I wrote this originally in August of 2012, but thought I would share it today because (it seems) I often need a refresher.
There is a way of sharing the gospel that makes people wish it was true, even if they believe it’s not. At least, Tim Keller thinks so (The Faith to Doubt Christianity).
There is a way of sharing the gospel that draws people in first because it’s beautiful. Not at first because it’s reasonable or socially responsible or sweet sounding, but because it is simply beautiful.
I know we can do battle about beauty – what it is and who decides – but that’s for another day (and a day that’s already been).
Today, I’m trying to be a student of this kind of gospel sharing. I’m trying to understand what it means to put the beauty of redemption on display – to draw back the curtain on the glorious story acted out on the living stage. I’m trying to remember what it felt like to see the hero die for the villain… and the horrible knot in my gut when I realized the villain was me.
To share a beautiful story, one must believe the story is beautiful.
And for that, I must go and sit in the theatre. I must watch wide-eyed and remember every interaction and every awe-inspiring stage direction. I must hang on every word because every time I know the villain is doomed, but every time the story plays out opposite what I am sure I know. And it is beautiful.
To share a beautiful story, one must first believe the story is beautiful.
There is a way to share the gospel that makes a person sit on the edge of their seat and hang on every word. There is a way to share the gospel that makes one appreciate and even wonder at the beauty so much that one wishes it was true.
I want to learn this way.
And so I must go again to the theatre.
Kris Orlowski is not in the indie/folk Nashville crowd I usually electronically network to mine for new melodies, but maybe that’s why I’m hooked to his arrangements.
They are not simple – they didn’t just accidentally happen in someone’s garage (nothing against spontaneously inspired music in the middle of the night after friends reunite). These notes are artfully placed – pulled by strings and strums and voices and drums.
Maybe I’m just in thatkind of place where music has more sway, maybe I am vulnerable to greater affection. Maybe. But maybe we are designed for such affections to stir us awake. Maybe we are far too easily pleased with the aesthetic menu of the top 40.
I think it’s more than maybe.
I know, not everyone feels a shift in his or her soul at the same sound, it would be silly to expect such a thing in a world with so many glorious differences. But, I do think we were created with a soul that senses beauty and greatness and … well, the fingerprints of the Creator in this created world.
When we have those moments of sight or sound or touch, I think our soul is shaken out of the far too easily pleased rut to desire more of the best the Creator offers. The beauty and earthly glory in music is a signpost that awakens my heart and points to what is most beautiful. Lesser things start to sound flat and dull and pale.
My musical preferences may not be for everyone, but I do believe God is inviting my soul into wakefulness to appreciate what He has made beautiful when the world settles for far lesser things.
This past weekend, I heard the acoustic version of this new song by Leeland and the story of how the song came about. The original words were penned by Lawrence Tribble in the 1700s after he was inspired by the famous preacher George Whitefield (more here) who preached revival during America’s Great Awakening with Jonathan Edwards.
Are we ready to be awake again?
Here are some of my new favorites, shaking my soul from its “too easily pleased” stupor.
Sometimes, just the song will do.
Sometimes, singing, “whoa” is the perfect kind of melody.
Sometimes, freedom looks like harmonies.
Enjoy this little gem, friends! You can get it free on Noisetrade right now, so share away! I’m probably (hopefully) on a plane right now singing along to this song, too.
There are a lot of reasons I’m crooning this jam from Milo Greene. It’s not because I know what he’s about – I don’t. I am just the kind of person who has a soundtrack to my days and this is making the list.
This song got stuck on me because I wish my clients would sing it. Some of them do, yes. Some of them want their kids back more than they want anything else in life. And when I get their voicemails about completing treatment or a picture text of the parenting class they are attending, a little part of me leaps with them for joy. Some of them are the reason I have a job – because they prove change is possible.
Others of them, well… I have to sing these lines on their behalf. I’m not sure how badly they want their kiddos back in their care, even though I am sure that they love their littles. But I want them to be reckless with their love – I want them shaken out of the stupor that addiction has buried them inside. I want to see them look those littles in the eyes and say, “Don’t you give up on me. Don’t you do it.”
Because, sometimes I wonder if the children want to. I wonder if they are tired of getting tossed about. I wonder if they get lonesome for home – one that stays in the same place with the same people. I wonder that.
And then there’s the other thing. There’s the other thing I think when my day’s soundtrack is stuck on this song.
I know the song isn’t about holiness or the Lord or probably anything spiritual. But, my heart is the Lord’s and I suppose it always stretches to hear Him even in unlikely places. And when I hear this song, I can hear my heart singing to the Lord about my holiness.
I know, sounds strange.
I’m just so far from holy – so very far from even feeling like there is progress, sometimes. And those times I imagine God shaking His head at my efforts as He patiently directs my steps (often in the direction opposite my footprints).
My friend and I read Kevin DeYoung’s book, “Hole in Our Holiness” and went to the Desiring God conference last fall where both Piper and DeYoung spoke. The incredible importance of our holiness sunk in so deep that it’s in almost every conversation we have now.
Though we are called positionallyholy as sons and daughters of the Lord, bought with the price of Christ’s shed blood, we are still being sanctified. That is, we are in the process of becoming holy right now, in this life.
And so, when I sing this song a bit of my heart asks the Lord not to give up on me. I know the progress is slow. I know I go backwards as often as I go forwards. I know I need to learn lessons I’ve already been taught.
But, I know [far above everything else I know] that the Lord will not give up on His sanctifying work. Even as I plead for His patience I am believing that He is giving it in grace. He has called me, and therefore He is doing a work that will be brought to completion.
For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.
(Romans 8:29-30 ESV)
My holiness, the messy progress of it all, is a victory I can claim in this moment. I know I’m not near finished – there’s a whole lot more in my life that needs sanctifying. But, to the degree that my heart mourns my waywardness as I sing this song, to that degree my heart is lifted with hope that God won’t ever give up on the progress.
The progress of my holiness is His alone to claim. He receives the glory for every victory over sin and He will not fail.
I guess that’s the difference between putting your hope in a person and putting your hope in God.
Just take a listen to this devotional (designed for tikes) read by the author, Sally Lloyd-Jones. And then maybe spend some moments thinking about God’s invitation for you into His forever happiness. Today, He is inviting you to glorify Him because he knows what your heart needs to be happy… Him.
Sometimes, the simplest lessons are the most affecting. The mature believer is not one who is found to be the most well-read in doctrine or the most well-versed in competing theologies. No, the mature believer is one found accepting the invitation to glorify the Lord, believing boldly while knowing it is by grace that one receives.
Paul Tripp says it better in this clip, “Knowledge Does Not Mean Maturity.” He is speaking to pastors in the ministry, but I confess my puffed up chest about knowing things and “academizing the faith.”
He says, “You can be theologically astute and be dramatically spiritually immature.” That’s a crazy bold statement and it hits hard with the growing number of reformed thinkers.
And that is why I’m drawn humbly into the pages of a children’s devotional – knowing that I will come before the Lord always as a child. I will always need more of His wisdom, grace, strength, love, and kindness.
And He will always invite me to shake off my pretenses and dance with joy, unashamed, in His forever happiness.
I highly recommend picking up a copy of Thought To Make Your Heart Sing and don’t feel like you have to give it to a little one, either.
Children are magnificent when it comes to storytelling. Mysterious, but magnificent. Sometimes I wish I could unlearn whatever made me tell stories any other way. What are your thoughts on Asa and Toby in this little tale?
And do you think scared is really scared of the things you like?
When did we let someone run away with this weighty word and drown it in hedonism?
When did we start using it to describe cupcakes and shallow conversations and crude innuendos?
It’s a bit of a fight today, so I’ve got delight on my brain… swimming around there and trying to evade my desperate fingers. I believe, I believe, I believe. Help my unbelief, Lord – that delight is impossible and evasive and illusive and less than rapturous.
I’m stealing it back and believing it means pleasure and enjoyment and rapture. My soul is waking up to pleasure and enjoyment and rapture in the moments where it feels illusive because I am believing delight is more than what we’ve made it.
I believe God wrote the definition of delight. And He wants it to define my life.
Referencing 2 Corinthians 4:6 in “Future Grace,”John Piper says that, “saving faith in the promises of God must include spiritual delight in the God of the promises. … Delight in the glory of God is not the whole of what faith is. But I think that without it, faith is dead.” And later he explains,
“It is not merely the security of the promises that frees us from motives to sin; but also the sweetness of the beauty of God in the promises. It is the spiritual nature of the things promised. When we apprehend the spiritual beauty or sweetness of what is promised, and delight in it, not only are we freed from the insecurity of greed and fear that motivate so much sin, but we are also shaped in our values by what we cherish in the promise (see 1 John 3:3). If we cherish the beauty of Christ in the gospel, we will cherish behavior – even painful sacrificial behavior – that reflects that beauty.” (p. 203)
But, who is John Piper? Does Scripture really say we should be delighting in the spiritual beauty of what is promised and the One who promises?
Christians often (maybe too quickly) grasp promises and make them ‘givens’ – the kind of phrases you run to when you’re worried the IRS will knock on your door or when you’re afraid of getting fired. “But, God is good and He promises to be good to me!” we might say to ourselves.
Though it is true that God is good, Piper helps us understand how delighting in His promises is different than assuming the benefit of His promises. Our delighting in His promises is freedom – moment by moment – from believing the lies that threaten to entangle us in this world. This delighting in the promises is never an end, but a great catalyst as we delight in the beauty of the One who promises.
Delight pours out delight and the well is infinitely deep!
I’m testing the depths today, but I have not yet found the floor. For every desperate moment I reach deeper, and there I find a delight that frees me from worry and fear. It’s not just my job that needs this deep well of delight – it’s my thoughts, my free time, my Tuesday nights, my phone calls, my lunch hours, my relationships, my family – it’s everything that needs redeemed.
If Christ is my greatest treasure, then everything (ev-er-y-thing) else is a secondary variable. No matter how convinced I am that my day could be ruined with one email, phone call, encounter, fight, bill – there is one most important trump card called Christ. If I dive in to delight in His promises, reveling in the security and weight of them, I will stay swimming in the delight of God’s beauty, that He would promise anything at all.
Are you overwhelmed yet?
Steal the word delight back today
and let LOVE fly like cRaZy
You make known to me the path of life;
in your presence there is fullness of joy;
at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
(Psalm 16:11 ESV)
Delight yourself in the Lord,
and he will give you the desires of your heart.
(Psalm 37:4 ESV)
Rejoice in the Lord always,
and again I say rejoice!
(Philippians 4:4)
Also, see this helpful devotional that sparked my thoughts from David Matthis over at Desiring God, “He Wants You Happy.”
It was like a wave washed up and stole the sand away – as if I stood looking down at my sand covered ankles wondering what was underneath and then a wave broke into the frame and stole the sand away.
The wooden pews in the downtown church on the corner were cramped with every version of hipster and we sang shoulder to shoulder:
In Christ alone my hope is found
He is my light, my strength, my song
This Cornerstone, this solid ground
Firm through the fiercest drought and storm
And the wave washed up and stole the sand away. What an amen I heard my heart say in those moments! What a beautiful discovery to listen as the Lord tells me once again about the firm ground on which I stand. It was like a deep breath that turned up the corners of my mouth and filled my ribs with certainty.
God was singing His sovereignty over me, reminding me of His grace. God was breaking into my small viewing frame to wash away the sand covering the very firm foundation.
And I am not afraid.
I am standing on a firm foundation and God is washing away the shifting sand at my feet.
We are the loved ones, friends of God indeed.
…
may the days stay sweet, may your steady heart beat
be the good in me, the good in me
I’m looking at my week today. I’m just sitting here on this side of Monday thinking – what stories will unfold before next Monday comes? How will I step into the miracles of grace God has authored this week? What will those joyful moments look like and when will I do battle in the moments of temptation? What treasures are waiting to be discovered in the most unlikely of places?
I’m still on this side of Monday, just barely, and I’m ushering it in with Sandra McCracken’s song, “Dynamite” because I guess I want to think on the weight of another regular week. Yes, life goes on – an unsteady rhythm in an unsteady and shifting world that somehow feels routine. Another 9 am start to another five day week that’s about to happen… and these lines are breaking in to shake me free of going through the Monday motions.
You may not be in a place to imagine anything this morning, and if that’s the case you might want to come back and read this later because McCracken paints a picture you are meant to see in your mind’s eye.
“The heart takes what it wants, like dynamite.”
Dynamite is not a gentle thing – not a pleasant or friendly thing. It is unforgiving and indiscriminate in its destruction. And this is the image McCracken uses to talk about the heart: dynamite. That’s ugly.
I don’t like to think about my heart like destruction – the kind that thunders and smokes and overwhelms. I don’t like to think about a lot of ugly things. On this side of Monday, I am thinking about how desire is lit like dynamite.
“Those who have ears, as the smoke it clears, will see things as they are
To bend the will, you first must change the heart.”
But I’m also thinking about the moments before destruction is guaranteed – those moments when the will can still be bent by a change of heart.
Where are those moments in my today?
When will my heart race to take what it wants this week?
Oh, I know there will be many times. My heart is fickle and fragile and forgetting. I want things I’ll never admit to wanting and this week will not be any different than last week.
But, maybe if I know my desire like dynamite, I will listen for a different sound.
“Will we choose the noise of our desire or the hope that makes no sound?”
Maybe, I will choose to say “Yes!” to all the promises God has given me in Christ – all the ways He has provided the power to bend the will of my flesh by the change of my heart. Destruction is not unavoidable. The noise of desire is not so deafening that the silent sound of hope cannot penetrate it. A hope that does not disappoint (Romans 5) is as brilliant and as sure as this morning’s sun.
In 2 Corinthians 1:20 we read, “All the promises of God find their ‘Yes!’ in Christ.”
The God of creation sees our desire like dynamite and yet still offers a hearty and infallible YES in the person of Christ, who secures every promise God has ever given. Within this profound security, we can say “Yes!” to those promises – to the hope that makes no sound.
We can walk out this week in a way that doesn’t leave destruction in our wake.
I am reading through Future Grace by John Piper and this particular post is inspired by his words in Chapter 7 as well as Sandra McCracken’s song.
How can you just not show up to see your little baby girl? What is more important?
I’m shaking off my judgments and getting a good helping of humanity today – the unfinished, raw, and unruly kind of humanity. We are all capable of this, we are.
Still, it’s tearing me up.
This is the love I wish all the children could crawl into – the kind that never leaves and always stays, the kind of love that is older and stronger than this breath of life, the kind of love that has roots deep like a tree.
I don’t know who this song is sung to, but I’m singing it today.
Sometimes melodies are just better than plain words.
MUSINGS IN THE MIDST 