I don’t think many would argue that out of all the positions on a church staff that someone could fill, in recent days, Worship Pastor is one of the hardest. It’s not the hardest to perform necessarily, but the friction and ugliness that can surround the songs that are sung in a church service each week add a tremendous amount of difficulty to the job.
Some of this pressure is good because music has a way of helping our minds remember truths. Therefore, it is extremely important that the words we sing each week are theologically accurate. The songs being sung in a worship service teach our hearts many things about God and shape our theology. There are plenty of great songs out there, some of them have been around for hundreds of years and some are brand new. The year a song was written or the style of music it was composed with really has nothing to do with the accuracy of the theology it contains. While many people want to argue about one or the other being better, the truth is, the only thing that should determine whether we sing a song or not, is the biblical accuracy of its theology.
Many churches do a great job of singing songs that stay true to the theology they find in the Bible. What I want to look at and discuss over these next couple of posts is our response to these truths. Do we understand the depths of what we are singing? Are we really willing to walk out of church and let these truths affect our day to day lives? Can we see the fruit of believing what we sing when we encounter hard, scary or sad days? How do we handle both the mountain tops and valleys of this life?
This week we are going to start with the song, Yes I Will by Vertical Worship. You can hear it on most Christian radio stations and I’m sure lots of churches are singing it during their worship services, but in case you haven’t heard it, I have posted the verse and chorus here.
I count on one thing
The same God that never fails
Will not fail me now
You won’t fail me now
In the waiting
The same God who’s never late
Is working all things out
You’re working all things out
Yes I will, lift You high in the lowest valley
Yes I will, bless Your name
Oh, yes I will, sing for joy when my heart is heavy
All my days, oh yes I will
The first thing that jumps off the page at me is, “I count on ONE thing.” There is nothing else we can count on in this world besides God. Nothing else can be faithful like we need it to be. But we don’t live like that’s true. We count on our money or job security, we count on statistics, we count on friends and family, we count on ourselves to keep it all spinning. The Lord uses these things most of the time to provide, but He doesn’t have to, and we must fight the temptation to replace trusting the faithfulness that belongs to God by trusting in the things He sometimes uses.
“The same God that never fails, will not fail me now.” How fast do we throw in the towel and give up all hope when something doesn’t go the way we thought it would? What do you think it looks like to believe that God doesn’t fail? It can’t mean that we will never experience pain or disappointment. So, when we must walk through say, the death of a loved one, what does it mean that God never fails? I think that God’s word is not bound to this place and space and time. I think failure leans more toward being out of control. God is never out of control or surprised by something. If something could over power Him or take Him by surprise, He would be able to fail us if He didn’t handle it correctly. He doesn’t handle things incorrectly. Our minds cannot know everything that God knows. I have seen a quote by Nancy Leigh DeMoss that says, “God’s Will is what we would choose if we knew what God knows.” I think that’s what it means when we say God doesn’t fail, it’s believing that if we knew everything that He knows, we would make all the same choices. Really believing that changes the way we stare problems down when they come our way.
“In the waiting, the same God who’s never late, is working all things out.” For me, trusting God in hard times is very different than trusting His timing. It’s one thing for me to trust that He can take care of things. I know He can. He is all powerful and I trust His love for me to know that He’s asking me to walk through something hard on purpose. But many times my knowing He can fix it turns into wanting Him to fix it NOW. My dependence on Him moves from knowing He can fix it to trusting He is fixing it when it should be fixed. He didn’t get distracted by what He saw on Facebook or get lost in some sports game, He’s completely in control and if He’s asking us to wait a little longer, there is a reason for it. Again, if we knew what He knows, we would wait also.
When these truth’s sink down deep into our hearts, they transform our thinking and that impacts our actions. When these are no longer nice words we mumble along too but instead they give weight to the corner stone we stand on, we can be truthful through the chorus. “Yes I will, lift You high in the lowest valley, yes I will, bless Your name. Yes I will, sing for joy when my heart is heavy, all my days, oh yes I will.” These truths don’t take away sad emotions or the grief that we experience when something is taken from us. Emotions are part of the human experience. We see this all through out the New Testament as Jesus experiences joy, pain, sadness, grief and many other emotions. He laughs, cries, etc, the entire time knowing how it all turns out.
Have you noticed that before? That Jesus weeps when He hears about the death of Lazarus, knowing that Lazarus isn’t going to stay dead right now? Emotions are not the enemy. However, we cannot let our emotions control our behavior and in turn what we believe about God, instead we must let the truth of who God is control our emotions.
If we are only depending on God and His faithfulness and His timing, then when we are in a valley, we can still bless His name. We know that He is working all things out and that based on what He knows, it’s the best option for this place and time. Even when our hearts experience heavy emotions, we can still sing for the joy that we have in knowing God didn’t mess up or mishandle this. This gives us the grace and strength to walk through all of life’s ups and downs with confidence and security. We are safe and surrounded by a strong Daddy who loves us and cannot be stopped. We can stop living in fear like an orphan child who has no one to protect them.
In my life, I have to constantly stop and evaluate whether or not I am responding to my circumstances as if I believe that God knows what He’s doing or not. Am I trying to take matters into my own hands or am I willing to leave them in His? Do I work and toil to make things happen faster or am I content to wait on Him when He’s asking me to wait? Can I honestly praise Him with joy while I am walking through a valley? I pray that my life, every day, little bit more by little bit more, proves that I trust Him with every detail of it. If we want to offer the world this kind of peace in the midst of a storm, we must believe it ourselves first. Then, we must live as if it’s true.
Your Fellow Traveler
Lacey
Find True Joy 