Category: understanding

Early CCM: Spotlight on Evie

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“Clean Before My Lord.”  This is a song by Evie, c. 1975.  It carries potent memories, as she was a major artist in Contemporary Christian Music.  This particular song, “Clean Before My Lord,”  is just coming out of the “Jesus Movement“, and it carries an innocence and a clarity that is rare today.

I sincerely hope it will penetrate your heart, and bless you in that tender place.  This is my very first attempt of music on Broken Believers.  If you like it, hate it or just indifferent to it, please let me know with the “comment” function below.  Thanks.

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Usefully Curious Links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contemporary_Christian_music

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evie_Tornquist-Karlsson

http://www.mymusicway.com/biography/evie.html

 

aabryscript

God’s Hamburgers

 

 “So the people left the town and went to see Jesus.

 31 Meanwhile, his followers were begging him, “Teacher, eat something.”

 32 But Jesus answered, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.”

 33 So the followers asked themselves, “Did somebody already bring him food?”

 34 Jesus said, “My food is to do what the One who sent me wants me to do and to finish his work.  

John 4:30-34, NCV  

  

 Jesus was amazingly attractive to people.  With an almost magnetic pull, they were drawn to Him.  He connected to each one in a powerful and intimate way.  In our time, and in our way,  Jesus continues to have this incredible appeal.  People are quite attracted to Jesus, and continue to be. They deeply respect and esteem Him. They maybe turned off by the Church, or by doctrine, but they are amazed by Jesus.
  
As disciples, there was a general consensus that Jesus had become a little too popular–to the extent that He wasn’t taking care of Himself.  The thought was that He need sustenance–calories, they hadn’t seen Him eating.  They were concerned that Jesus was “spreading” Himself far too thin.  But this concern was not valid.  Jesus tells of His “food” that the Father was giving Him.  Nourishment was something that Jesus didn’t have to worry about.  The Father took responsibility for Jesus’ hunger.  And Jesus trusted His Father implicitly.
 
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Often our physical needs become our central issues, taking a consistent center-stage.  We start to make eating to an fairly elevated importance. We aren’t just eating, we become gourmets. We will follow Jesus, but only if we can bring our refrigerators.  It may seem subtle, and unimportant, but our stomach can be diverting.  Our appetites subtly encroach on God’s claim on our lives.  The story of Esau in the book of Genesis is a warning for us today–he traded his birthright for a bowl of savory stew.

Whenever Jesus comments deeply, He will clarify much.  He is not worried about His physical needs, that it the Father’s concern.  Instead we see Jesus focusing, with almost pinpoint precision on the Father’s will.  Such focus seems fanatical, way too zealous for us.  It seems that we have exalted culinary excellence, and have been gastronomically led to a place where are palates and stomach’s start to rule.
 
“My food is to do His work.”  Jesus had a focus, that took Him into a way of life we admire, but don’t ever attain.  We certainly will never diminish or minimize Jesus.  But I think we do this when we just gloss over verses like this, and try to ‘side-step’ the obvious meaning with an interpretation that removes the stinger.  We must arrive at this point.  It’s the place were our physical hunger for “good food” is replaced by a strong appetite to do the will and direction of our Heavenly Father.
 
What do you intend to do now?  Will you trust Him to meet your physical needs?  Will the active pursuit of God’s will nourish you completely? You need to figure that out for yourself.  All I can do is to lay this before you so you can make a decision.
 
  
 
 
 
 

 

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Dealing with Arguers

“Make every effort to live in peace with everyone and to be holy”

Hebrews 12:14, TNIV

 

For me personally, someone in my face can be nasty and irritating.  It seems I can never say enough.  I simply don’t get any sense of having “convinced” them of my position or views.  I maintain composure (I try, anyway) and then ignite when its all over.

Inevitably, I start playing the whole ugly argument over and over.  Often, if I feel quite vulnerable, I will enlist my dear wife’s availability.  She comes to my side, where I find the support I wanted.

Intense arguments can derail me from so much.  Going to scripture in this frame of mind does me no good at all.  When I’m in this place, prayer becomes unplugged (kind of like my exercise “treadmill.”)  I sit in my chair and simmer, and occasionally boil over.

What do I need most?

  • Humility
  • Gentleness, and sensitivity
  • Kindness  
  • Pre-planning, or pre-alignment of my heart
  • A sense of humor
  • Renunciation of my “rights” and privileges

 

A lot of things could be added to my quick list, that would be helpful.  Making cookies, or doing new chores also sort out things.  If the issue is more mountain than molehill, find your way to an elder or a pastor.  But whatever you do, it’s best to keep moving.  So much is working to solidify you in one place.  It’s like walking through wet cement! (It’s best not to linger too long, in one place.)

Know this though.  Being in an argument or conflict is not sin.  They may disturb us, but we don’t necessarily have to sin.  Jesus had some whoppers in His day.  He walked into these conflagrations without a diminishing of peace or joy.  He walked out of them the same way.  He can teach us, by showing us how He did it.

Just one more thing (I’m trying hard to write a essay here.)  You don’t hear or read it very often–but, we all are models and examples to someone else.  Our children, neighbors, friends, the bank teller and our gym instructor.  Not that everyone knows of our issue, our frustration.  But that our lives are filled with a “joyous humility.”  I think what hurts me most is that I fear my witness or testimony has been damaged by my words and actions.

God is God of my everything.  He knows what happened.  He knows me, and knows them.  The sin does not impede His vision of you.  When he was on earth, he was never disturbed by any confict.  Today, he is the same.  Disputing with someone else– no problem.  He doesn’t get loose and cut you down in embarassment.  Brilliantly and lovingly, He absorbs all that concerns you.  He is more gentle than you know and kinder than any man, or woman. 

Humpty Dumpty Was an Optimist

 

Therefore, since we have been made right in God’s sight by faith, we have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us.

Because of our faith, Christ has brought us into this place of undeserved privilege where we now stand, and we confidently and joyfully look forward to sharing God’s glory.

Romans 5:1-2

 

Our smashing deliverance over our darkness is something God decided on, not us.  Because of our feeble faith, and our meager trust is transformed into a state of peace.  Our struggling faith elevates us.  Often it is really pathetic, malformed, ugly, and oh, so small.  But Jesus has been working “behind the scenes.”  He  delights in escorting us, His adopted brothers and sisters, into victory, with a Savior’s pride.  Trust me, there is no way we deserve this astonishing salvation, we didn’t earn this honor.  By no means.  Essentially, we are in a shattered heap.

It seems that everything is something, that  He has done for us.  The fact is Jesus far more than adequate.  He has done things that very easily exceed the bare minimum.  We stand, why?  Because He makes us stand.  And to be honest, everything, absolutely everything is something He has done.

If it was up to us, if we tried to make it happen, we would just sizzle out, and collapse in the darkness.  We are totally lost.  So many times, I’ve really tried.  But my darkness truly dissolves any hope that I might have.  I’m not only lost, I’m irrevocably lost.  I have lied, cheated and hoped it would not matter.  I am a colossal loser.   A pile of brokenness.  Why would His Son die, and than give me an  inheritance to take on His righteousness? ( The Bible can be “bizarre” sometimes.)

There is nothing I can bring.  I am much, much more evil than good.  I bring nothing but being a complete moral disaster.  I am a failure beyond any human redemption.  I have completely given up any sort of chance for personal salvation.

What does Jesus do with “losers” like me?  I will tell you what He does.  He redeems us.  He goes to the “slave market” and buys us, on the spot, right off the block!  According to Romans, through our stumbling faith we are simply given that which we could barely hope for.  Our meager faith gives us a billion and billions dollars of righteousness.  We transition from a devastating poverty to being Bill Gates’ heir.

The shock of this will take a lifetime to absorb.  We will try to adapt.  We have moved from a pathetic state of slavery, to being a child to the richest king of the entire universe.  It’s most unreal, like winning the Illinois lottery multiplied by a 1000.

Romans speaks of a new found confidence and joyousness that should come to those lifted out of the slave pit.  Our faith in what Jesus did for us brings us into this incredibly magnificent state.  The Book of Malachi describes the joy that calves of kicking up their hoofs on their release from the stall.  The imagery makes a direct connection to us who have been released from the darkness.

Simply put, He has done something for us that is beyond a dream.  The Parable of the Prodigal Son has now been “switched on.”  It illuminates us fully and describes every person on this planet.  We look at the parable and those 320 words take us apart, and then returns to instill life to us. This parable teaches every human being, of life’s realities.  He has done everything, and we have done nothing.  He now runs to us, and He will change us completely.