The Director of Music

Throughout the Psalms you see a little subtitle that reads, “to the director of music.” This is the guy who had the privilege of leading the songs way back in the day. David would write something from his heart to God, then he would pass it on to the director of music, and the director would use the lyrics (along with some killer Jewish music) to lead the entire assembly in praise and adoration of the Lord God Almighty.

I wonder if anyone from the assembly ever got mad because the director of music did not pick their favorite Psalm that week.

I wonder if the assembly ever sang about repentance and sang about bowing down before God while they remained standing.

I wonder if the assembly ever grew tired and bored of singing the praise chorus “His love endures forever” when the director chose Psalm 136.

Unfortunately, I’ll bet they did get mad at the director, I’ll bet they did remain standing, and I’ll bet they did grow tired and bored. Maybe not in the beginning, but once they got comfortable, once they got proud –just as God warned them that they would.

In the eighth chapter of Deuteronomy, God says, “When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the Lord your God for the good land he has given you. Be careful that you do not forget the Lord your God, failing to observe his commands, his laws and his decrees that I am giving you this day. Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, then your heart will become proud and you will forget the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. He led you through the vast and dreadful desert, that thirsty and waterless land, with its venomous snakes and scorpions. He brought you water out of hard rock. He gave you manna to eat in the desert, something your fathers had never known, to humble and to test you so that in the end it might go well with you. You may say to yourself, "My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me." But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your forefathers, as it is today” (Deuteronomy 8:10-18, NIV).

When the people became proud and sang from their minds rather than from their hearts, God had to crush them. After all of those years of singing songs about God’s faithfulness, how could they think for one minute that He would not be faithful to bring about the calamity that He promised to bring about? For the rest of the passage from the eighth chapter of Deuteronomy goes on to say, “If you ever forget the Lord your God and follow other gods and worship and bow down to them, I testify against you today that you will surely be destroyed. Like the nations the Lord destroyed before you, so you will be destroyed for not obeying the Lord your God” (Deuteronomy 8:19-20, NIV).

I wonder what it was like to be the director of music in the assembly when the people gave mere lip service to the Lord.

I wonder what it was like for the director of music to go from leading Psalms to leading Lamentations.

I wonder if we will learn from our past.

Discouragement

It has been said, “Discouragement is the tool of the enemy.” Although I do not entirely disagree with this statement, I would point out that I have never found solid Biblical proof for this statement. It seems true that Satan would be responsible for any discouragement that may come upon us, especially since Christ would bring us encouragement (see Philippians 2:1).

Regardless of whether or not discouragement is the tool of the enemy, it is certain that truth and honesty are tools of God:

Into your hands I commit my spirit; redeem me, O Lord, the God of truth. (Psalm 31:5)

Send forth your light and your truth, let them guide me; let them bring me to your holy mountain, to the place where you dwell. (Psalm 43:3)

These are the things you are to do: Speak the truth to each other, and render true and sound judgment in your courts. (Zechariah 8:16)

An honest answer is like a kiss on the lips. (Proverbs 24:26)

To be truthful and honest, I am discouraged. It doesn’t necessarily help when people say, “Don’t be discouraged, that is a tool of the enemy!” Well maybe it is, but to combat that tool, I am using two weapons that are clearly from God, truth and honesty.

Surely you desire truth in the inner parts; you teach me wisdom in the inmost place (Psalm 51:6)

Kings take pleasure in honest lips; they value a man who speaks the truth. (Proverbs 16:13)

I am discouraged, and I need Jesus.

Too often the church acts as if once you have given your life to Jesus, you will never have any problems again. They say, “Don’t be discouraged, you have Jesus” (of course the hidden idea is that if you are discouraged, then you must not have Jesus). Well the trouble with that line of thinking is that it actually subtracts Jesus from the equation. It keeps us from being truthful and honest. It keeps us from coming to Jesus and saying, “Dude, I am discouraged, and I need You!”

Do you think that Jesus is afraid of discouraged followers? No. As a matter of fact, those are the exact people that He came to earth to connect with. He did not come to heal the healthy, but the sick (see Matthew 9:12; Mark 2:17; and Luke 5:31).

God is not impressed when we tell each other, “We won’t be discouraged because that is a tool of the enemy.” He is impressed when we come to Him completely broken in truth and honesty, and say, “God, I am discouraged. I need You. I need Your encouragement. I cannot get through this without You.”

I think that at the heart of this problem is a misunderstanding of salvation. I am encouraged to know that the Bible points out that we have already been saved (see Ephesians 2:8-10), that we are currently being saved (see 2 Corinthians 2:15), and that some day we will be saved (Philippians 1:28). The truth of salvation is three-fold, and this truth is of utmost importance. The error is in accepting Christ and then thinking that it was a magical time in your life which now enables you to grit your teeth and get through anything that comes your way; to put on a cool, happy face even though you are sweltering inside; to live as if you already have Christ and not as if you still, in fact, need Him today, and will still need Him tomorrow. The error is in hoping that some day you will attain a level of super-spirituality which will enable you to live not in complete dependence upon God, but rather as a fourth member of the Trinity. This mentality, by the way, is also a tool of the enemy.

The good news is that God does want us to be encouraged. He does want us to overcome the enemy, but it can only be done in His strength, not our own. Jesus has saved us, but He wants to keep on saving us so that on that great day He will, in fact, save us.

So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness. See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ. For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and you have been given fullness in Christ, who is the head over every power and authority. (Colossians 2:6-10)

If anyone is discouraged today, as I am, let us together approach the throne of grace, where Jesus Himself is seated. Let us approach with truth and honesty, and let us ask Him for the encouragement we need.

Expect Great Things

There is a popular department store that has the slogan, “Expect Great Things.” It is interesting. I wonder how many customers enter the double-doors of this store expecting great things. What kind of “great things” can a department store really offer?

The slogan “Expect Great Things” was originally attributed to the English missionary William Carey. In Northampton, England, on May 30, 1792, this great missionary to India delivered a powerful sermon urging God’s people to “expect great things; attempt great things.”

Carey was a man who was passionate for the glory of God. Not only that, but he was realistic about who God is and what God is capable of. He was a man who expected great things from God, attempted great things for God, and accomplished great things through God.

The Bible powerfully portrays a God who consistently goes above and beyond the expectations of His people. When the people of Israel simply wanted out of Egypt, God sent ten different plagues –saying to Moses, "Go to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart and the hearts of his officials so that I may perform these miraculous signs of mine among them that you may tell your children and grandchildren how I dealt harshly with the Egyptians and how I performed my signs among them, and that you may know that I am the Lord” (Exodus 10:1-2, NIV).

Later, when the people of Israel were looking for someone, anyone to stand against a giant of a man named Goliath, God sent a ruddy boy named David to strike down the oversized obstacle with a single stone. And if that was not enough, God went above and beyond their expectations by anointing this boy to be a great King over God’s people.

And long after the reign of King David, when God’s people were desperately longing for the Messiah to come and restore the kingdom to its former glory, God went as far above their expectations as anyone could ever imagine by sending His Son into the world to suffer and die for our sins, ushering in the Kingdom of God, and offering all people the gift of eternal life. “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him” (John 3:16-17, NIV).

And now James tells us, “If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. But when he asks he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind” (James 1:5-6, NIV).

Or as Jesus said it, "Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!" (Luke 11:11-13, NIV)

God invites us to expect great things from Him. He is our loving Father in heaven. Attempt great things for God, as Moses in Egypt, David in Israel, and William Carey in India have exemplified for us.

I don’t know about the double-doors of a department store, but when you open the doors of a church –expect great things!

Beloved, when you open the door of your heart to God –expect great things…

Being and Doing

If you are like me, you probably have had times in your life when you are at the point where you say to God, “God, whatever you want me to do, I want to do it!” I have said that a lot, actually. I want to do things for God.

A lot of us want to do things for God. He has done so much for us, and so we want to do things for Him. But what I am finding more and more as I walk through this journey of life is that God is not really interested in us doing things for Him. He is more interested in us doing things with Him. He is more interested in us being His child than in us doing the work of His servant. Yes, we are His servants. But yes, we are His children. It is a dual truth.

If we are not careful, Christianity can become too much about doing and not near enough about being. Steve Brown, an author, theologian, and long-time Christian points out this dangerous truth in his latest book, What Was I Thinking?

"A friend of mine says that much of the evangelism and
witnessing done by Christians is a pyramid scheme. The
purpose is to acquire the product (i.e., salvation), sell it to
others, and then train those others to sell it. The problem,
my friend says, is that nobody ever uses the product. We
just sell it."

This is a painful truth. And how often is it true in our own spiritual lives? Jesus Christ has purchased new life for us. It was expensive. It cost Him His very life. Are we using the product, or just trying to sell it? I honestly believe that we can do both, and that is when the lost world around us will actually see the value in the product itself.

Consecrate Yourselves

Consecration is one of those words that we have in the Christian Dictionary that, when spoken it makes us feel both holy and wholly confused. What does it mean, anyway? What did it mean when Joshua told the people, "Consecrate yourselves, for tomorrow the Lord will do amazing things among you” (Joshua 3: 5)? He was telling them to make or declare themselves sacred, to set their own lives aside for a specific purpose. And when they did consecrate themselves, God did in fact do amazing things among them.

But what about us? Does the act of consecration apply to us today?

Absolutely.

The consecration of the Christ follower is something that seems to be lacking more and more in the body of Christ. It seems like church-goers want to be “filled up”, but with no real focus or purpose. There is rarely and attitude of setting aside their lives and desires for the cause of Christ, rather, there is merely a setting aside of Sunday morning for the sole purpose of being filled –or even worse, of filling the pew.

I think of the popular song on Country Music radio today:

Sunday morning, at the church,
and my shoes and my back and my neck-tie hurt,
but I’m in the pew,
and she don’t tell me to…

Is that really what church is all about? Pew filling? How about people filling? Is that what the church is all about?

Absolutely not.

We are to be a people who declare ourselves sacred, and completely set aside our own lives for the cause of Christ. Through us the Kingdom of God is to be made known. Through us God’s will is to be done on earth as it is in heaven.

We are not to be like the followers of Jesus who, after He had filled their stomachs with miraculous bread and fish, “went back and walked no more with Him” (John 6: 66). We are to be a people who would follow Christ to the very end. As Simon Peter pointed out, “Where else would we go?” Jesus has the words of eternal life. He is the Holy One of God (John 6: 68-69).

It is time to get serious about our faith. It is time to get serious about the Kingdom of God. Consecrate yourselves, people of God. God is longing to do amazing things among you.

Consecrate yourselves.

The Lost Art of Meditation

We live in interesting times within an interesting culture. Interesting is not always a bad word, but it sometimes can be. Nearly every culture or moment in time could be described as interesting or unique. Nearly every culture or moment in time has strengths and weaknesses. While this culture and moment in time certainly has plenty of strengths, I can see at least one glaring weakness. We have lost the art of meditation.

We want things now. Right now. Later is too late, and there is far too much time separating right now from later. We are a fast-paced culture. That is how it is and that is how we like it.

However, I have a word of warning for the Christian of this time and culture…

Slow… down… and… take… time… for… God…

Not that God is slow in the way that we understand slowness; however, He is not interested in competing for our attention. In our fast-food society, we have lost the art of Biblical meditation. We want someone else to explain the Bible to us and to do it quickly because we have to be somewhere else, soon.

Even on Sunday mornings, we are a culture who would rather look up to the overhead projection screen (where the preacher had better project the Bible verse that he is talking about) instead of taking the time to locate it in our very own physical, touchable Bible. Then we want the preacher to tell us the revelation he got out of the verse (in short form, please) so that we can move on to another verse and move on with our lives.

But look at what the psalmist says in Psalm 119: 97, “Oh how I love Your law! I meditate on it all day long.” (NIV) The one hundred and nineteenth Psalm is a beautiful Psalm in which the author portrays his understanding of God and salvation. And over and over again he talks about meditating on the word of God.

When is the last time that you just sat down with your Bible, just you and God, and spent time meditating on the word of God, seeking wisdom from the Holy Spirit?

Unfortunately, if we were to write a Psalm today, it would probably read, “Oh how I enjoy your book! I flip through it Sunday after Sunday…”

Meditate on God’s word. Let it infiltrate your heart. Let it change you.

Co-Pilot

I was recently coming home from a quick trip to Nashville, Tennessee, when I saw something that inspired this thought for the week. I had actually stopped to get myself a McDonald’s coffee (which was richer, bolder, and more robust, by the way), when I noticed a sign in the window of a parked car. It said very simply, “God is my co-pilot.”

I was sick.

In my mind, that is the absolute worst mentality that you can possess as a Christian. The heathen at least have the mentality that there is no God, but this “God is my co-pilot” mentality actually says, “I know that there is a God, and I am he.”

God is not interested in being your co-pilot. He is either your Pilot, the Lord of your life, or you are fooling yourself. You will never be the Lord of His life. You are finite. He is infinite. He may be your Parachute, your Savior in time of great need, but never will He be interested in being your co-pilot.

We would do well; however, to adapt the mentality that we are God’s co-pilots… that He is in control and we are just along for the ride. The co-pilot status may still be a bit much for us, though. Slave would be more accurate. Yes, Jesus calls us friend, but He never asks us to take the wheel.

In the message, Eugene Peterson does a beautiful job of paraphrasing the words of Jesus on this subject:

“Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You’re not in the driver’s seat –I am” (Luke 9 23).

God is not your co-pilot. The very thought is an insult to His righteousness. Would a co-pilot lay down His life on the cross? Would a co-pilot shed His blood for the forgiveness of sins? As the old saying goes, only the Captain goes down with the ship.

Amazingly, this Great Captain that I speak of did go down with the ship of our sin, and He rose from the grave. Do not insult the One who was victorious over death by claiming that He is your co-pilot. I would advise you to acknowledge His supremacy, acknowledge your great need for Him, and ask Him if you can get on board with what He is doing in the world. You’re not in the driver’s seat –He is.

The Lesser Light

There is an interesting piece of Scripture found in the Creation story. On the fourth day, when God was creating the sun and the moon, “God made the two great lights –the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night…” (Genesis 1: 16, NRSV).

According to our scientists, this passage of Scripture is inaccurate because the lesser light, or the moon, is not actually a “light” of its own. But I think that this passage is very accurate. Our scientists are not necessarily wrong; they are just missing the important point. What we scientifically know today about the sun and the moon is this: the sun is the source of all light on the earth. It is ultimately the light of the world. The moon; however, also acts like a light only when it is in such a position that it turns its face towards the sun, and nothing is blocking it. In other words, the moon acts like a light when there is nothing standing between it and the sun. The earth itself sometimes acts like a barrier between the two, which are separated by a large distance. But when the earth is not in the way, and the moon is facing the sun, the light of the sun covers the face of the moon, illuminating it, and it acts as a light in the darkness.

Jesus said in John 8: 12 that He is the light of the world. He promises that whoever follows Him will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. He is the great light. And He has also asked us to shine. He tells us that we are the light of the world:

“You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead, they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone on the house. In the same way, let your light shine before all men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5: 14-16, NIV).

God put a parallel physical truth in place on day four to help us understand this amazing spiritual truth today. Jesus is the greater light, much like the sun. Ultimately He is the true light of the world, the source of all light in the Universe. And He has asked us to be the lesser light for Him here on the earth.

We have no light in and of ourselves. We are the lesser light. We need to take a lesson from the moon. We need to put ourselves in such a position that we can turn our faces to Jesus Christ. We need to make sure that nothing is blocking us; nothing is standing in-between God and us. We need to make sure that we put God as such a priority in our lives that nothing… not the earth… not sin… nothing can get in the way. And when we do that, His glory and His light will shine on our faces and illuminate this dark world.