Tag Archives: psalms

Found to be misrepresenting God?

11 Friday May 2012

Posted by in Book Discussion, Christianity, Theology

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To get this book from Amazon, click on the book cover.

Thomas Brooks’ book Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices talks about various ways the Christian is dissuaded from the life Christ wants him or her to live. One such idea is to present God as made up entirely of mercy, to the exclusion of other things which can be said about him.

One way the Christian can fight the urge of our time to view God this way is to consider that the people of God who have gone before didn’t consider God’s mercy as an excuse to sin. The psalmist wrote,

3 For your steadfast love is before my eyes,
and I walk in your faithfulness.

4 I do not sit with men of falsehood,
nor do I consort with hypocrites.
5 I hate the assembly of evildoers,
and I will not sit with the wicked.

–Psalm 26:3-5, ESV

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And We’ll Understand It Better By and By

28 Monday Mar 2011

Posted by in Personal, Theology

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I was listening to “By and By” by Phil Zito’s band on the way home. (But of course, as the jazz nerd that I am, I was listening to a transfer that I made myself from the original 78 with my Crosley USB turntable.)

Almost the entire time the song was playing in my car, I cried. I’ve been fairly emotional for the past few days. I think it’s due largely to the overwhelming support I’ve had from guys I have class with.

In the course of a conversation I had the other night with two awesome friends, I disclosed that there are things I won’t even post here about myself…things that I suspect that if my closest friends knew, they would disown me…or at least keep their distance. In my mind, if I’m a window that my seminary brothers can look through to help minister to people who wrestle with homosexuality (or even those who fully embrace it), then that’s great.

Maybe even if they know me as someone who is lonely from time to time, then that’s a little more risky…but as long as I spread out my expectations of who I want to hang out with, people won’t tire of me and my seemingly endless loneliness. It might even get to the point where someone might offer me a hug, which of course means a lot, but isn’t something I readily ask for.

But when I stop being a window and start being someone who is real flesh-and-blood who crushes on people, finds them attractive…then what? Will people still love me?

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A Psalm 88 kinda day

19 Tuesday Oct 2010

Posted by in Personal, Theology

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Psalm 88

I Cry Out Day and Night Before You
A Song. A Psalm of the Sons of Korah. To the choirmaster: according to Mahalath Leannoth. A Maskil of Heman the Ezrahite.

1O LORD, God of my salvation;
I cry out day and night before you.
2Let my prayer come before you;
incline your ear to my cry!
3For my soul is full of troubles,
and my life draws near to Sheol.
4I am counted among those who go down to the pit;
I am a man who has no strength,
5like one set loose among the dead,
like the slain that lie in the grave,
like those whom you remember no more,
for they are cut off from your hand.

Psalm 88 has long been one of my two favorite psalms of lament.  The other, a close second, is Psalm 13.

Today’s lament really started in earnest yesterday afternoon.  I was driving away from school and there was a runner with an amazing body standing at the intersection that I didn’t just lust over…I was full-on envious.

Then this morning, I saw two or three guys who I find myself being very intimidated by at chapel.  They seem very articulate and talented and like they’ll be good pastors.  And they’re all really attractive on top of all of that.  And they wear that attractiveness like it doesn’t really matter to them…they could take or leave it.

Oh, to be that bold.  To have the security to hold one’s looks loosely in one’s hand like they seem to…it’s a pretty impossible task.  How many idols have I just rattled off? Probably five or six.

I just feel very alone; I couldn’t really concentrate in Sermon Preparation & Delivery today…I sort of phased in and out on what the sub would say (though he had excellent things to say, and the stuff I did hear seemed very insightful).  If there’s one class I never check out of, it’s Prep and Del.  But I just couldn’t focus.

I unfriended someone on Facebook this morning.  The past few times I’ve gone to his page to see what he’s up to, he and his cute boyfriend are all over the place.  The guy himself looks like a model. I get that life isn’t fair…but like Calvin (of Calvin and Hobbes fame), I ask, “but why can’t it ever be unfair in my favor?”

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Worship Worthy of God

08 Thursday Apr 2010

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In this blog article, the question is asked, “is your worship worthy of God?” The following quote from Calvin is offered:

Moreover, that which St. Augustine has said is true, that no one is able to sing things worthy of God except that which he has received from him. Therefore, when we have looked thoroughly and searched here and there, we shall not find better songs nor more fitting for the purpose, than the Psalms of David, which the Holy Spirit spoke and made through him. And, moreover, when we sing them, we are certain that God puts in our mouths these, as if he himself were singing in us to exalt his glory.

Quote by John Calvin taken from John Calvin: Pilgrim and Pastor by W. Robert Godfrey.

It seems that Calvin has a point to make and makes it well. It would, in response to Nathan’s question, seem to point out a serious deficit in worship which is exclusively hymn-driven (or even ‘blended,’ I’d argue). This is why, as a Reformed worship leader at a non-Reformed congregation, I strive to incorporate psalmnody whenever possible. We don’t chant them, but I am capable of doing so myself due to the fact that I was in a psalm-chanting Episcopalian congregation while in college.

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The Gospel in the 103rd Psalm

28 Wednesday Oct 2009

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He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repays us according to our iniquities.  For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.  As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him.

–Psalm 103:10-13, ESV

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