Monday 7 November 2011

Tuesday 28 June 2011

Worshipping God's Judgements

Eagle eyed readers will recall that I had stated that I would write more about Emmanuel ... in fact I have failed to do this, indeed I have failed to write about anything in particular.  I however do wish to share the following observations / teaching with you, reader, and hope that it will bless and challenge you.

Firstly, as I find myself wont to do, I wish to declare before Almighty God that I want Him to be glorified, and His Word to be revealed, and pray that he will rescue me from heresy etc.

The Bible has a few things to say that bring encouragement to anyone who has witnessed the death of a baby.  Psalm 139 contains verses 13-16, which tell of God knowing about us when we were in our mother's womb, and speak of him knitting us together.  It is passage that should be of great encouragement to us that God loves us personally, that he cherishes us; we recently looked at the psalm in our Community Group, and verses 17 and 18 leapt from the page.  God has too many thoughts to count about us.  This passage speaks of a great love for us as individuals, far away from the corporate, duty bound love that we can associate with God (God is love, so he loves us all, equally etc).  This passage brings an individual element to his love: He has many happy thoughts about US: He loves my desire to make perfect picadillo enchiladas, He loves the fact way I lift and drop Jo etc.

But I'm on a tangent.  The other encouragement the passage brings is this: God is the creator of life, He oversees foetal development, He is knitting together babies before they are born.  It is doubtless this passage that spurs so many to protest against abortion; it is certainly this knowledge that allowed Stella and I to be comforted that our precious child, although far from being fully developed, was known by, designed and crafted by God.  Witnessing His ongoing craftmanship at this stage, whilst horrific and painful for us, spoke also to encourage us that if God has tended for Emmanuel to this point, He will further tend for him, in heaven.  And we (maybe just me) was struck when praying a few days later, when exhausted and drained and crying out to God, that we might get the chance to worship Him in His awesome glory with Emmanuel at our side.

Which leads on to the second passage: it is found somewhere in one of the Samuels, maybe 2 Samuel 11 or 12 off the top of my splendid head.  David has been confronted by the prophet Nathan, who tells him that God has seen his sin, and that his son, born from his illicit affair with Bethsheba, an affair compounded by his arrangment of the death in battle (called a murder by God) of her husband, Uriah the Hittite, will die.  David spends days fasting in prayer and repentance, his son dies, and then he arises, washes, dresses, goes in private, worships God, then comes out and asks for food.  He then says the profound statement (paraphrased) "I will go to him, he will not return to me".

Again, the scripture brings solace to those in a similar position (mourning the death of a baby) by answering that question we really want answered: will we see our baby's again in heaven? The existence of this verse is an encouragement to all that they will go to their children, and  that in death they will be reunited.  The existence of both these passages brings much succour to those in our position: the child we had was not even born, so can we say that we lost a child? Medically, we may not be talking about a baby yet.  Emmanuel didn't have fully formed genitals, and their gender could not be determined.  However, by standing on the words of the psalmist, we know that what God has knitted together is known by Him, and loved by Him.  And that same writer said: I will go to him in death.  This all brings great peace.

But what I meant to write about is this: God says to David that since he has brough shame upon Him by behaving in this manner, God's annointed King has brought shame upon him, He will allow his son to die.  This is the judgement that God passes on David.  Anyone who has tried to instill some discipline into a child will know that it is key to explain that we make choices, and there will be a consequence.  This is pretty much what God does here.

At this point, I must observe that I am in now way stating that all suffering come from God.  Flat out denial of that.  But I am stating that this particular event (the death of the boy) was allowed or even decreed by God.

I guess what really speaks here is that David, having wrestled with God in prayer and mourning and fasting for a week, when he finds out that his son is dead, goes immediately to worship God.  Now we hear a number of songs that encourage us to worship in the dry place, praise Him in a dark place, when the storms of life beat upon us to rely on God ... in this case God sent the storms, He dried up the water, He blocked out the light.

Job says "The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away".  The song Blessed Be Your Name by Matt and Beth Redman uses this same line.  I wonder how much we have appropriated this to mean "You give, and You allow to be taken".  I am also sure that you, reader, when something precious has been taken away, have relied on God to deal with the pain, with the understanding that He suffers with us and is our comfort.  This is how Stella and I felt after Emmanuel.  But I must stress that what I am looking at is that I believe there is a difference betwen confronting the reality of an all-knowing God who allows us to suffer in His wisdom, and comforts us, and a God whose judgements cause that suffering, and through all of our pain, we still humble ourselves, suborn ourselves to that justice, and worship Him.  If God had told me that what happened with Emmanuel was as a result of my sin, would my first response be to submit to that judgement? This is an area where our declaration that God Is Just is put to the test.

I pray that if we were tested in such a way, David's response to God's justice is the place where we would find ourselves.  Any feelings he had about the portion he received were cast aside, and he worshipped God.  Let it be unto us.

Onelove.

Monday 9 May 2011

Sounds

A couple of songs that we have been getting on recently.

At church we have played a few times this simple tune which a couple of our team picked up at a World Trumpet Mission (our affiliate church network, as it were): Set A Fire.  A very simple song, with two refrains, which can be repeated round and round; we've used it in the latter part of worship,where we have broken through already.  "There's no place I'd rather be, than in here in Your love" comes as a response to God after He has responded to our worship by drawing close to us.  Then "Set A Fire Down In My Soul, cos I Want More Of You" expresses our plea: to be set alight with a passion for God, for holiness, for righteousness.  Every time we've played the song there's been a real sense of anointing.  Musically it's really simple, with the rhythm from acoustic guitar backed up with either the congas or a simple phrase on the snare drum with snares off, with simple kick and hi-hat pedal.  Great great song, my song of the now.

The other song we've (Stel and I, that is) been enjoying is I Worship You, a performance by Travis Cottrell.  We sang this at the church prayer meeting once or twice; again very simple, repetitions of a phrase, this version uses key-changes and musical build, and especially the choir; the building soaring music encourages a similar response in the worshipper: as the truths we sing further penetrate us, our declaration in praise grows firmer.

So two simple songs that carry a lot of anointing.  Enjoy.

Wednesday 27 April 2011

Emmanuel

Our baby was stillborn on 26th April 2011.

We are unsure as to the gender of the baby, who we were able to say hello and goodbye to yesterday.  They were beautiful.  King David said of his baby that passed away in 2 Samuel that he would go to him, and we believe that we will see our baby again.

Our baby's name is Emmanuel, which means God With Us.  We called them this because despite this being the hardest thing that we have ever been through, we know that God is with us, He never leaves us, He gives us strength and peace and lifts our heads.

Friday 22 April 2011

A brief and cheery thought for Good Friday

Great prayer meeting at church this morning before the Good Friday march in glorious weather before a rehearsal where the band sounded absolutely awesome (I love it when rehearsal = worship, it gets close to the 1 Chronicles 25 players I talked about yesterday).  The prayer meeting was grand; People bringing their all in praise to God, declaring His glory in our own words.

And God gave me the following sentence to chew over:

"How many more will go to the fires before you wake up?"

Chastening.  Tears.  No sense of condemnation for the failures of the past, which is why I bring this here.  I don't intend you to start carrying guilt because people you love have not responded to Christ: He didn't lay that on me, and not on you.  But we need to kick our slumber.

Bless.

And this actually was brief.  One out of two and all that ...

Thursday 21 April 2011

Something spiritual ... worship leading and playing.

To go with all that cricket stuff.

I'm going to write a series of posts about worship; Andrew from church and I lead our Youth Band at church where we are encouraging a number of our talented youngsters to learn about worship and develop their skills at playing together and learn some of the songs we play regularly as we lead worship in the church.  Due to having not one but two talented drummers amongst the kids, I am forced to play the bass, which is very amusing for everyone except me.  We also have a ukulele, and several voices and Jacob (who is already a fantastic electric guitarist and really blesses God and the church with his playing in the band on Sundays as well).

Anyway, we need to come up with our teaching for the summer term, and I thought that this would be a good place to start to put some of my teaching ideas in place, so you can give me feedback or further enlighten me for the teaching sessions.  The areas I am thinking to break it down to are these keys to serving God through the playing of instruments, or worship leading as we have come to call it!

Firstly the key attribute to anyone who is going to be a worship leader or serve God through their playing is to be a worshipper of God; to love God, to be devoted to him above all else, and to live for Him.  Straight forward this one, and truth be told, something that all Christians should be living for, but this is the key attribute or behaviour of a musician: that they love to worship God.

Alongside this then come the qualities that we expect to see in a worshipper of God, with the Holy Spirit indwelling: the fruits of the spirit.  Love, joy, peace etc.  I think the important ones here are faithfulness, and self control.  A worship musician needs to be dedicated and to work hard.  From personal experience, another crucial personal quality is humility; as a drummer, knowing that you can be heard, and that you can have a large influence on the band, on volume, on tempo etc. means that it is vital to be humble, to seek to play your role, to respect the worship leader, and not to seek glory for ourselves.  These qualities will flow out of a relationship with the Holy Spirit.

Another couple of scriptures I want to look at are 1 Chronicles 25 and 1 Samuel 10:5-10.  As a worship musician, these are two of the ways in which I want my playing to develop to glorify God.  In the first passage, the temple musicians are appointed, and they are trained and skilled in playing music for the Lord.  The word translated skill here is the Hebrew word Sakal, and can also be translated to mean sensitivity.  These musicians were in the temple, skilled musicians who had been trained to play music for the Lord.  God loves our music, and loves to hear it, and from this passage we see that there is skill involved in playing for the Lord.  I pray that I, and my fellow players, and the youngsters that we are teaching would all develop this skill.  The second passage talks about a group of travelling prophets, who come playing their songs, and their music leads Saul to also prophesy, at a time in history where prophecy was not common or undertaken lightly.      I love the idea that when these prophets play, the spirit falls upon Saul and causes him to prophesy, the sense that the music seems to carry the Spirit with it.  I also pray that our playing would carry the same annointing.

Any feedback, other ideas, let me know.  Especially if you too are a worship musician!

Thanks.

20 Years, Man and Boy ... (Part 2)

So my memories will start to become a bit less clear now.  I didn't mention previously that Kent actually came 2nd in the championship in 2001, and they put up a small challenge in 2002, when again the batsman all made runs.  Symonds was again the overseas talent.  Kent lost in the semi-final of the one day cup in this year, chasing a huge total at Somerset they were in contention and probably favourites with Nixon and Ealham at the crease, they proceeded to throw away their last four or five wickets and lose.  Saggers would still have been the pick of the seamers.

2003 saw each county allowed to take two overseas players, Kent started the year with Greg Blewett and Symonds.  This was also the year 20:20 started: Kent took a while to grasp this format, but they won their first ever match at Beckenham against Hampshire: Symonds hit 96 off 32 balls (really), savaging the seamers Mullally and Giddins, mostly over long on and mid-wicket in an extraordinary display of power.  In the championship, we struggled for most of the first half of the year.  Mohammed Sami replaced Blewett as overseas player, and blew away Nottinghamshire with about 16 wickets in the match.  Championship form turned with the signing of Muttiah Muralitheran for the second half of the season; although he was surprisingly easily played by Middlesex in a Sunday League draw with scores level, his form in the championship was sensational, and I think Kent won or drew all of the seven or eight games he played, in which he took around 40 wickets.  Truly one of the greats.  2003 was also the year that Ed Smith displayed his finest form; he was in sensational form all year, with a truly magical spell around July where he scored a number of hundreds in succession.  Late in the year he scored his first double hundred (against Surrey, possibly), and in the Sunday League relegation decider at the end of the season, scored a hundred.

In 2004, Kent in theory challenged for the championship for much of the year, although in practice they were well short of Warwickshire.  It was Robert Key's turn to hit sensational form, his run of hundreds propelling him to the England side where he scored his first test hundred against the West Indies.  I don't remember much about this year.  Early in the season the mercurial Sami returned and destroyed Gloucestershire in the Sunday league; an extraordinary bowling performance saw him take around 8 wickets.

In 2005 Kent had a fairly large change of personnel: Smith went to Middlesex, Symonds departed, and in came Andrew Hall and Justin Kemp, with Kolpak signing Martin Van Jaarsveld in the middle order.  Van Jaarsveld became one of a handful of players to score a pair of hundreds on his Kent debut.  Kent challenged for the title all year, up to their penultimate match, where Nottinghamshire set them an absurd 420 to win off 70 overs on the last day, which they failed badly to chase.

The amount of Kent cricket I have watched since 2005 has decreased remarkably; I spent a couple of years as a member of Surrey in 2006 and 2007, being fortunate enough to watch Mark Ramprakash in perhaps the finest form of any batsman I have ever seen.  I have fitted in the odd game since then, but the seasons all blur together; I know there have been two relegations and one immediate promotion, a 20:20 cup win and another finals day.  Overall I would say that county cricket is not what it was: starting times are all over the place, as are tournaments, there is too much cricket that people don't want to watch, and the one day competitions need a genuine strategy to move forward.  I will always keep an eye out for Kent cricket, and will attend matches as and when I can with my dad, but the thoughts I used to have of taking my son to watch county cricket in the same way that my dad took me are not so present; I doubt there will be a championship worth watching in ten years time.  But there we go.

To finish my ridiculously self-indulgent trawl through memory lane, I have selected three teams: the best XI I saw play for Kent, the best XI I could pick for Kent with only one foreign player, and the best XI of players I have ever seen in the flesh.

Fulton, Key, Dravid, Hooper, De Silva, Symonds, Nixon, Ealham, Headley, Saggers, Muralitheran

Fulton, Key, Smith, Hooper, Van Jaarsveld, Ealham, Nixon, Patel, Headley, Mccague, Saggers

Hayden, Langer, Lara, Richards, Waugh, Kallis, Russell, Warne, Waqar, McGrath, Muralitheran

Thanks for reading, even though I know you didn't really.