All This Time – My worship song to sum it up

I wrote this over the course of the last 10 months or so.  It was a hard time, but throughout I felt I was on an upswing.  I don’t know for sure if I was or not, but usually I can connect with this song and what I meant by it.  It’s my attempt to give praise to the One I don’t really understand.

I finished up Donald Miller’s Storyline workbook just before Christmas.  Part of the process involves finding a redemptive purpose in our suffering.  To finish this song, even a draft like this here, is my attempt to step in that direction.  I’m hoping something good has come from my extended bout with depression and that maybe someone else will be blessed by where I’ve been.

Rediscovering The Weight of Glory by C.S. Lewis

I was talking with a friend last week about finding joy in this world and looking forward to joy in Heaven.  While going on about it, I was reminded of some things C.S. Lewis had written.  I referred my friend to The Weight of Glory.  I hadn’t read that sermon in years, but I remembered that I liked some of the thoughts.  I was glad to find the complete text at the link above and I sent it to my friend.  I also read it while listening to my brother’s sermon in church on Sunday.  It was a good double message on the first day of 2012.  (I did manage to pay attention to both quite well!)

Until reading it again, I had been feeling that Lewis has become dated.  I was glad to find, again that his message in this short work is amazing.  His presentation that glory is the due result of a life that pleases God is powerful, uplifting and very fitting with some of the things I have been searching out and mulling over throughout the past year.

I remember in my early 20’s that my secular studies had raised many questions about my faith.  It was in those years that Lewis’ writings gave me great encouragement.  Now, two decades later, he may not be the rock that he was, but he makes me want to believe.  I had forgotten this passage was from this sermon:

“Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

Here’s to holding out hope for some infinite joy.

I highly recommend reading the complete message.

 

The Right Perspective Psalm 16:8 – You Before Me

Psalm 16:8 – I have set the Lord continually before me.  Because He is at my right hand, I will not be shaken.

This is probably the most recent complete song I’ve written.  I posted it on YouTube and wrote about it on the blog several months ago, but I did a better version during Christmas break.  It’s not great, but I’m confident that is shows my best work.  I still like the song a lot and I’d love to hear it done well.

The funny thing is, I don’t think I actually looked up the verse that it was drawn from until this morning.  I really like the idea of not being shaken, but maybe it’s better that I didn’t include that in the song too.

Of the lines I wrote, the line about “bring all things to light” still stands strong for me.  A lot has come by me in the past year since I wrote the song, but I hold to that–knowing God brings the other things to light.  Things are put into the proper perspective.

 

We Can’t Help but Worship

I came across a lot of great worship resources this weekend.  This article on worship from Harold Best is definitely worth reading.  He was the professor of music at Wheaton College and he speaks and writes about creativity and worship from a deep perspective.

The heart of it is that we are made to worship and we always worship.  “Only the gods change,” as he puts it.  The article is filled with many excellent thoughts, but what most kept me reading is how it started almost along the lines of the article I posted a couple weeks ago.  He quickly surpassed that and offered a ton more.

Another new guitar, another recording of Not Ashamed

Last time I recorded Not Ashamed it was the first song I played on my Gibson Hummingbird Artist.  That version sounds terrible!  I just got a Gretsch Tim Armstrong signature model a couple weeks ago and I reworked the song.

Someone suggested that I quit the really rough sketches and try to get a clean recording.  I’ve learned a lot in six months, but I still have a long way to go.  At least I can stand to listen to this version!

If nothing else, listen to the bridge starting around 1:40.  It’s the best part of the song and I think it could be done very well in worship.  I played it twice in this recording, once toned down and once full.

Getting It Right – Leading Worship and Life’s Purpose

Last week I wrote about my purpose diagram that, for any organization or system, relates purpose to the other elements involved it its function.  The main point is that people naturally end up giving undue attention to the steps that lead to the purpose or they overemphasize the measures or results of achieving the purpose.  While they are correct to give importance to those elements, the imbalances lead to ineffectiveness in achieving the purpose.

I presented these thoughts as an introduction to the importance of leading worship and how that relates to the purpose of our lives, so now I’ll finish that thought.

The big question that we must answer first, then, is What is our purpose?  We could argue that from a lot of standpoints, but for now let’s assume we’re talking from a Christian perspective.  Does that make the job any easier?  My experience has been that it doesn’t.

When I ask explicitly what our purpose is, I’m often told it’s salvation or it’s to tell people about Jesus.  I’ve heard that preached and taught from leaders.  In less direct ways we might leave the Sunday morning service with the implication that the real purpose of the Christian life is anything from happiness to a strong family to a commitment to high moral standards.

Listening not just to leaders, but to the average church attendee, it’s even more clear that we lack focus in the Church.  We all are familiar with the ways our culture of Consumerism has been blended with some superficial aspects of the Bible into a muddled mix in the lives of most Christians in the U.S.

So what is a biblical answer to the question of our purpose?  When I first delved into the matter, I concluded that our purpose is to know God.  Considering it further, though, I realized that was insufficient as a final purpose.  Knowing God leads to something more and that more must be the real reason behind it all.

From there, I remained content for some time in thinking that our purpose is to glorify God.  There’s certainly a lot of support for this thinking from Scripture.  As I mentioned previously, we used my purpose diagram and discussion at the worship retreat at our church.  Glorifying God was the ultimate purpose that we agreed on that day.

More recently, though, I decided it is still a step deeper.  I think the best description of our purpose considering Genesis to Revelation, Heaven to Hell and everything in between is that we were made to please God.  Read Colossians 1:3-20, Ephesians 5:1 – 15 and Hebrews 11:6, just to mention a few passages.  I think you’ll agree the only why that makes sense behind all the steps and that precedes all the results of the Christian life is that we were created to please God.

So here’s my attempt at a diagram for this.  Notice that the tests and artificial results are left out.  God handles the tests and He’s not into artificial rewards.

This puts salvation, right living, strong families and blessings in perspective.  Entertaining, inspiring worship services are part of the picture too, as results that we might experience.  These steps and natural results are important and good, but we will lose focus and effectiveness if we them make them important apart from the purpose.

It took me a long time to get here, but how does this apply to leading worship?  I think there are two points to make in this regard.

First off, consider the commandments.  In our diagram, the commandments would be considered steps toward the purpose.  We are obedient because it pleases God (Hebrews 13:16 is one example in Scripture).  And when Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment is, He said it’s to love God fully.  While it’s hard to argue what the first step toward the purpose is, certainly this could be considered one of the first.  Or as some translations put it, it’s the foremost commandment.

When we lead worship in a service, we are modeling one clear way in which people express their love for God.  It is primary in process and importance.  What a huge responsibility we have as we start a congregation along the path toward pleasing our Creator!

And secondly, when it comes to singing and praise as an assembly, we know from the Bible that it is a sure way to please God.  We can safely conclude that true worship can be expressed through other skills and talents that we exercise such as making beautiful paintings or displaying physical strength in sports.  There are countless ways we glorify God as individuals, but we know from the earliest history of God and His people that He is pleased in hearing musical praise expressed to His glory.  When we model praise in this form, we have no doubt that we are giving His people a taste of what it means to fulfill their purpose in life.

I would argue that as our society’s education and entertainment have become void of God, my point here illustrates why songs of worship have overtaken the landscape of popular Christian music.  Though our culture is steeped in Consumerism and our spiritual life has been weakened collectively, the heart beats on and the heart is at the core of our purpose–bringing pleasure to our Creator.

As leaders of worship, let’s model lives of adoration to God with the ultimate goal of pleasing Him.  If this results in worship services that excite and entertain, let’s enjoy those blessings with thankfulness.  Just never let those things take the focus off our true purpose.

How People Mess Up Everything – A Prelude to the Importance of Leading Worship

I had to meet with the administrators in the school district where I work once.  To frame my thoughts, I put together a short presentation that used an early version of the graphic below.  I saw one of the administrators taking notes, so I thought maybe I was onto something with this insight.

I’ve more recently come to believe it sums up everything.  I used it in a presentation at a retreat for our worship team a few weeks ago and that’s why it ends up here.  To see what it has to do with worship, though, I have to explain the usefulness of the graphic in general.

All the things we do in life, whether we take time to think of it or not, we do for a reason–a purpose.  When there’s a purpose worth doing something for, there’s a system of other important pieces.  There are the steps that must be done to accomplish the purpose.  There are results of achieving the purpose, some of which are natural and some of which are artificial, often created to encourage people to work for the purpose.  And somewhere in the system there are (or can be) tests to see if the purpose is being accomplished.

The graphic doesn’t show all the ways in which these might relate, but it is a simplified flow of the key relationships.  What we must take from this diagram is not the list of parts or the relationship, because I think in general those things are pretty obvious.  Instead, there are two key points:

• All of these pieces are important, but within the system none of them are more important than the purpose.  In fact, they only derive their importance from the purpose.
• Also, and this is the big thing, it takes most people less than 15 minutes to completely lose focus and start acting as if one of the pieces is really the purpose.

Read that second point again because it is so vital to acknowledge this.  It is the most normal thing for a group of people to be a part of a common goal, yet many or all of them can be missing the point.  We know this from experience, but I point it out with the diagram so we can visualize the important relationships of the system in question and so we can have a common language for discussing priorities in working toward the purpose.

To make this very clear I usually use the following diagram as an example because almost everyone has been part of an education system.  Though we could argue quite a bit about the real why behind education systems, or schools, for now let’s just sum it up as learning.  It might look like this:

As you may know, there are some common ways people get the priorities mixed up and start making the pieces more important than the purpose.  For example:

• Students will focus on the grade or getting credit and cheat on the “test”, which might not be a formal examination.  Parents will make this likely by increasing the importance of  grades in the home.  By making the artificial result more important than the purpose, the system breaks down.
• We often elevate a piece’s importance above the purpose because of the role we play in the system.  For example, a teacher (one who primarily resides in the “steps” part of the diagram) might teach only the way he learned because he knows that was the necessary step that he took to reach the goal of learning.  Not acknowledging there could be many valid steps or paths leading just as effectively to the goal, his preferred way gets too much focus and it hurts students working their way through the system.
• And some foolishly believe, or at least act as if, an artificial result is a sign of having achieved the purpose.   Anyone close to the education system knows that a person’s degree, diploma or high G.P.A. is not necessarily an indication that the person learned the subjects in question.

To illustrate my point about people messing up the priorities and missing the point very quickly, one only need to talk to a kindergarten or first grade teacher.  Better yet, observe a class.  I used to teach high school math and I figured the system broke down around 6th grade.  When I watched first graders practicing subtraction in the computer lab, though, I realized it happens much sooner.  Students shared answers or used trial and error to progress through the online practice.  Even then getting done with the assignment (a step) had replaced the goal of learning.

But enough of trivial things like education.  Instead, I want to get to the real heart of the matter–the purpose of our very existence.  How does this relate to why we are here in the first place?  In the next part I’ll tackle that from a Christian perspective and show how leading worship fits in.

 

God’s Classroom

Last weekend we had a worship retreat for the team at church.  It went quite well.  It was very informal, but I think it was productive.  Time will tell.

The main point of the retreat was that we can only lead to the extent that we worship God individually.  We focused on a regular time of meeting with God, which is really the heart of worship.  In that time, I encouraged them to focus on thankfulness and to listen to what God is teaching in life.

I have a cousin who’s an international speaker on the topic of prayer and intimacy with God.  He taught me years ago to ask this question daily:

After 24 hours in God’s classroom, what did He teach you today?

I’m not great about trying to answer that daily, but I do record regular journals based on that question.  God teaches us if we’re willing to listen.  We have to trust there’s a lesson.

When God took on flesh is it any coincidence that He was a teacher?  We learn from day one and the lessons never stop.

I think every song ever written from the heart came from someone who was learning what God was teaching.  All those artists who pay attention to life are in tune, to some extent, with what God is trying to say.  Of course, not all would phrase it that way.  Maybe they’d deny it came from God or maybe they’re just unaware.

But it starts with an expectation that there’s a lesson.  Then the trick is to pay attention.

The Family Band

I had some fun with the wife and kids on this song.  I had posted a version here previously, but it wasn’t very good.  There are many more hours of work in this one, but it’s still far from perfect.

My son (age 11) played some of the drums and my daughter (age 12) did some of the synth parts.  My wife added vocals in the obvious places.

Previously this song was done with a bridge, but I left it out on this version.  The whole song, then, can be played with the chords Bm D A G throughout.

Always Thankful

I’m bad at it, but I’m sure that joy and worship spring from a heart of gratitude.  An attitude of thankfulness is a sign of a trusting heart that rests in God’s provision.

I remembered this story today from The Hiding Place.  I found the excerpt in full on this website.  It is my favorite story on being thankful and a must read for anyone who is going through trials.

http://www.broadcaster.org.uk/section2/transcript/hidingplace.html