More thoughts...

I was very encouraged today by this message from Doug Phillips (Vision Forum). My heart breaks for the Sproul family. It is difficult to recognize the gifts of God in these circumstances. This evening, I read R.C. Sproul Jr.'s article revealing his thoughts and his faith in God through this trial. The Lord's grace is surely manifest. He loves us more than we can know. Can we truly trust His goodness? Will we follow him wherever He leads us?

"And with that he took my hat from its peg, wrapped my hand in his and led me from the room. My hand in Father's! That meant the windmill on the Spaarne, or swans on the canal. But this time he was taking me where I didn't want to go! There was a railing along the bottom five steps: I grabbed it with my free hand and held on. Skilled watchmaker's fingers closed over mine and gently unwound them. Howling and struggling I was led away from the world I knew into a bigger, stranger, harder one..." (The Hiding Place)

Lily

Earth has no sorrows that heaven cannot heal

My heart is heavy today. After a long struggle with cancer, Denise Sproul has gone to be with the Lord. Pray that the Lord will be near to the Sproul family in this difficult time and that they will feel his tender, loving embrace and the comfort of our heavenly Father.

Thoughts on Music and Worship

We've been discussing church music as a family, for quite some time. Recently, it's been a fairly central topic due to a research paper that I wrote for my college music history course (which I shall post later). The paper was on Martin Luther, and his impact on music. The whole subject lead to different areas of research in the area of reformed music and the principles which the reformers held. I have been pondering this list (below) of principles written by a present-day pastor, which I found on another blog. I think there are several excellent points which all reformed churches should consider in order to enable each body of believers to worship God heartily. Would love feedback. (Sarah, perhaps this shall enter into our "talkin' about the issues" conversations ;)

God-Centered Orientation: The service in general, and the songs in particular, should point people to God, not self.

Gospel Focus: The service and songs should remind participants of the gospel—that they are sinners saved by the life, death, and resurrection of Christ.

Theological Richness: Songs should not only be doctrinally true, but theologically rich. Preference will be shown to modern hymns, and shallow, repetitive songs will be avoided.

Historical Connection: The great hymns of the faith should be sung, either with their original tunes or with modern revisions of them, allowing today’s worshippers to be connected to their brothers and sisters of the past and their depth of expression.

Modern Expression: The best of today’s worship songs should also be used,

allowing for modern expression of ancient truths, while still preferring God-centered, gospel-focused, and theologically rich songs.

Indigenous Style: The “feel” of worship music should suit the place in which the church is found, allowing the people of that community to give appropriate voice to their praises.

Liturgical Flow: The structure of the worship gathering should have a certain flow, ushering people through the gospel to the throne of God. To say the gathering is liturgical speaks more of the thought put into the service than the feel produced by it.

Diverse Instrumentation and Involvement: Diverse instruments and different believers (ethnically, generationally, etc.) should be utilized to lead all the saints in praise, while keeping a stylistic “center” to the gathering.

Participative Nature: The goal of worship music is to engage and lead the saints in worship. Therefore, arranging, playing, and mixing of music that encourages a

performance-spectator mentality will be avoided. The voices in a worship gathering should be the main instruments.

God-Glorifying Excellence: The music leader and team will strive to lead in such a way that God is glorified, and that the saints will not be distracted either by their mastery or by their inability. This will be accomplished partially through weekly rehearsals.

Musical Beauty: God-glorifying lyrics must be matched with fitting, beautiful music that images the beauty of the Creator God who invented music.

Non-Negotiable Importance: As singing is commanded throughout the Bible and serves as the most supreme voice of amazing truths, its importance must be taught and modeled by church leadership. “I don’t like to sing” is an unacceptable statement for a believer of Christ.

Lifestyle Understanding: Worship encompasses all of life—certainly more than Sunday morning, and especially the Sunday singing time. Singing is just one aspect of a worship service, and calling it “worship” confuses the people of God.

Gifted Leadership: As the song leader sets the tone for the gathering of God’s people, he must be a gifted musician, passionate worshipper, and loving servant who can plan and lead God-glorifying singing times.

Elder Involvement: The final responsibility for the songs sung during the worship gathering falls to the elders, so they must be involved closely with the planning of services. They must not completely delegate this responsibility due to the critical teaching component of corporate singing.

Believer Orientation: Singing in corporate worship gatherings should be geared to facilitate the worship of believers, not appeal to “seekers.” Worship can only be truly done by believers in Christ.

Multi-Generational Appeal: A diversity of songs should be sung that appeal to all of God’s saints, not just a certain age group. However, a congregational “center” should be ascertained, enabling for an indigenous expression of worship by the bulk of the congregation.

Multiple Settings: Small groups, family devotions, and youth groups, just to name a few, are other venues that should encourage musical worship.

Corporate Emphasis: Believers should be encouraged to worship God primarily as a corporate body, not as individuals, during the weekly corporate worship gathering. This will affect songs chosen (preference for “we” songs over those “I”) and prayers uttered (“God, forgive us,” over “God, forgive me.”), as well as numerous other aspects of the meeting.

Passionate Expression: Christians must be taught to desire strong affections in worship. Hypocritical, heartless singing is to be avoided, while heartfelt passion is to be pursued.

Loving Deference: Church members must put the desires of others above themselves, not fighting to see that their musical preferences are honored as best.

Unified Praise: The unity of the local body must be pursued in worship gatherings. This is achieved, first of all, by having all the believers gathered in one room, with one voice. Multiple worship gatherings, and multiple, different-styled worship gatherings will be avoided.

To Sarah

A very Happy Birthday to Sarah!

It gives me great pleasure today, to take a pause from the ordinary demands of life and reflect upon the Lord's mercies and grace which are new every morning. His blessings are numerous, but today I want to focus on just one: friendship. What a privilege it is that God should place people in our lives - fellow pilgrims, traveling saints - and that we should find strength and encouragement in one another. Today, I am thankful for twelve years of friendship with Sarah. Twelve years of growing. Twelve years of phone calls, emails, pillow talk time, summer visits, book discussions, sermon sharing, laughter, celebrations, and close fellowship. We've been through so much together. Nothing can ever change our love for each other. Our dedication to each other is not based on external likenesses, but on internal convictions and shared desires.

On another note: Today, Sarah is two decades old! That's right. Twenty!

After all those years of being teenagers together...today is the close of a chapter. I pray the Lord's blessing on the years to come, that each day might be another step heavenward.

Thus nature has no love for solitude, and always leans, as it were, on some support; and the sweetest support is found in the most intimate friendship.- Cicero

Why I Joined Facebook (For Now)

Ahhh...so today I joined the masses on facebook. Why? I don't know if you're asking that question, but I certainly am.

The reasons are several. Allow me to bore you. (I suddenly sound like Ben Miller...I don't really know why).

First of all, let me say that since I have joined (some 4 hours ago) I have not enjoyed my experience and may delete the account at any moment. Maybe I should give it 24 hours? Ok...I'll do that at least.

Secondly, I, for the first time in the long history of "Sarah needs to get facebook" assaults, felt that I'm missing something. There have been lots of events planned in recent months that have been involving me, and yet I can't see who's coming (not that I care that much), I don't know who's bringing what (glad no one else was planning to bring chips and salsa), I don't know the details of, etc., etc. Ok, so maybe that's a lame reason.

I also sense (and maybe I'm just a little slow on the uptake) that this is the way of things in my generation. People facebook. It's a noun, a verb, whatever part of speech it needs to be. And while I have resisted the trend for a long while (despite the "Get Sarah to join facebook page" on facebook [how counterproductive is that?]), this is what's going on in my world right now. And just because this is what's going on does not mean that I have to "conform to the pattern of this world." I can take this "thing" and use it as a gift and a tool. It doesn't have to demand of me things that I'm not willing to give (time would be a good example).

Other details: my friends are real friends. Like, I know them. Like, I would walk across the parking lot to say "Hi" to them. I would give them a hug if I hadn't seen them in a month. I would visit them in the hospital. I don't do fake friends. I'm sorry...maybe I'm just not cut out for the facebook world. We're finding out together.

Also, not that you need to know, and please don't take it as an insult, but I don't care that you had grilled cheese for lunch. I'm glad it was the best grilled cheese sandwich you've ever had, but I'm not going to comment on your post about it. And I won't be updating you on what I had for lunch. If you want to know, please come join me some afternoon...I'll make you a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and we can sit and talk for a while. Doesn't that sound lovely?

May facebook never replace the real conversations, really hearing your voice; real meals together; real laughing rather than emoticons; real doing life together; really seeing you, face to face. And thus my first facebook status:

"I had many things to write to you, but I am not willing to write them to you with pen and ink; but I hope to see you shortly, and we will speak face to face" (III John 13-14).

So, I'm not sure how long I'll be on facebook. I would guess until my 20th birthday and then I'll be done. I'm not sure. I guess we'll all find out together. Thanks for listening. I constructed this post in my head this afternoon while I was fixing my hair. Thought you might like to know.