Music Mondays

1 John features three main themes about God. 

• He is Light - 1:1-3:10
• He is Love - 3:11-5:5
• He is Life - 5:6-21

Our sermon series started into the second of those themes this past Sunday.

One of the key points the apostle John makes is that godly love must be demonstrated:

¹⁶ This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. ¹⁷ If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? ¹⁸ Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.

  As dc Talk put it so succinctly, 'luv is a verb'.  

Music Mondays

"Is it bow season?"

That was the question I heard one of our members ask another yesterday at church as a group of us men were putting our socks and shoes on.

You probably regard that scenario as strange for a number of reasons. 

I find it fitting.

Yesterday was World Communion Sunday and our denomination celebrates communion with a three-piece observance - the Love Feast, Communion, Foot-Washing. We sit around round tables of 6-8 people and have a carry-in dinner after the Worship service. We let each table decide when they want to do feet-washing as the ladies go to a designated room and the guys to another. 

This Tri-Fold Communion mixes all that is good about being a follower of Christ. Serious thought and consideration is given to what Jesus has done for us and how we must approach him. Familial fellowship is enjoyed around delicious food. The special opportunity to serve and be served is present as we follow the very non-American custom of removing our socks and shoes, taking anothers foot, and rinsing it in a tub of water - then letting someone do the same to us. 

After we have imitated Christ in that way and all have had their fill of meatballs, cheesy potatoes, salad, and pie, we dim the lights and partake of the Bread and the Cup. At the end of the service, as a group, we sing the Doxology. 

As we drove home, my mind went back though to that singular question one of our men asked another. Sure it's a basic question, possibly meant to deflect some awkwardness of the foot-washing exercise. But I felt something deeper at play. 

That question was intentional because the one who asked knew the enjoyment his friend got out of that hobby. 

More than that, he knew his friend. 

That is Christian fellowship. In the midst of worshiping in an unusual way, he inquired about life.

Praise God from whom ALL blessings flow - even those of leisure that He enjoys to share with us.

Music Mondays

In May of 1999, just a few weeks away from graduating high school, I fulfilled a life-long dream by attending a dc Talk concert at the Ft. Wayne War Memorial Coliseum. 

We had ground level tickets near a secondary stage that the group used throughout their concert, but predominantly for an unplugged worship set mixing their own songs and others. 

It very much resembled this:

I had the good fortune to be able to be right up next to this secondary stage during their whole set and it was phenomenal. It will always be the best concert I have or will ever attend. It was my favorite band at the height of their significance and artistry. 

I'm sharing this walk down memory lane not just to reminisce, but to also share that classic song. We're beginning a sermon series at church in 1 John which deals with fellowship with God and "walking in the light". God as light and walking in the light are major themes of the book to the extent I could use this song to connect to multiple passages in this letter. 

As the passage which Toby Mac read reminds us, we can claim to be in good standing with God all we want. But if our actions do not match our profession, we are just hypocritical liars. 1 John 1 especially calls us to address our sin - to confess it rather than rationalize it (1:8-9), to depend on Christ rather than deny our problem (1:10-2:2). 

Do we? Are we?

Let us be in the Light as He is in the Light. Let us shine like the stars in the heaven.

Music Monday

It's been awhile, but we are done with vacations and holidays for the time being, so on to Music Monday!

I'm a sucker for songs that incorporate classic hymns and put a new spin on them. This song does that, actually alluding to two traditional songs: 

Big Daddy Weave - "My Story"

Can you name the two songs it references?

Music Mondays

This week I'm featuring a couple things that popped up in my Twitter timeline over the weekend. 

The first features the greatest shooter of all time (with apologies to Larry Legend) getting some stage time at a Lecrae concert.

On the other end of the music genre scale is this SiriusXM video that featured NeedtoBreathe covering a couple songs seamlessly - almost like they wrote the selections themselves.

How good is that? A Jackson 5 classic along with a Otis Redding/Black Crowes song (I had to look it up).

Music Mondays

My most recent Music Monday selections have related to my sermon series through the Minor Prophets of the Old Testament. 

One that quickly came to mind from yesterday's message on Habakkuk was this song from Bethel Music:

Habakkuk is a book expressing confusion at the work of God. "How could he let his people go on in their sinfulness?" "How could a Holy God use a wicked empire to punish a people more righteous than they are?"

In the end, God shows up. He reveals his greatness and majesty and it satisfies Habakkuk, who to paraphrase the end of the book concludes, 'even if my present circumstances are more wasteland than oasis, through it all my eyes are on you and it is well with my soul.'

Habakkuk and this song both challenge us to embrace the proper spiritual perspective. We are called to embrace the view that even if our problems seem overwhelming, we can trust in our Great and Awesome Creator.

This 'story-behind-the-song' clip is worth checking out too.

Music Mondays

Yesterday's sermon was on the book of Zephaniah. 

Zephaniah checks all the boxes of what OT prophets did, in three succinct chapters.

• He criticizes God's people and pagans for their wickedness. Along with that criticism comes vivid descriptions of promised judgment.
  
• He energizes the faithful to persevere through adversity by describing the future hope and restoration God will bring.
  
• He calls the people to repent and seek the Lord's presence before it's too late.

Read works by Dr. Walter Bruggemann and/or my former professor, Dr. Brent Sandy and you'll discover Zephaniah fits the prophetic mold to a 'T'. 

Given that summary of the minor prophet, crafting a worship service around the book didn't seem particularly natural. Our worship planners didn't even know the specifics but knew the broad strokes. Honestly though this seemed like one of those weeks we didn't tie the worship to the sermon in real specific ways.

Yet the way the Lord brought things together did just that. Zephaniah's a book describing how God is the one whose powerful wrath we need saved from, but he's also the only one who can protect and deliver us.

The song we used to close the service captured that idea well in my view. It's a newer 'classic' by Michael W. Smith. Simple yet deep in it's biblical descriptions of who our Lord is.