A Beautiful Harmony

I am not much of a singer. I have an ok voice that breaks down easily into falsetto and mismatched notes. Earlier in my life, I sang in the church choir (when we attended much smaller churches), but I was never quite comfortable. I can only barely read music and am very reliant on being by someone else who can.

However, you do not have to be a great singer to enjoy the harmonizing and worship of being in the presence of God's people lifting up the love of God through Jesus Christ in song. Three times yesterday I was in the presence of God's people lifting up the message of the gospel through song. In the morning, I attended a men's breakfast at Christ Community Chapel and we gathered after breakfast in the sanctuary and sang praises to God.


In the afternoon, we attended the Saturday evening church service and of course part of the service was worshiping God  through song. Finally, later in the evening we met with our "flocks" group. This is a group of people we have been meeting with for years and years. Our kids grew up together and many of them are friends. We started out all in the same church as a group, but now span different churches. But we still get together for fellowship, worship, studying the Bible, and prayer.

Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you, with all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God (Col 3:16).

Singing is the way we can reach out to God and express the love we have for Him. We can certainly do that individually, but when done in community, it expresses both the fellowship we have with God and the fellowship we have with one another. In other words, the true essence of relationship is both vertical (with God) and horizontal (with one another). Worshiping through song best conveys that essence.

I find it especially uplifting to hear men praising God. Debsue and I were talking about it and there is something powerful about men singing in unison to God. With women, it is more a sense of beauty - with men, it is more a sense of power and strength. 

be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord; always giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to  God, even the Father; and be subject to one another in the  fear of Christ. (Eph 5:18-21)

The Chocolate Island

I recently attended a conference in Pittsburgh where they had a "chocolate island". They might as well have moved crack in front of an addict. If that wasn't enough, the lead delicacy was chocolate covered pretzels. Now I did not move my chair and stand there just piling the food into my waiting mouth. I was much more subtle than that. I would walk around the exhibits, then purposely meander over to the chocolate island and sample a few more. Then I would walk around a little more and repeat said process. This occurred throughout the day.

It was not hard to imagine that by the end of the day I was not feeling all that great. It did not seem to me that I overindulged. I dealt with the temptation in bite-sized increments, but over time it wore down my immune system. At the end of the day, I had a two hour drive home and I was very concerned about falling asleep at the wheel. I had to pull off of the road and take a nap. Such were the repercussions of my "sugar high" which came crashing down. I don't think I felt very well for several days afterwords.

Such is the nature of sinful habits. They are very insidious. They creep up on you and gain a foothold. Before you know about it, they completely envelop your mind to where there is nothing else to think about. I think that is precisely what James meant when he said "but each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death. Do not be deceived, my beloved brethren. (James 1:14-16). 

It used to surprise me when alcoholics would say that they haven't had a drink in XX years. What harm could one drink do? Answer, a lot. A friend and co-worker does not eat processed sweets at all. Why? Because he knows as he says that he cannot eat just one sweet - he will eat a whole lot of them. Now for me, sweets are a problem but there are many more habits that wreak havoc with my mind and pull me away from Christ. Believe me when I say that the enemy knows your weakness and what your "chocolate island" is.

The answer is not out of our own will to combat the chocolate islands of life. It requires a supernatural filling of God's Holy Spirit. That is why after a verse like James has, it says "Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow" (James 1:17). Or when Paul says "Do not be conformed to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind" (Rom. 12:2). Or "Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you, with all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your heart to God (Col. 3:16). For every hurdle, there is a spiritual answer.

God provides the answer to our chocolate islands and it involves transformation, not our willpower. Our willpower will get us to a smaller sample size, but will not eradicate the problem. God wants us to come to him and he will supernaturally enable us to not avoid the temptation but overcome it.

What if I Couldn't Remember?

In this morning's Plain Dealer, there was an article about a woman who had had a traumatic brain injury at age 22 which caused her to lose all of her memory. Su Meck wrote a book about the experience called "I Forgot to Remember: A Memoir of Amnesia".  Most amnesia has limited effect both in its severity and in its length of time. Su Meck has what is called retrograde amnesia and results in no previous memory.  One of my favorite movies is 50 First Dates which has a similar theme as the character had no memory beyond each day. Here is a funny clip from the movie.

Communion is the act of remembering what Jesus has done on the cross. Scripture says we are to "do this in remembrance of me" (Luke 22:19). It would be really hard to understand the nature of the Christian life without a backward look at a specific time and place. This was a real event and it would be impossible to have a relationship with God without the ability to look back upon the event.

Su Meck found herself unable to remember anything from the past. It deeply impacted her relationships with her friends and family. The focal points were all of the sudden gone. Memories of childhood, or family events, of even her own marriage and kids suddenly erased.

Sometimes I treat the historical death of Jesus like that. It is like my own version of retrograde amnesia. It is so vital to remember - to look back. I think God knows our temptation to put this event on the back burner. Communion draws us back to the event in history that reconciled us to God. We must never forget what God has done for us. Scripture further says we are not to "diss" (my words) Communion by treating it an unworthy manner (1 Cor. 11:27). If I don't believe what it is and what it represents, I am putting myself under judgment. That is why coming to Communion requires self examination. I look at the gap between my sin and what God had to do to reconcile Himself to me. Purposeful remembering is vital.