Saturday, November 29, 2008

Mouthing the Words

It's that time of year again. I love music and Christmas music is especially touching to me. Once I became a mother, I was even more entranced by the idea of Christ coming to Earth as a helpless, innocent baby and the music of the season really tugs at my heartstrings. To look at my own babies and imagine the Lord of all creation humbling himself to become one of us, and not just anyone, but a newborn baby - well, it's just wondrous to me.

And so I find myself listening to Christmas music on the radio, and in the stores, and on my Zune... and I start to wonder about these so-called secular artists singing about Christ's birth. Just today I heard Josh Groban sing "O Holy Night" and when he sang about "our dear Savior's birth" I caught myself wondering, *Is* He really Josh Groban's Savior? While some secular artists might be true Believers, surely not every one of them who records Christmas songs is. I'd like to think I would be able to tell by the whether or not they seem to put enough passion into it, but so far that's an imperfect strategy. I wonder what goes through their minds as they sing about holiness and our Savior. When they sing "Christ is the Lord, oh praise His name forever," do the words mean anything at all to them? Does the Holy Spirit prick their hearts, or do they feel like a fraud? Do their hearts beat just a little faster? The Praise Team has a running joke about how, if you happen to forget the words to a song, you can mouth the word "watermelon" and make it look like you know what you're doing. Is that what it's like for some people when they sing songs about Christ's birth? Could they be singing "watermelon" and it have just as much meaning to them? And how does God view their singing about Him? Does it sound like Charlie Brown's teacher: wah, wah, waaaah, wah, waah?

SIDE NOTE: That does not mean that there is no such thing as a born again secular musician. I'm sure there are some out there, in the same way that I'm sure there are Contemporary Christian singers who are NOT born again.

My question doesn't only apply to secular artists, of course. How many people sit in churches every December and sing about their Savior and the wonder of His birth, and they might as well be singing "watermelon" over and over? I'm not just talking about the Easter and Christmas Christians either. I think sometimes we sing about Christ and we don't even think about the words coming out of our mouths, much less whether or not we truly mean them. Maybe over time we get hardened to the meaning behind the songs and they don't affect us anymore. I know I have had periods of time when it seems like the world has me distracted and I might as well be singing "watermelon" instead of "How Great Is Our God" but thankfully that hasn't happened lately. Or maybe we're in some misguided self-protection mode, not wanting to think too hard about the words because if we do, we're afraid we will be overcome by emotion and embarrass ourselves. When I first accepted Christ, I was in high school and I was a crier. Maybe a more accurate word would be "blubberer" because I couldn't get through a service without bawling. Whenever we had the Lord's Supper I was an absolute sobbing mess! After one particularly wet Sunday morning service, the Youth Pastor stopped me and told me this: "Don't ever be ashamed of your tears. That's a sign that you are being sensitive to the Spirit." That has stayed with me all these years. Nowadays I WANT to cry. I never want to get to the place where I am no longer affected by songs about my Lord.

So this Christmas, when you hear a Christmas carol, take some time to really think about the words. When you sing, "Hark the herald angels sing glory to the newborn King! Peace on Earth and mercy mild; God and sinners reconciled" turn that over in your mind for a while. God and sinners reconciled - that means you and me, folks. We're the sinners God came to be reconciled with. Bad sentence structure, but right idea. He came to us, in the most humble of ways, to save us. The baby Jesus was born to die for our sins. That's something worth singing about.

Monday, November 17, 2008

Worship, Take 3: Praise

I'm reading an excellent book by Bob Sorge called Exploring Worship. It has been over 30 years since the first time I voluntarily stood up in church and sang for God (I was about 10 years old and my cousin and I sang "I'll Fly Away") and I feel like I am just now beginning to get a glimpse of what praise and worship are designed to be.

Praise means, among other definitions, "to extol in words or in song; to magnify; to glorify." We can either praise God directly (like we do in the worship service) or indirectly, by praising Him to others. It starts with our minds set on God, who He is and what He has done, but it's not praise until it's put into action or given a voice. I grew up hearing people talk about how you can praise God in your own way and now I am learning that God Himself tells us in His word how He wants to be praised. Did you know that raising your hands in praise isn't just a personal preference? I sure didn't. God tells us in the Bible to raise our hands, just the way He tells us to sing to Him.

I'm probably not alone in thinking this, but I used to think that all praise was supposed to come out of a spontaneous wave of emotion, what some might call feeling the Spirit move. Now I'm learning that we are called to praise even when (and especially when) we don't feel like it. That's considered a sacrifice of praise. It costs something. It's easy to praise God and raise your hands in the middle of an emotional and Spirit-filled service. It's harder to do that when you're worried about how you're going to pay your bills this month. When I think about consciously raising my hands when I'm singing on the Praise Team, I admit to sometimes wondering if I'm being fake. But I have to ask myself whose purpose would it serve best for me to refrain from offering sacrificial (i.e., even when you don't feel like it) praise? The enemy, of course. So I raise my hands in honor of all God is and all He's done and all He's yet to do. If I'm raising my hands in praise even though I'm not necessarily overcome with emotion, there's still nothing fake about it. I don't know that any of us are qualified to judge each other's level of spirituality or worship anyway. That's for God to do. And it's easy to confine yourself to spontaneous worship, when the music and atmosphere are just right and you get those God-bumps up and down your spine. Bob Sorge talks about how some people are like lazy dogs - they sit in the worship service and wait for someone to come along and scratch their worship spot so they will start praising and worshipping spontaneously. Now, I don't personally know anyone like that but I'm sure they exist. I think a little discipline and self-control might be useful in this instance. Can you imagine what would happen in LifeSong Church if one morning every single person in the worship service stood up (another form of praise) and raised their hands in praise during the worship music? I think the roof might just fly off the building!

Along the lines of praising intentionally even if you don't feel like it, we still have to be honest about the condition of our hearts. It's hard to offer true praise when you've got something you need to confess to the Father and repent from. Larry tells the Praise Team and Band that we have to stay "close and clean," meaning stay close to God and keep our hearts clean. How can you offer yourself fully to God in praise when you're trying to hide something from Him? You can't. And how much easier it is to praise God when you are reminded of just how much He has forgiven you!

Sunday, November 16, 2008

Grudge Match

For some reason, I am having a terrible time with my anger today. It doesn't help to know that in this situation, I'm pretty sure I'm on the right end of the argument.

I don't believe in taking sides in the case of friends' marital problems, but I'm having trouble dealing with a particular ex-husband and I'm not sure I understand why. Let's call him T. No one can really know what goes on in a marriage except the two people involved and that's also true of the events leading up to a divorce. I also believe that there's not usually one person who is absolutely blameless in a divorce while the other person is completely at fault. For instance, in my own divorce while I was not the one who walked away and asked for a divorce, I can admit that I was not the easiest person in the world to be married to. I was not and am not perfect. Hopefully I've learned from that experience but you'd have to ask Jon. :-) Anyway, from all accounts T was leading something of a double life. This was not the first time T had been caught by his wife in the same type of behavior but in the past they had worked it out, or so she thought. Once they were separated and the evidence started coming out, the church leadership attempted to practice Biblical church discipline. First, a friend confronted him with his behavior and gave him an opportunity to turn away from it. T denied everything. Then his small group attempted to talk to him about it. No dice. Leaders of the church spoke with him and finally the church was forced to "put him out" because he refused to acknowledge the error of his ways, denying everything until the end. Even now, he has never once accepted responsibility for what he's done and I'm angry. I'm angry on behalf of his children whose home got torn apart. I'm angry because I thought we were friends and he's not who I thought he was at all. I just want him to feel some shame and show some remorse. Instead he just be-bops around like everything is just happy-happy and it drives me crazy! Oh sure, your daughter cries for you sometimes at night but you don't have to think about it because you don't live with her. Yeah, you visit and get to be the fun parent and when you go home, Mommy has to pick up the pieces, sometimes for days after the visit is over.

But why? Am I feeling all this on behalf of his family? Actually, I think some of it is misplaced anger from my own childhood and my failed first marriage. My Dad did eventually tell me one time that he was sorry for what he did to my mother, and you wouldn't believe how affected I was by that apology. My first husband has never apologized to me. Maybe it's the difference between a mother and a father, but I don't know how he could have chosen to leave his own child. OK, so I wasn't the easiest person to live with but I never cheated on him. I can't think of any man I would leave my child behind for. A great deal of my grief over my divorce was because of Dana and the realization that no one else would ever understand the impact it would have on her the way that I could. I'd like to think that she came out of the divorce unscathed but in my heart I know she didn't. No child of divorce is EVER totally unscarred by it. My parents divorced when I was 4 and although I can say with certainty that I had a better life with my mother and stepfather than I would have had if my parents had stayed married, that doesn't mean that I don't carry some wounds. Dana's pretty well adjusted and loves Jon dearly but I know that she carries wounds too. What's startling is that I'll be going on with life and having a pretty smooth ride when all of a sudden I hit a brick wall of anger and slam into it headlong. Just when I think I have it all together I get reminded that I'm not in control.

In the end, I'll have to hold my tongue and let the parties involved work it out the best way they know how. As for my own wounds, I'll have to give them over to God and trust Him to heal me in His time, and stop ripping the scabs off to see if they're healed yet.

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Change is A-Coming

I'm trying not to be bitter, really I am. I confess that John McCain didn't really strike me as the best possible candidate for President, but he was certainly better than Obama in my eyes. And while I didn't think "my" side had much of a chance of winning I still got out there and voted. So now what? My first instinct is to be afraid but God tells me very directly in His word "Do not fear." I know that Obama only won because God allowed it and I know that God has everything in His control. Now if I can only convince my heart to be still and know.

Life at my house is mass chaos right now. Our friend Tracy has temporarily moved in with us, along with her three children (ages 7, almost 2 and almost 2 - yep, twins). We've been friends for 5 years now and when things got tough out there in Vegas she finally agreed to come here, after we nagged her repeatedly for a many months. We're happy to have her and the kids close by but I'd be lying if I said it was easy to go from a family of five to a group of nine. God has been faithful and so far we've not wanted for anything. Tomorrow she has two interviews and I would be shocked if she does not get an offer for at least one of those positions. She's a smart girl with excellent experience in the insurance industry and won't go unemployed for long. One of the best parts has been seeing Karis and Harper enjoy being together. Those two have been friends since the age of two, as I wrote in an earlier post. I think Christmas this year is going to be a blast! And when the time comes for Tracy and the kids to move into their own place, it's going to seem so quiet around here. Dana is planning to move into a dorm at USC-Upstate in January and when Tracy goes we will be reduced from 9 to 4.

The only constant in life is change and change would have come no matter which candidate won the office of President. I'm not sure I can sincerely pray for Obama just yet but God's working on me to get me there. Just another change coming my way...