving life and giving thanks. 

 

Happy All Hallow's Eve! Celbrate Christ's Victory over Death and Mock Evil!

 It comes up every year.  What do you do for Halloween?  I tell people, "I mock evil."  I take my stand with the rest of Christian history.  This day is not just about Reformation, candy, getting scared, or the paranormal. This day is the eve of All Saints Day, which is basically Christian Memorial Day. We celebrate those who have come before us and even died for their faith in Christ. 

As James Jordan points out in his article on Halloween:

The Festival of All Saints reminds us that though Jesus has finished His work, we have not finished ours. He has struck the decisive blow, but we have the privilege of working in the mopping up operation. Thus, century by century the Christian faith has rolled back the demonic realm of ignorance, fear, and superstition. Though things look bad in the Western world today, this work continues to make progress in Asia and Africa and Latin America.

The Biblical day begins in the preceding evening, and thus in the Church calendar, the eve of a day is the actual beginning of the festive day. Christmas Eve is most familiar to us, but there is also the Vigil of Holy Saturday that precedes Easter Morn. Similarly, All Saints’ Eve precedes All Saints’ Day.

The concept, as dramatized in Christian custom, is quite simple: On October 31, the demonic realm tries one last time to achieve victory, but is banished by the joy of the Kingdom.

What is the means by which the demonic realm is vanquished? In a word: mockery. Satan’s great sin (and our great sin) is pride. Thus, to drive Satan from us we ridicule him. This is why the custom arose of portraying Satan in a ridiculous red suit with horns and a tail. Nobody thinks the devil really looks like this; the Bible teaches that he is the fallen Arch-Cherub. Rather, the idea is to ridicule him because he has lost the battle with Jesus and he no longer has power over us.

Because Christ has won, we also remember those who are currently being persecuted today.  My church honor those around the world who are persecuted for their faith.  Below is a video from Voice of the Martyrs describing Christians being persecuted all over the world.  What drives my prayers for my brothers and sisters in the midst of persecution is that Christ has and will triumph.  God will wipe away the tears from their eyes, and reveal himself to be the true King of the world.  Happy Halloween!  Happy All Saints Day! Praise God for his victory in Christ Jesus!