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Tag Archives: worship

National Coming Out Day, 2020

11 Sunday Oct 2020

Posted by David L. Gill in Christianity, Personal

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Tags

coming out, homosexuality, Revoice, sexuality, worship

I grew up in a home where anything related to coming out was met with a sneer. “Why do they have to force their sexual depravity on us?” was a common refrain in discussions. From the time that I began actually dealing with the fact that my sexual attractions and my experience of the world just didn’t fit the narrative which my friends and relatives seemed all-too-comfortable in, I weighed the options of coming out.

For years, I refused. My freshman year of college, I was asked point-blank by a friend in marching band: “Are you gay?” I told him no. I had reasons, of course. Being a conservative Christian, I reasoned that I wasn’t actually gay because I wasn’t sleeping with men. I was same-sex attracted and was attempting to be free from the curse thereof through prayer, accountability, and just plain perseverance.

There is nothing at all wrong with any of those three things. It was, for me, a misguided attempt to grapple with reality as I found it.

But was he asking about my sexual practices? No, probably not right then. He was likely only asking if I liked dudes. And so, I was lying. He probably doesn’t even remember the conversation, but that lie has weighed on me much more heavily than the lies I later told my parents.

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Thinking or Loving?

27 Friday Dec 2013

Posted by David L. Gill in Christianity, Personal, Theology

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Church, communion, education, Eucharist, theology, worship

Liturgies aim our love to different ends precisely by training our hearts through our bodies. (James K. A Smith, Desiring the Kingdom, pg. 25)

Several years ago (2008ish, I think) my parents and I embarked on a small group at the church that we were attending at the time which was working its way through The Truth Project, a curriculum designed by Focus on the Family for use in churches to expose adults (primarily) to worldview issues and good teaching on a Christian worldview. The strength of such curriculum is that, as thinking beings, we need to think consciously about how we think and what we accept uncritically.

The problem with such programs (and yes, I saw most if not all of the DVDs and participated in maybe half of the discussions in the group–so I’m speaking from some measure of experience) is that they don’t aim at the heart. Christianity is reduced to a worldview in abstraction.

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Hymns of Encouragement

17 Saturday Mar 2012

Posted by David L. Gill in Personal, Theology

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Gospel, hymns, music, repentance, worship

This past weekend, I was in a class that Kevin Twit taught on the History of Hymnody. It was a weekend seminar at my seminary, covering the hymn as a genre of writing (not specifically the music thereof, though we did sing periodically in the lectures).

For the class, we’ve been reading Faith Cook’s Our Hymn Writers and Their Hymns. I have been stirred, even as I’ve cried, as I’ve read about people dying well, trusting their Savior while passing on their love for Christ and the experience of joy in Him and sorrow in weakness and sin to others through their music.

In chapel an excellent new tune by Joel Littlepage to a hymn by Ora Rowan (altered by Kevin Twit) was introduced. The words were especially moving and I cried as I sang them on Friday:

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Though I Once Embraced the Darkness

08 Wednesday Jun 2011

Posted by David L. Gill in Personal, Theology

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Tags

Gospel, music, Scripture, theology, worship

Hope you enjoy it.

A Morning Well-Spent

18 Tuesday Jan 2011

Posted by David L. Gill in Personal

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hymns, music, worship

I spent some time with a couple of good friends this morning in the chapel at CTS.  We got started shortly after 9 and finished up at a quarter to twelve.  We rehearsed and recorded six of my original tunes and one arrangement I’d written while at my previous church.  All three of us had a great time (even though I’m a little bit hoarse from the sinus gunk that’s been going around lately).

It was an extremely encouraging way to spend a morning, indeed a privilege, to worship God with our skills and our instruments as we recorded songs which ranged from heart cries (Psalm 88) to celebrations of God’s mercy (“The Holy Ghost Must Give the Wound”) to songs about the risen Christ (“I Know that My Redeemer Lives”).

Look at the Rose

31 Friday Dec 2010

Posted by David L. Gill in Theology

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Christmas, Gospel, hymns, theology, worship

Isaiah 11:1 says, “A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.”  This German hymn, dating from 1560, was translated by Theodore Baker (vv1-2), Harriett Spaeth (vv3-4) and John Mattes (v5).  Taken from The Trinity Hymnal, Revised Edition, 1990.  Hymn #221.

Lo, how a rose e’er blooming
From the tender stem hath sprung
Of Jesse’s lineage coming
As men of old have sung
It came, a floweret bright
Amid the cold of winter
When half-spent was the night.

Isaiah ’twas foretold it,
The rose I have in mind
With Mary we behold it
The virgin mother kind
To show God’s love aright
She bore to men a Savior
When half-spent was the night.

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Break Forth!

30 Thursday Dec 2010

Posted by David L. Gill in Theology

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Christmas, hymns, repentance, theology, worship

“O God, You make this most holy night to shine with the brightness of the true Light.  Grant that as we have known the mysteries of that Light on earth we may also come to the fullness of His joys in heaven; through the same Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy  Spirit, one God, now and forever” (Collect for Christmas Midnight, from The Lutheran Service Book).

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Prophets Foretold Him

29 Wednesday Dec 2010

Posted by David L. Gill in Theology

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Christmas, hymns, music, worship

Of the Father’s Love Begotten.  by Aurelius Clemens Prudentius (348-413), translated by J. M. Neale and H. W. Baker.  From Cantus Christi, pg. 246.

Of the Father’s love begotten
Ere the worlds began to be
He is Alpha and Omega
He the Source, the Ending He
Of the things that are, that have been
And that future years shall see
Evermore and evermore!

At His Word the worlds were framed
He commanded; it was done
Heaven and earth and depths of ocean
In their three-fold order, one
All that grows beneath the shining
Of the moon and burning sun
Evermore and evermore!

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Silence!

28 Tuesday Dec 2010

Posted by David L. Gill in Theology

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Christmas, confession, Gospel, hymns, music, prayer, theology, worship

Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence. from the Liturgy of St. James, trans. by Gerard Moultrie, 1864.  As published in Cantus Christi 2004 revised edition, pg. 241.  (For those keeping track, this particular hymnal was produced by Douglas Wilson’s church.)

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All Praise to Thee, Eternal God!

27 Monday Dec 2010

Posted by David L. Gill in Theology

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Christmas, Gospel, hymns, Martin Luther, music, Scripture, theology, worship

A hymn by Martin Luther.  From The Lutheran Hymnal of the Evangelical Lutheran Synodical Conference of North America, Concordia Publishing, St. Louis, MO: 1941. #80.

All praise to Thee eternal God
Who, clothed in garb of flesh and blood
Dost take a manger for Thy throne
While worlds on worlds are Thine alone

Once did the skies before Thee bow
A virgin’s arms contain Thee now
While angels, who in Thee rejoice
Now listen for Thine infant voice

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