Only a few short weeks ‘ere Christmas songs are playing on every radio station, until grocery shopping becomes a veritable hit parade of all our favorite songs.
So before anyone gets tired of them (and who could ever get tired of 62 replays of “Santa Baby?”), send me some feedback with song(s) you’d like to hear in Christmas-oriented worship services this year. They don’t need to all be “Christmas songs” – in fact, I typically don’t use solely Christmas-themed songs during the season, though I’ll be using a lot of them.
Also, I am not currently aware of any scheduled Christmas-themed specials. There are four Sundays in December (including Christmas Day). If you have something you’d like to do, I’d like to put it in to one of the December services. We also have the Christmas Eve service – if you’re interested in contributing either via music or spoken word, please let Holly know.
I’ve said this before, but no one HAS to do anything for this – I only want you to participate willingly and out of appreciation for what God has done and for what we remember at Christmas. The only thing we are required to do is be thankful for God’s mercy and truth, and to act on that thankfulness.
I’d like to encourage you briefly to be prayerful. Paul encourages us to “pray unceasingly,” and though it is a small verse, it’s a tall order. Sort of.
In reality, if I believed I had a connection to the almighty God, I’d probably be pretty liberal about using it. Yet unceasing prayer gives way to daily prayer, and daily prayer gives way to occasional prayer, and eventually infrequent prayer. That is, if it’s just disciplined rote repetition, or if it’s just trying to get what I want from God.
Two things I’d like to propose – more as a hopeful help to myself than as a one-size-fits-all solution: 1) perhaps it’s not God’s intervening power that is most evident through prayer – it’s His nearness to us that’s most evident in the long run. Through perseverance in prayer I want to learn that God will never leave or forsake me. And 2) prayer isn’t just about getting something we want from God – it’s communication about the things we need with the One who promised to provide them. It’s relational. It’s communication and trust that keep relationships going. Prayer is both those things and more.
So back to the original thought. If I really knew I had relational access to the most powerful and loving Being in the universe, wouldn’t I want to use it? The lines of communication have been opened at great personal cost to God, yet He considered it worth the cost. And He wants to talk with me! That wonder of grace is what leads us to consistent prayer – not guilt, not discipline.
The ugly fact is, I fall way short. But God is not judging me on that – He already passed judgment on Christ for my lack of faith and my inconsistency. So I can go boldly to His throne and talk with Him.
I’ve been encouraged by several of the other leaders in the church to begin posting my weekly worship team devotionals on the church blog. So here goes:
Here’s a song to think about this week. It’s one I particularly love from the Sovereign Grace Ministries people, called Completely Done.
As I ponder the lyrics to the song (The old is gone, the new has come/What You complete is completely done) I have to ask myself – do I really believe that? Do I believe that because I am His, I’m no longer who I was? And do I act like I believe it? I can tell you now that I often meditate on the negative things, on my shortcomings, my failures, my sins. I often seem to live anxiously in the middle of doubt, paranoid of what destruction my faults will cause.
But the Bible says this in 2 Corinthians 5: “Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again. … Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! (v. 14-17, NIV)”
How would I think about myself if the old is truly gone? Should I live in fear? Should I constantly berate myself for falling short in a million ways? Bottom line: this is legalistic thinking. This is the old way. Legalism says that “if I do all the right things, I’ll be right, and therefore I’ll be OK.” And it naturally follows from that statement that “if I DON’T do the right things, I won’t be right, and I won’t be OK.” This might look good on the surface, but underneath it is not Gospel thinking! The Gospel teaches that salvation and holiness are not based on our own goodness - no, it’s the goodness of Jesus that is credited to us by God. And we respond to God’s grace with humble obedience, because we have seen how great a thing it is for God’s forgiveness to be so freely given to us, and for us to be a part of God’s family when we used to be His enemies.
So as we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, let’s keep in mind what it shows us about our own spiritual life. There is no room for pride in our own goodness. And there is no need to run in shame when we fail. It’s already taken care of and given to us as a gift. So we respond with humble obedience and ever-growing love for the one who is our great Confidence, the Lover of our souls, and the One who judged His own Son so that he could make us His righteous children. I think of the lyrics we are singing Sunday:
Pastor Don Julian
Mark Worden
Ben Power
