A couple quick notes on our songs for this week. I want to plot a road map of sorts in your mind so as we sing through these you can hopefully have a better idea of where we are and where we are going and that it would help you to worship better.
We are going to start with Did You Feel The Mountains Tremble. I really like this song mainly because it is a confession—a prayer that longs to see what some would call revival or reformation break into God’s world. Especially notice that this song isn’t just pleading for God to do something in “them.” No. This song is a prayer for you, individually to bring to and with those around you, asking God to “open” you (and us). To “prepare” you (and us), the way(s) the Lord breaks into the lost. To be the singers and the dancers whose lives are the rhymes and rhythms and stories of hope and joy to the nations.
Then we are going to sing about this breaking in of Joy To The World. We are going to sing and remember that this breaking in is coming, and we know this because it has already happened—it has already started. The leaven is working. The kingdom is rising. No more let sins and sorrows grow, nor thorns infest the ground! He comes to make His blessing flow far as the curse is found! He rules the world!
But “joy” doesn’t equal “short-cut.” Joy isn’t a hall pass that gets us out of class and out of the tests. Joy, as Tim Keller says, is buoyancy. Joy doesn’t mean we get to skip to the other side, to the other shore. No. Joy ensures that though the storms come and rage, though the journey will probably be long and hard and full of thorns and loss and death, we will make it to the other side. Christ our Brother has gone before us as have many brothers and sisters since. We will make it to the far shore. And so then, we will sing a song called Beautiful Lord. This song should remind us of and point us to the faithful, merciful, beautiful God we serve.
Next we will sing Be Still My Soul. The lyrics of this hymn speak for themselves. Read them. Meditate on them. According to cyberhymnal.org, this hymn was supposed to be the favorite of Eric Liddell, the athlete who became famous in the 1924 Olympics for refusing to run on the Sabbath. Liddell later became a missionary in China, and was imprisoned during World War II. He is said to have taught this hymn to others in the prison camp, where he eventually died of a brain tumor.
Finally we will sing House Of God Forever. This is truly a prayer. It should obviously remind us of Psalm 23. If you haven’t ever read that Psalm, you should. If you haven’t read it lately, you should read it again soon. The truth here is precious and comforting and yet it guards us against pretense and apathy.
I hope this map will help you to sing well from the first to the final words. I hope your God would stir you and stir us this Lord’s day in transforming ways. That we would say enough with the pathetic church games we play with our Sovereign God. As if all He wants is a weekly preformance from us. No, let us sing well as we worship the Lord our Maker.
Here are our songs:
- Did You Feel The Mountains Tremble
- Joy To The World
- Beautiful Lord
- Be Still My Soul
- House Of God Forever
