Blessing the Name of the LORD: When He Gives & then Takes Away
Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshiped. And he said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”
The people of God have always had their laments. The Psalms are filled with a whole host of intense emotions and expressions towards God. So many of them were birthed in times of suffering and struggle. Psalm 3 was written as King David fled for his life from his own son Absalom. Psalm 56 was inspired when the Philistines seized him in Gath. In Psalm 57 he’s on the run again, this time from King Saul, and wrote the song whilst hiding in a cave. These are songs formed in the fire of affliction. They are the desperate cries of a worshipper on the road marked with suffering. In fact, Eugene Peterson estimates that around 70% of content in the Psalms is lament-based.
Blessed be Your name:
In the land that is plentiful, where Your streams of abundance flow;
When I’m found in the desert place, though I walk through the wilderness.
When the sun’s shining down on me, when the world’s ‘all as it should be’;
On the road marked with suffering, though there’s pain in the offering.Every blessing You pour out, I’ll turn back to praise.
When the darkness closes in, Lord, still I will say:
blessed be Your glorious name.
Clearly therefore, songs of lament are a very biblical thing to sing in worship. Yet they are also a relevant thing to sing, for we live in a world full of anguish and heartache. As Christians, yes we live in victory, but in paradox we also exist as strangers in a foreign land, aching for home, and knowing deep within us that the world we see before is not as it should be. So the question is this: if songs of lament are firstly thoroughly biblical, and secondly extremely relevant, then why on earth are there not more songs to help us voice these heart-cries? As Frederich W. Schmidt Jr. writes, these Psalms do three things:
They give us permission to ask our own questions about suffering. They model the capacity to ask questions we might otherwise suppress, but can never escape. And they model how those questions might be asked without fear of compromising our relationship with God or with other people.
--Matt Redman
A Gifted Response
This is a gifted response
Father we cannot come to You by our own merit
We will come in the name of Your son
As He glorifies You
And in the power of Your Spirit~
We have come to something so mysterious
Too deep for minds to comprehend
Through the open door
Where the angels sing
And the host of heaven are antheming…* *
And we’ll sing the glory of Your name
Celebrate the glories of Your fame
We will worship You, We will worship You!
And we’ll make Your praise so glorious
Singing songs of everlasting praise
We will worship You, We will worship You!
“Two themes run through this song. Firstly, that worship is a ‘gifted response’. We cannot do it in our own strength, or offer it by our own merits. Anything we ever bring to God belongs to Him in the first place. If we sing a song to Him, he gave us the breath we sing it with. If we tithe some money, it was already His. If we help an elderly lady across the street, he gave us the strength in which we carry out that act of service. (more…)
Worship through Questioning and Doubting
Why have you rejected us forever, O God?
Why does your anger smolder against the sheep of your pasture?
How long will the enemy mock you, O God?
Will the foe revile your name forever?
Why do you hold back your hand, your right hand?
–Psalm 74
O LORD God Almighty, how long will your anger smolder against the prayers of your people?
–Psalm 80
Will you be angry with us forever?
Will you prolong your anger through all generations?
Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you?
Show us your unfailing love, O LORD, and grant us your salvation.
–Psalm 85
How long, O LORD ? Will you hide yourself forever?
How long will your wrath burn like fire?
Remember how fleeting is my life. For what futility you have created all men!
What man can live and not see death, or save himself from the power of the grave? Selah
O Lord, where is your former great love, which in your faithfulness you swore to David?
–Psalm 89
These prayers, daring as they may be, are still very much worship. They are not the cries of people who have given up on God. They are not sarcastic or rhetorical questions. Instead, they are songs of intercession, from a people whose only hope is found in their God. They are honoring to Him, because they show their need for total dependence on Him. The Psalmists cry out with these searching questions because they know God is powerful enough to change the situation. And they also know He is a God whose heart is full of compassion for his people. In other words, he is strong enough to intervene, and he is kind enough to do so too.
–Matt Redman
Defining Worship
This morning, I started a week-long “j-term” class. I am taking The Worshipping Church, and as it says on the syllabus, the course is “a study of Christian worship, its biblical roots, its historical development, the impact of the Reformation and the liturgical revival; a comparative study of denominational worship patterns, the selection of worship materials, planning orders of worship, inner-staff participation in worship in relation to preaching, evangelism, music, and spiritual growth in participants.”
For the next couple weeks, I’ll be discussing worship / church music related issues on my blog here. Before starting at Southern, I had been leading worship for… let’s just say a long time. I have always enjoyed the corporate singing of His praises, and the joyful responsibility of leading people to recognize their position in Christ. I do miss leading corporate worship, but since being called to the ministry of the Word, I still find myself yearning to spread a biblical theology of worship. (more…)
