Musings – When the Trite Becomes Profound … Again

Acronyms are great mnemonic devices. I can think of a number of them, and sometimes I can recall the list they were designed to help me remember. There’s one for the colors in the visual spectrum, another for the 9 planets in order (and I wonder how that has changed now that Pluto has been demoted), another for the 12 cranial nerves in order, another for the phases of cellular division, the list goes on and on.

One that I came to appreciate as a young teenager is “GRACE = God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense.” As a young believer, I connected with it; but, as I grew in my faith, I began to regard it much in the way that a young teen may think about the TV shows he enjoyed as a 5-year-old. Until just a few days ago, I thought that it was a trite oversimplification of a deep and profound truth. It was fine for new Christians, but it didn’t go deep enough for more mature believers … or so I thought.

With that narrow perspective, I almost missed a useful song for our 8:30 service. It’s on a CD I’ve had for over a year. It was co-written by Stuart Townend (one of my favorite writers of new hymns for the 21st century church) but I disregarded it when I first heard it because it uses that phrase … one that I thought I had outgrown … in the first few seconds of the song.

Has God ever taught you something new out of something you thought you knew well? That’s what has happened with that phrase in my heart. As a young believer I was focusing on two things: Christ’s expense, and riches. I was focusing on the “Jesus Paid It All” part of the equation … and waiting for the riches that I thought should come. We need to outgrow that interpretation and realize that because they are God’s riches, they will probably look different from our immature expectations.

I think many of us spend an awful spiritual energy just looking for riches any kind, rather than opening our hearts to experience the riches God wants to give us. God’s riches are the only ones worth Christ’s expense. The song is “Grace”, and here’s the truth:

[be]cause it’s grace; there’s nothing I can do to make You love me more, to make You love me less than You do. And by faith I’m standing on this stone of Christ, and Christ alone, Your righteousness is all that I need; [be]cause it’s grace.

It strikes me as odd that God takes us back to the simple stuff to help us grow. That’s enough to think about for now.

As we were preparing to enter the Love to Pray study a few weeks ago, a song written by Don Schlosser, a seminary friend of mine, came [back] to my mind. It was a part of his Masters Degree thesis project … a musical about revival. A major part of the focus was the role of prayer in major spiritual awakenings in the recent history of the church, leading to a dramatic climax in the song “I Wish with Our Songs.” I was so moved by the song that I asked him for a copy of it … and close to 20 years later I am amazed that I still had it filed so that I could lay my hands on it easily. Here is the text:

Verse 1
I wish with our songs we could move you to pray.
I wish there were notes or words we could say
To burden your hearts for the need of our day.
I wish we could move you to pray.

Verse 2
I wish with these hands we could show how we feel.
I wish there were signs to stir up your zeal;
Zeal to plead God to make images real.
I wish we could move you to pray.

Bridge
But maybe the fullness of time is not here.
Maybe the darkness will be yet more drear.
Maybe our children will finally hear
And their generation will struggle in prayer.

Verse 3
But we believe God can be moved by your tears.
We know that His Spirit is somehow right here.
We thirst for revival, we know it is near.
I wish we could move you to pray.

(Verse 1 repeats here)

You may hear it as a solo some time in the next few weeks. Keep your ears open for it. I’m working on transcribing it from Don’s handwritten manuscript. Technology has come a long way in 20 years. I’m glad we don’t have to hand-write everything any more.

That’s enough to think about for now.

Happy New Year - Love to Pray begins

I have always found that a holiday on Monday puts me behind for the rest of the week. It was great to be lazy all day on New Years Day, but I have yet to get caught up. That’s not really the pattern I wanted to establish going into 2007, but it’s what I have to work with and it will have to do. I can begin a new pattern next week.

Speaking of new endeavors, I am excited about what we will encounter as a congregation going through the Love to Pray study. I have talked briefly with Nettie Young about her experience. Among other things, it was her testimony of what the study has meant in her life that prompted your staff to examine the material and choose to lead the church through it. I didn’t start the study as early as Blake did (as a matter of fact, I’m only in week one right now … so I’ll only be slightly ahead of the congregation as a whole as we go through it).

I have not yet encountered anything that I haven’t seen or heard before, but some of what I have encountered is truths that needed to be repeated in my heart and life. I don’t expect to encounter much new, but I do expect to encounter God in the study … and I expect to encounter Him in new ways that will make a profound difference in my life.

If you are not already actively involved in a Sunday morning Bible Study class (some of us are on roll in a class but don’t attend frequently), please make the effort to link up. If your Sunday morning responsibilities prevent your doing that, there will be at least one Sunday evening session offered that covers the same material as the classes do on Sunday morning. Even if you can do nothing else, by all means get the book and go through the daily quiet time study. Here’s a nugget from day 2:

If prayer starts with God, then the first order of business as we learn to pray is to learn to listen to God’s whispers, to tune our hearts to him, to respond to his promptings. Perhaps the first prayer of each day should be “Lord, teach me to pray. Help me to understand Your purposes, to feel Your burdens, to see what You see, to hear the groans You hear, so that my prayers may be pleasing to You and may accomplish Your purposes.” (Love to Pray, p.
11)

That’s enough to think about for now.