Come On

One of my favorite bands is Rend Collective Experiment. They hail from Bangor, Northern Ireland... the land of rolling emerald hills, shamrocks, and spuds. Not really (about the spuds so i hear.) They have a song called Come On that has been so relevant to my life recently and I think is relevant to all those who long to worship Jesus.

The song is very simple, yet in it is a profound truth.

The lyrics are:

Come on my soul
Come on my soul
Let down the walls
And sing my soul

Come on, come on, come on, come on
It's time to look up


I love this song because it declares the truth of what we want our hearts to be in our worship of Jesus. There are times when I am either leading worship (musically) or just in the congregation and I feel like I am so far from a place of worship. I feel distracted, disengaged, and just plain distant from God. Sometimes there is no desire in my heart to worship at all. Before I had ever heard this song, I was talking to a worship pastor about this place of the heart. I asked him about those times when we feel out of it and distant. What should we do? He said that sometimes we have to force our heart to worship God. We must tell God "I know I don't feel like worshiping right now, but I want to want to worship. Take me to that place Lord." He said that there times when he will do whatever is necessary to get his soul in a place of worship, even if it means lying prostrate on the ground in front of everyone starting at him. If that is what it takes to force our heart to want to worship, then that is what we must do.

I love the truth that this song captures. The only response to God is worship, and when we don't feel like, we need to beckon our hearts and say

"Come on my soul! Let down the walls. It's time to look up!"



JN

Seasons

In the third chapter of Ecclesiastes, Solomon speaks about the different seasons that we encounter in our lives. In verse one, he says

"For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven."

He goes on to say

a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.



These verses have really been relevant to me recently as I feel I am entering into a new season of my life. For a while now, I have really been in a season of growth in my mind. Over the past year and a half I have learned so much about the Word of God and yet sometimes I feel like I am just scratching the surface. But in the midst of learning and growing in knowledge, I had lost a sight of something that has always meant so much to me, and something that defined who I was for a long time. I had lost sight of the journey of life.

One of my favorite quotes is "life is not a problem to be solved, but an adventure to be lived." For the last year and a half, most of the time I have viewed life, as well as people, as problems to be solved. I don't think God made life that way.

So I am really excited that The Lord has broken through all the intellectual restraints I put up sometimes. He has a funny way of doing that. :) He used a band from Northern Ireland to remind me that worship is a lifestyle meant to be filled with joy and life is truly a journey we must embrace as we cross the thresholds through this side of eternity.

So as life moves, and we are taken through the seasons it brings, may our lives sing jubilant melodies to our marvelous, boundless, wonderful, sacrificial Savior, and may we know that He loves us.



filled with the joy of our Lord,

JN

The Battle

It has been a while since I have been on here. The last few months of my life have been quite busy, as the ministry has been growing. This past year, the Lord has really been teaching me a lot about myself and about some of the learned behaviors I have grown up with. But in the midst of realizing I need to unlearn some things in my life, there is a deeper issue in my life the Lord has been unlayering.


I have a tendency to view the Christian life as us humans trying to be better people, to be godlier in our actions and lives. While this is true, the Christian life does not stop there. Ephesians 6 tells us that there is a spiritual battle going on all around us. It tells us Satan is trying to deceive God's children into believing lies. There is a very real supernatural force of darkness that we are battling daily. And the battle is for our heart. If Satan can get believers to be unproductive and ineffective for the Kingdom of God, then he has succeeded.

I have a tendency to merely acknowledge the existence of Satan, but significantly play down his role in my life. Whether Satan or his demons, the truth is there is a spiritual battle going on. This cannot be ignored. And this battle is not only within me, it is outside of me. When the enemy gets my eyes off the eternal and focused on the temporal, then I tend to get discouraged, self focused, lazy, and just down. But if my eyes are fixed on Jesus and the eternal reality of the spiritual battle, I see things much differently. I see the Christian life as not just me wanting to become a more godly man. I see it for what it truly is, a battle that I must fight.

In my past, I have had a real fear that I am inadequate. Much of my life has been lived out of this fear. It was not until recently, that The Lord has shown me that this fear does not only come from within me. It is comes from without. This new truth has changed the way I look at that fear. I used to see my fear that I am inadequate as inadequacy itself. In other words, because I had that fear and I thought it came from me, I thought there was something wrong with me. Something that I had to try and change myself. Much of my Christian life has been me trying to overcome this fear. It never works. Now, I recognize that that fear is a lie that Satan wants me to believe. That battle is not a fight against myself. It is a fight against the demonic strongholds of the spiritual world.

In 1 Timothy 6:12, Paul exhorts us to "Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses."

I love this verse because it demands action. We cannot expect God to do all the work, while we sit back and relax. God has empowered us to fight the good fight trough His Spirit, and by Him, we must take hold of the life to which we were called. This is a daily battle. This is our lives as followers of Christ.

The question is, are you fighting? And if you are, who?


JN