Why are you downcast, O my soul?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and my God.

These are the words that are repeated in Psalm 42 and 43. It’s saying something that’s so different to how our world thinks that we might just miss it. It’s saying that when I feel like my life’s falling apart and nothing going right, the best thing I can do is praise God. The writer looks forward to going to the Jewish Temple and there being able to praise God, that’s what he hopes for; it’s what he looks forward to. More than that… it’s what he knows will help settle his “downcast soul”.

That’s a very different thing than we’d expect isn’t it… for most people in the midst of their life falling apart, we’d think they need to be reminded that God will “work things out for their good”. But the Psalmist doesn’t say that. He says that best thing for your soul is to reflect on your great, saving, awesome God… and praise him.

I hope you take the opportunity to do that today in prayer, and at church on Sunday.

photo credit: suburbanbloke

Series: Looking into the lights #1, Looking into the lights #2

In the previous post in this series, we posed the question “Why would we use lights anyway? What’s it meant to help?” I wonder if the answer is “everything”. But I want to be careful how we say that.

See, we need to hold on to two seemingly opposing truths.

1. God, and only God, can soften people’s hearts to hear the gospel and respond appropriately - if God chooses not to soften someone’s heart and move them to respond appropriately, they can not and will not receive the gospel nor respond to it. (John 6:44; Acts 13:48; Rom 9:16; 1Cor 1:25; 1Cor 2:14; and so on)
2. We must make every effort to speak the gospel clearly, effectively, sensitively, faithfully, and helpfully. We must try and remove all hindrances to Christians and non-Christians hearing the gospel and responding to it. In other words, we must endeavor to make hearing and responding to the gospel easy and even enthralling for people. (Rom 10:14-15; 1Cor 9:19-23; 1Cor 10:32-33; 1Cor 14:23; Col 4:4; and so on)

Although these seem quite different, we need to believe both of these things at the same time. If we hold #1 stronger than #2, we’ll end up ostracising people and doing things in ways that suit “us” and say things like, “We don’t need to change how we do things… if God wants to save people he’ll do it without us!” However, if we hold #2 stronger than #1, we’ll end up thinking that God’s sovereignty is limited by our efforts, and that the gospel is insufficient without worldly wisdom and human power. A tendency to either side is wrong.

So what does this have to do with lights? Everything!

Do we need to use lights for people to hear the gospel and respond with their lives?
#1 tells us “No, God can grow his Kingdom in the dark if he so chooses!”.

Could we use lights to help make our gospel centred meetings effective and enthralling for people?
#2 tells us “Yes we could! Discerning use of lights might help people feel more comfortable and relaxed, or more thoughtful and reflective.”

Will using lights mean that more people will become Christians and Christians will understand the depths of the gospel more?
#1 tells us “No”, and
#2 tells us “We hope things like lights will help the kingdom grow!”

Do you see how we have to hold both of these ideas together? On one hand, we don’t have to do anything, its all up to God! On the other hand, we must do all that we can, and work hard to make the gospel “attractive”. An old friend of mine calls this “Being creative with everything, except the truth!”

I think the measure of how we use things like lights and how we run our groups and church meetings is our prayer. Prayer is where #1 and #2 come together! Prayer is where you say, “God, we think it’ll help people if we do things this way… Please use our humble feeble efforts to draw people to you in Christ! Amen”.

So, before my next post about lights, why don’t you leave a comment and tell me how using lights could have a good effect on a meeting’s “feel” and “experience”. In other words… by God’s grace, what does using lights “do” to a meeting, that would be good?