Each one has a hymn: Blessed be your name
In two previous posts, I asked how singing can be edifying to the church and offered one example of how we have attempted to make singing more edifying by attaching the lyrics of the songs to our lives. (See my posts “Each one has a hymn” and “Each one has a hymn: Singing for edification.”) In two other posts, I explained how a brother shared how the song “Jesus draw me ever nearer” in his own life and in doing so edified the whole church and how a sister who had just been diagnosed with cancer (again) edified the church by sharing the hymn “Joy to the World.” In this post, I’m going to share another example of a song that was shared in our gatherings over the last few weeks. This time, it’s a song that I shared with the church… one two different occasions.
Last week, I was with a group of adults and teenagers serving people in Norfolk, VA area in Jesus’ name by working on their homes. Our crew chief, who had more experience with construction than the rest of us, was a great encouragement and help to all of us. Toward the end of one day of work, he got a phone call from his wife. She told him that she received the lab results of some tests that she had taken earlier. It turns out that she was being diagnosed with stage one breast cancer.
After we cleaned up our work site that day, we circled around our crew chief to encourage and prayer for him as he and his wife were getting ready to face this battle with cancer. As we were encouraging him, he encouraged us as well with his trust in God in spite of these circumstances.
I recommended that we sing “Blessed be your name” (by Matt Redman) together. So this is what we sang:
Blessed Be Your Name
In the land that is plentiful
Where Your streams of abundance flow
Blessed be Your nameBlessed Be Your name
When I’m found in the desert place
Though I walk through the wilderness
Blessed Be Your name[prechorus]
Every blessing You pour out
I’ll turn back to praise
When the darkness closes in, Lord
Still I will say[chorus]
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your name
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your glorious nameBlessed be Your name
When the sun’s shining down on me
When the world’s ‘all as it should be’
Blessed be Your nameBlessed be Your name
On the road marked with suffering
Though there’s pain in the offering
Blessed be Your name
Our crew chief wrote about this time together. This is what he wrote to encourage others:
“Today as I was hanging a storm door, I got a call from my wife confirming stage one breast cancer. My crew driver overheard the conversation and asked if he could share with our crew. I said yes, so he called the crew together and shared our story. Our crew closed circle, held hands, and offered up prayers; we then sang ‘Blessed Be Your Name’. We serve an awesome God who placed this crew in my path when I needed to be lifted up.”
After we returned home from our trip to Norfolk, I shared this story with the church here, and again we sang this song together. Once again, people shared how God had proved himself strong and faithful even in “the desert place.”
We’ve found that sharing songs like this in the midst of life as part of our circumstances and situations helps our singing to be more edifying than if we simply sang the songs without discussing the significance to our lives.
Each one has a hymn: Joy to the world!
In two previous posts, I asked how singing can be edifying to the church and offered one example of how we have attempted to make singing more edifying by attaching the lyrics of the songs to our lives. (See my posts “Each one has a hymn” and “Each one has a hymn: Singing for edification.”) In another post, I explained how a brother shared how the song “Jesus draw me ever nearer” in his own life and in doing so edified the whole church. In this post, I’m going to share another example of a song that was shared in our gatherings over the last few weeks.
One Sunday morning, we were talking about one of our sisters. A few weeks earlier, she had been diagnosed with cancer again, and the doctors had only given her six months to live. She had been struggling physically… although she was and still is very strong spiritually. Someone mentioned visiting her, so I called her. It turned out that she had just woke up, and she felt strong enough for visitors.
So, we all piled in a few cars and headed over to her house where we spent the next hour or so talking, singing, praying, reading Scripture, etc. Our intention was to encourage her and her two daughter who were taking care of her. Instead, we all ended up being built up in Christ.
Now, in the past, before she learned that her cancer had returned, she had always responded to times of singing and testimony with something like this: “I always have a praise for my Lord!” This morning – in spite of the cancer and the weak body – she also wanted to share a praise with us. Then, she asked if we could sing “Joy to the World” (by Isaac Watts) together. Yes, “Joy to the World.” It’s much, much more than just a Christmas carol. So, we sang…
Joy to the World , the Lord is come!
Let earth receive her King;
Let every heart prepare Him room,
And Heaven and nature sing,
And Heaven and nature sing,
And Heaven, and Heaven, and nature sing.Joy to the World, the Savior reigns!
Let men their songs employ;
While fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains
Repeat the sounding joy,
Repeat the sounding joy,
Repeat, repeat, the sounding joy.No more let sins and sorrows grow,
Nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make His blessings flow
Far as the curse is found,
Far as the curse is found,
Far as, far as, the curse is found.He rules the world with truth and grace,
And makes the nations prove
The glories of His righteousness,
And wonders of His love,
And wonders of His love,
And wonders, wonders, of His love.
There’s not much more to share about this example. In spite of her physical struggles and her sickness, this sister edified us with her faith in God and her continued desire to praise him!
Church problems? Let’s blame the other guy!
If you’ve been reading this blog for long, then you know that I have a good friend who lives in southern Canada (i.e., Maine) named Dan. He blogs at “Some Church Stuff.” Alot of his writing is sarcastic and edgy.
His last two posts are not on the sarcastic side at all. They are straightforward and, I think, important for all of us to read and consider. The posts are called “Culpritless Crime” and “Blame the Victim.”
I’m not going to quote Dan’s posts, because I think it would be better for you to read both of them. But, I will tell you the point: if the church of Jesus Christ is not living as we should, then it is not the fault of the leaders (pastors). All of us all responsible for following Jesus Christ and helping others follow him. In fact, the problems among the church have arisen because all of us (leaders and nonleaders alike) are not living in Christ among one another.
As said in a comment on the first post above: “It is so easy to point our finger at other people and blame them. It is much more difficult to take stock of where WE are and move on from there, following Jesus into whatever and wherever he leads us, regardless of what has happened in our past.”
Good stuff, Dan! Thanks!
Each one has a hymn: Jesus draw me ever nearer
In two previous posts, I asked how singing can be edifying to the church and offered one example of how we have attempted to make singing more edifying by attaching the lyrics of the songs to our lives. (See my posts “Each one has a hymn” and “Each one has a hymn: Singing for edification.”) In the next few posts, I’m going to share some examples of songs that have been shared in our gatherings over the last few weeks.
One morning, one of our brothers asked us to sing a song by Keith Getty and Margaret Becker called “Jesus Draw Me Ever Nearer (May This Journey).” This is a fairly new hymn (from 2002), and I did not know it.
But, my friend shared that he had been struggling with trusting God lately, and this song kept coming to mind as a prayer to God during those tough times. These are the words that we sang together:
Jesus draw me ever nearer
As I labour through the storm.
You have called me to this passage,
and I’ll follow, though I’m worn.[chorus]
May this journey bring a blessing,
May I rise on wings of faith;
And at the end of my heart’s testing,
With Your likeness let me wake.Jesus guide me through the tempest;
Keep my spirit staid and sure.
When the midnight meets the morning,
Let me love You even more.Let the treasures of the trial
Form within me as I go –
And at the end of this long passage,
Let me leave them at Your throne.
Knowing that God had used this song in my brother’s life, that he had sung it personally as a prayer for God to strengthen his faith, and that he had shared it with us in order to encourage us to trust God helped us all to focus on the words as we sang them.
After we sang, and really throughout the time that we were gathered together, people continued to refer back to the words of the song and our friend’s confession that he was struggling with trusting God. In fact, other shared about their own struggles trusting God.
As we turned to Scripture, we continually saw the theme of trusting God pop up in our conversations, which again reminded us of our brother’s song request.
If he had not shared how God had used this song in his own life, the lyrics would not have been as meaningful to us as a community. Not only did we understand better about what was going on with our brother, we could also see how God was working in his life to strengthen and encourage him, then using him in the same way in our lives.
It’s often difficult for people to think outside the traditional church box
If your understanding of the church falls outside the normally accepted range, then I want to encourage you to have patience with others. I encourage you to listen and to explain carefully and to focus on important aspects.
Jim at “Crossroad Junction” offers an excellent example of this kind of patience in his post “Directed Church versus Participatory Church: A Dialog.”
In that post, Jim relays a conversation that he had with one of his mother’s close friends about gathering with believers in a prison. Jim does not belittle her or get annoyed with her, even when she doesn’t understand in the end.
Here is part of their dialog:
Me: “…I have learned to sit back so they can learn to express what the Lord is doing in them and it always seems to meet the needs of those present. Sometimes I have something to share, usually along the lines of helping to create a framework for them to come forth. This morning, however, like most of the times I join with them, I said a few words as just one of the guys then sat down as they ministered to each other for an hour and half. Like usual, they also ministered to me.”
Her: Silence, then, “Oh, so you are there to make sure they don’t get off track?”
Me: “No, they’ve learned to do a really good job of that themselves. I just go to enjoy their fellowship every now and then and be an encouragement to them or maybe add some foundational input.”
If you read the remainder of Jim’s article, you’ll get a good sense of the life of these prisoners as they live as the church in their prison.
You’ll also see how carefully he answers his friend’s questions. The difficulty, of course, is that she does not understand exactly what he’s talking about because it is so outside of the categories in her thinking about the church.
So, Jim is patience, careful, and includes many explanations and illustrations.
By the way, this is also a terrific way to deal with any kind of disagreement or misunderstanding.
Great example, Jim! Thanks!
Each one has a hymn: Singing for edification
As I said in my previous post (“Each one has a hymn“), Paul said that everything we do when we gather together with other believers should be done for the purpose of building each other up. In the context of that statement (1 Corinthians 14), he specifically mentions singing a couple of times.
So, I asked the question, “When we come together with other believers and when we sing, how do we sing in a way that edifies one another?” The “one another” part of that question is very important. Throughout that chapter – and in other places – Paul specifically differentiates between activities that edify ONLY the individual and activities that edify many. When we are with other believers, our focus is not to be on edifying ourselves, but instead our focus is to be on edifying others. How does that work with singing?
In this post, I’m going to share one way of using singing (hymns and other types of songs) to edify others. Then, in the next few posts, I’ll share a few specific examples.
In the middle section of 1 Corinthians 14, Paul explains that for something to edify others, they must understand what is being said, prayed, or sung. If a person does not understand something (for various reasons) then that person is not edified by it, even if the person speaking, singing, praying, etc. is responding to the Spirit in a way that edifies himself.
For many years, we have asked people to share a song that has been on their heart. We would sing the song together, and then move on to the next song. However, we wanted this to be a more edifying time.
So, a few years ago, when someone requested that we sing a song, we started asking a simple question: “Why do you want us to sing that song?” Usually, the person explains something that has happened in the recent past (sometimes the distant past) and how that particular song corresponds with what God was doing in that instance. In that way, the song shifts from a generic lyric written by someone we don’t know into something that has meaning both to the person and now to the community.
Often, after the person requesting the song explains the significance and after we sing the song together, others will then add their own comments regarding the song and its significance to their own life. Again, the song become even less generic and becomes even more relevant to all of us, knowing more about what our friends are going through.
By the way, there are times when someone (especially our younger or more quiet friends) will request a song simply because “it is one of my favorites.” We do not discourage that at all. In fact, others will often still discuss the significance of the part of the lyrics after we sing together.
Furthermore, as we sing multiple songs and as different people discuss the significance of the lyrics, we find a connection between many (or all) of them. That connection often carries over as we discuss a particular passage of Scripture or a topic together.
In this way, singing hymns and psalms and spiritual songs becomes much less about the music and much more about what God is doing in our lives as individuals, as families, and as a community in Christ.
Do you think that discussing the significance or relevance of the lyrics would be edifying to others? Would this make this song more understandable – at least, would it make the reason for wanting to sing that particular song more understandable? Can you think of other ways to make singing hymns, psalms, and spiritual songs more edifying to the church?
Simple Church? Organic Church? House Church? Missional Community?
I’m so far behind in the blogosphere right now that I’m almost ready to give up and start fresh with posts from today. However, before I went out of town (and away from the computer) last week, I began following a series called “What’s in a Name” by Felicity at “Simply Church.”
So far, Felicity has examined the source and reason for the names “House Church,” “Simple Church,” “Organic Church,” and “Missional Community.” I love the way that she finds positive attributes behind each name.
For me, I prefer just using the name “church” for any gathering of believers. Yes, some believers organize more than others – and yes, sometimes I believe that organization overshadows the church. But, if the people of God are gathered, then the church is there.
On the other hand, I understand that it can be important to use labels such as those above (and others). I hope, though, that those who use various labels use them as descriptive and not as a reasons for separation or pride.
We are all brothers and sisters in Christ, and when we gather we are God’s church.
Each one has a hymn
The title of this post comes from 1 Corinthians 14:26 – “What then, brothers? When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. Let all things be done for building up.” (1 Corinthians 14:26 ESV)
In this part of his letter to the church in Corinth, Paul exhorts the believers to gather together in order to edify (build up) one another. While Paul mentions several different activities such as teaching, prophesying, praying, seeing, etc., he does not explain how to carry out those various activities. Instead, he focuses on the purpose of any activity that is done while gathered with other believers: edification. In fact, the entire chapter is focused on edification.
But, have you ever thought about how hymns and singing would edify others?
We know from other passages that singing can be directed only to God. For example, consider this statement (also from Paul) about singing:
[B]e filled with the Spirit…addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart… (Ephesians 5:18b-19 ESV)
Notice that in the statement above, Paul says that singing is one result of being filled with the Spirit. But, he lists two different kinds of singing: 1) addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, and 2) making melody to the Lord with your heart. So, there is a type of singing that is prompted by the Holy Spirit which is directed from the individual directly to God. But, there is another type of singing which is also prompted by the Holy Spirit which is addressed to one another.
This second type of singing is the kind that Paul is talking about in 1 Corinthians 14 and which Paul says should result in edification (building up). In fact, Paul specifically says in 1 Corinthians 14 that those activities that are specifically between the individual and God but which do not edify others should not take place when we are gathered with others.
For example, in the passages below, Paul says that we should not pray, sing, or speak in tongues (without interpretation) – among other activities – if others are not edified:
What am I to do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will pray with my mind also; I will sing praise with my spirit, but I will sing with my mind also. Otherwise, if you give thanks with your spirit, how can anyone in the position of an outsider say “Amen” to your thanksgiving when he does not know what you are saying? For you may be giving thanks well enough, but the other person is not being built up. (1 Corinthians 14:15-17 ESV)
If any speak in a tongue, let there be only two or at most three, and each in turn, and let someone interpret. But if there is no one to interpret, let each of them keep silent in church and speak to himself and to God. (1 Corinthians 14:27:28 ESV)
Paul never says that the prayer, singing, or tongue speaking are invalid or not in the Spirit. Instead, he says we should only pray, sing, or speak in tongues (among other activities) in ways that are both understandable and edifying when we are with other believers.
Thus, when we are gathered together with our brothers and sisters in Christ, our singing is to God, but it is also to one another (i.e., “addressing one another”). Similarly, our singing is for the purpose of building one another up as much as it is for the purpose of praising God.
So, when we come together with other believers and when we sing, how do we sing in a way that edifies one another?
Back home – resting and catching up
We arrived back home yesterday afternoon (Saturday, June 23, 2012) after a week of working with many teenagers and adults from around the southeast. We were all in Norfolk, VA to serve people in the name of Jesus Christ through various forms of construction and painting. We were not building houses. Instead, we were working on houses that were in bad shape and whose owners could not afford to maintain them.
During the last week, I primarily spent time with two different groups: the people who traveled with me from Youngsville, NC, and the work crew which was made up of people from five different cities in three different states. It was a special time with both groups.
One of the young men in my work crew described it like this on Facebook:
My crew was so encouraging and each and everyone of them was awesome! They were always happy and willing and wanting to work! … Our crew ate together, laughed together, cried together, worked together, bernied together, and loved together. I could not ask for a better crew. It showed that people from around the country that have never met before can work together to spread the Gospel.
I was also very encouraged by the adults and teenagers that I traveled with. I learned so much from them, especially one young lady in particular who stepped outside of her comfort zone in many ways including sharing the gospel with people in the neighbor of the house where she was working.
It was a long week of hard work during hot and humid weather. So, I’m tired, and resting.
I realize that I have many comments on the blog that need a response. I hope to get to them in the next couple of days. Please be patient with me.
Scripture… As We Live It #214
This is the 214th passage in “Scripture… As We Live It.”
Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth. By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him. (1 John 3:18-19 re-mix)
(Please read the first post for an explanation of this series.)