Displaced

Zac  Hicks post:  Set Our Hearts on Fire Again

Have you ever experienced a Sunday morning when worship felt lifeless, rote, even boring? Has there ever been a time when worship’s coals have gone cold, when you began to lose your first love (Revelation 2:4)? Have you ever desperately cried out, “Restore to me the joy of your salvation” (Psalm 51:12)? 

There are lots of tools, resources, gimmicks, and ideas out there on what remedies the heart of worship gone cold. But if we were to boil it down, if we were to focus on one thing, we might simply ask, “What has the power to inflame a worshiper’s heart again?” 

“Their Hearts Burned Within Them”

This language of hearts “on fire” isn’t just Christianese. It’s biblical. Luke 24recounts one of the most beautiful moments in Jesus’s ministry — the road to Emmaus, where two despondent disciples are transformed by an encounter with Jesus.

The scene opens with these two men on the road shortly after the crucifixion, lamenting the death of Jesus and their loss of hope. Jesus appears and walks alongside them, but they don’t recognize him. Then Jesus begins a kind of Bible study, right there on the road: “Beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself” (Luke 24:27). Jesus was teaching them how to read and interpret the Bible. And his main point? “It’s all about me.” 

Later on, when Jesus was gone, the two disciples talk about what they learned and how it affected them. “They said to each other, ‘Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?’” (Luke 24:32). What set their hearts ablaze — in the language of Augustine, what captivated their affections — was an interpretation of Scripture that put Jesus and his finished work front and center.

Putting Jesus at the Center

If worship is going to set our hearts on fire, it needs to do the same thing. It needs to put Jesus front and center, through the Scriptures. This understanding of Christ-centeredness as the key to unlocking vibrant, passionate worship is old, and perhaps no one has said it better than the Protestant Reformer, Thomas Cranmer.

When Cranmer unveiled the 1549 Book of Common Prayer — a collection of the first worship services that the English-speaking world had ever heard — he wrote a short manifesto on worship in its preface. In it he claimed that the purpose of worship centered on Christ and filled with the Scriptures was to cause worshipers to “be the more inflamed with the love of [God’s] true religion.” 

Cranmer believed that worship’s goal was to set hearts on fire. And so Cranmer designed worship services that made much of Jesus.

Displace and Replace

How did Cranmer do it, and how can we do it? 

Some people have argued that Christ-centered worship simply means singing songs, praying prayers, and preaching sermons that make much of Jesus and his finished work. Reformers like Cranmer and theologians like Paul would tell us, though, that this approach is far too simplistic. They would be more inclined to describe Christ-centered worship as a cyclical process of two actions. Let’s call those actions displacement and replacement.

Every last one of us — Christian and non-Christian alike — comes into worship having spent a week consistently placing ourselves at the center of our lives. This self-centeredness is the disposition of what Paul variously called the “old self” (Romans 6:6; Ephesians 4:22; Colossians 3:9), the “sinful” nature (Romans 7:5, 13), or sometimes just “the flesh” (Romans 7:5; 8:3–13). 

If worship is to be Christ-centered, it must first do the work of displacing me. It must tell me that I do not belong in the center. It must call me out for what I am — a fraud, an imposter, a sinner. This means that worship’s first word to me must be a discomforting, displacing word that leaves no blurred lines between who God is (perfect, holy) and who I am (rebellious, sinful). 

This is why Cranmer and the other Reformers were dead set on providing repeated moments in worship that highlight God’s glory through lofty words of praise. It also is why they insisted that we must have moments to confess our sinfulness. These kinds of words and habits displace “me.” They remove me from center-stage. 

Then, and really only then, can the words of the gospel rush in to offer the remedy of replacement, putting Christ at the center. The point that Paul and the Reformers were attempting to make is that for Christ-centered worship to have its proper heart-inflaming effects, the gospel needs to be set against the backdrop of my sin and need.

For Sunday Morning

Let’s get practical. If the above is true, then singing, praying, and preaching about how awesome Jesus is, how amazing his grace is, and how marvelous his cross is, is not enough (odd as that may sound).

It’s not that Jesus isn’t awesome. It’s not that his grace isn’t amazing. It’s not that the cross isn’t marvelous. But we won’t have eyes to see it until we’ve been displaced, until we’ve been knocked off the throne of our tiny self-kingdoms.

Do our worship services give room for that kind of reflection? That kind of honesty? That kind of confession and humility? Words of displacement can come in many forms — songs that highlight the glorious incommunicable attributes of God, prayers that offer words of confession, Psalms of lamentation read together or responsively. But such words are needed in order for the replacement — the songs, prayers, praises about the finished work of Christ — to have its full effect on us.

Christ-centered worship suggests a certain progression or cycles of progression. This kind of ordering in our services can be a lasting fuel to keep the heart of worship burning.

Two Things

“Although my memory's fading, I remember two things very clearly: I am a great sinner and Christ is a great Savior.”

― John Newton, Amazing Grace

Renewed - Unchanging Bedrock

Ray Ortlund post:  When you can't count on anything else

What do you have going for you everything is against you?  What will not fail you when what you thought was true and solid and real collapses beneath you?  Who will stand by you when friends forsake you and enemies seize their opportunity?  What works when everything is on the line but nothing else is working?

This experience is inevitable.  We don’t have to go looking for it.  It will come find us.  God himself has written it into our stories.  But when this happens, we are forced to ask the basic question: What can I count on, when I can’t count on anything else?

Psalm 139 is where to go for the answer.  When David found himself in that catastrophic place, he dug all the way down to the deepest foundations of his very existence.  This is the unchanging bedrock he found there:

God, you know me (verses 1-6).

God, you are with me (verses 7-12).

God, you made me (verses 13-18).

The psalm then turns on the hinge of verse 18b: “I awake, and I am still with you.”  David wakes up from his contemplations.  He was lost for a while in his thoughts.  As he stirs himself, blinks, sits up and looks around again, he finds that he is still with God as he returns mentally to “the real world” where nothing has changed.  But he has changed.  He has been renewed within by meditating on God’s intensely personal care for him.  His boldness returns:

God, I am wholeheartedly for you (verses 19-24).

“How precious to me are your thoughts, O God” (Psalm 139:17).

My Refuge

1-13 You who sit down in the High God’s presence,
    spend the night in Shaddai’s shadow,
Say this: “God, you’re my refuge.
    I trust in you and I’m safe!”
That’s right—he rescues you from hidden traps,
    shields you from deadly hazards.
His huge outstretched arms protect you—
    under them you’re perfectly safe;
    his arms fend off all harm.
Fear nothing—not wild wolves in the night,
    not flying arrows in the day,
Not disease that prowls through the darkness,
    not disaster that erupts at high noon.
Even though others succumb all around,
    drop like flies right and left,
    no harm will even graze you.
You’ll stand untouched, watch it all from a distance,
    watch the wicked turn into corpses.
Yes, because God’s your refuge,
    the High God your very own home,
Evil can’t get close to you,
    harm can’t get through the door.
He ordered his angels
    to guard you wherever you go.
If you stumble, they’ll catch you;
    their job is to keep you from falling.
You’ll walk unharmed among lions and snakes,
    and kick young lions and serpents from the path.

14-16 “If you’ll hold on to me for dear life,” says God,
    “I’ll get you out of any trouble.
I’ll give you the best of care
    if you’ll only get to know and trust me.
Call me and I’ll answer, be at your side in bad times;
    I’ll rescue you, then throw you a party.
I’ll give you a long life,
    give you a long drink of salvation!”

Psalm 91 [Message]

Committed to Our Joy

Ryan Troglin post:  Why God's Sexual Ethic Is Good for the World

Rosaria Butterfield, Sam Allberry, and Jackie Hill Perry Discuss 

How is God’s sexual ethic not just true, but beautiful and good?

That’s the question Sam Allberry (author of Is God Anti-Gay? and a founding editor of Living Out, a ministry for those struggling with same-sex attraction), Rosaria Butterfield (author of The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert and Openness Unhindered), and Jackie Hill Perry (spoken word poet and hip-hop artist) take on in this new seven-minute roundtable video. 

Perry considers how pursuing holiness leads to human flourishing; Butterfield thinks about how bearing God’s image informs Scripture’s sexual morality; and Allberry reminds us what the Bible actually is—the story of a Creator more committed to our joy than we could ever imagine, not an arbitrary list of prohibitions. 

Watch (or listen below) as they open up about their own struggles with sexuality and share how the Lord has used his Word to show them the goodness of his sexual ethic. 

Fully Present

Steven Dilla post at Park Forum:  Resting in Hopelessness 

For my soul is full of troubles, and my life draws near to Sheol. — Psalm 88.3

If Christianity has lost anything in the transition from its eastern roots to modern western culture it is surely its emphasis on contentment. It takes enormous energy to find contentment in the day-to-day of material-oriented life—let alone to find it in the depths of pain and discomfort.

The journey of contentment is often short-circuited by our appetite for conclusion. Contentment requires one to sit in the midst of whatever is happening without longing for “the next step.” It necessitates performance-oriented people relinquish their commitment to get everything right. Sitting in contentment isn’t about getting answers, but gaining understanding.

In The Resurrection of the Son of God, bishop N.T. Wright contrasts what the authors of scripture ought to have felt with the reality they confess in their deepest struggles:

When this strong faith in YHWH as the creator, the life-giver, the God of ultimate justice met the apparent contradiction of the injustices and sufferings of life, at that point there was, as we have seen, a chance of fresh belief springing up. Not that the sufferings of Israel always evoked this response. Psalm 88, and the book of Job, are evidence to the contrary.

Psalm 88 is disturbing not only because, as Spurgeon says, it is, “the darkest of all the Psalms; it has hardly a spot of light in it,” but because it doesn’t even try to move forward out of the abyss.

The psalmist pours out pain, frustration, and disappointment before God. The lament is unapologetic and lacks a move toward restoration: it weeps, aches, complains, and accuses. Then it ends.

Contentment, in this way, is not satisfaction in the moment but the ability to be fully present. It creates margin for the exploration of the soul and space for transparency in what was found. Contentment’s fruit is born not in resolution, but in presence.

We fear contentment because it has become convoluted with complacency. How can we rest at peace when there are great things to accomplish, proper beliefs to be held, and greener pastures in which we could find ourselves? And so we press on—unaware, performing, and restless.

The invitation of Psalm 88 is to stop. Discover where you are—don’t judge it against where you ought be, or what you ought believe—just find yourself. It’s only here that the journey of authentic community and renewal in the gospel can take root.

Psalm 88 [Message]

1-9 God, you’re my last chance of the day.
    I spend the night on my knees before you.
Put me on your salvation agenda;
    take notes on the trouble I’m in.
I’ve had my fill of trouble;
    I’m camped on the edge of hell.
I’m written off as a lost cause,
    one more statistic, a hopeless case.
Abandoned as already dead,
    one more body in a stack of corpses,
And not so much as a gravestone—
    I’m a black hole in oblivion.
You’ve dropped me into a bottomless pit,
    sunk me in a pitch-black abyss.
I’m battered senseless by your rage,
    relentlessly pounded by your waves of anger.
You turned my friends against me,
    made me horrible to them.
I’m caught in a maze and can’t find my way out,
    blinded by tears of pain and frustration.

9-12 I call to you, God; all day I call.
    I wring my hands, I plead for help.
Are the dead a live audience for your miracles?
    Do ghosts ever join the choirs that praise you?
Does your love make any difference in a graveyard?
    Is your faithful presence noticed in the corridors of hell?
Are your marvelous wonders ever seen in the dark,
    your righteous ways noticed in the Land of No Memory?

13-18 I’m standing my ground, God, shouting for help,
    at my prayers every morning, on my knees each daybreak.
Why, God, do you turn a deaf ear?
    Why do you make yourself scarce?
For as long as I remember I’ve been hurting;
    I’ve taken the worst you can hand out, and I’ve had it.
Your wildfire anger has blazed through my life;
    I’m bleeding, black-and-blue.
You’ve attacked me fiercely from every side,
    raining down blows till I’m nearly dead.
You made lover and neighbor alike dump me;
    the only friend I have left is Darkness.

Faithful Witnesses

Bruce Ashford post:  4 Principles for Political Witness in our American Babylon

The past decade has made one thing clear to many evangelicals: the social, cultural, and political ground is shifting beneath them. We’re not “winning the day” with our vision of the good life. Although we’ve seen incremental progress on the pro-life issue, we’re experiencing consistent regression on other important issues, such as religious liberty, human dignity, gender and sexuality, and free speech. And many of us have given little attention to opposing racial injustice.

As we’re marginalized in this uncertain day, the Old Testament offers important lessons for us. Especially prescient is the story in Daniel 3 about three Jewish men—Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego—who are Babylonian captives under King Nebuchadnezzar. From these mid-level government officials, we learn four significant lessons about being faithful witnesses in a pagan public square.

1. We must not bow to the false political gods of our day.

In Daniel 3, we learn Nebuchadnezzar had constructed a 90-foot-high gold statue on the plain of Dura. He gathered government officials from across his kingdom and ordered them to worship the statue. It was quite an event, replete with celebrity musicians and politicians from around the world. Anyone who didn’t bend a knee was threatened with fire. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego refused to bow.

Similarly, evangelicals shouldn’t submit to the false political gods that flourish and abound in the United States of America. How do we identify the “false gods” in our own nation? We look for anything raised to a level of ultimacy that God alone occupies.

One way to gain perspective on false political gods is to identify perennial idols—sex, money, and power—and observe the way they shape political platforms and public policies. Another way is to identify dominant political ideologies and excavate their idolatrous underpinnings. Divorced from the corrective influence of the gospel, every ideology mislocates “evil” and then deifies some aspect of God’s creation to redeem us from that evil.

Classical political liberalism takes on such ideological dimensions. It elevates individual freedom and autonomy to ultimate status. This can manifest in a sort of social progressivism, because when individual autonomy is made the chief moral arbiter, norms are liable to constant change. The epitome of our societal obsession with the liberal ideology (and idolatry) is the cliché “Follow your heart.” It’s another way of saying, “I have the right to do whatever I please.” The deleterious fruits of such an attitude—elective (and frequent) abortion, embarrassingly high divorce rates, disregard for biblical sexual mores, the diminished religious liberty—are legion. Other ideologies such as nationalism, socialism, and social conservatism are similarly idolatrous.

2. We must stand strong in the face of immense social, cultural, and political pressure.

Once the three Jewish nonconformists refused to bow, a group of rival government officials arranged for them to be brought to trial in front of Nebuchadnezzar, whose initial rage soon turns into puzzlement. The king offers them another opportunity to capitulate, promising that the Jewish God couldn’t possibly save them from his own powerful hand. In response to Nebuchadnezzer, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego state the God of Israel can in fact save them—but even if he doesn’t, they will not worship the false god.

In the United States, evangelicals will experience opposition in many forms, including corporate pressure, legal sanctions, social ostracism, and social media flash mobs. These will increasingly coalesce to put evangelicals under immense social, cultural, and political pressure. We should remain convictional, refuse to compromise on biblical beliefs, and capitalize on every opportunity to decenter ourselves by pointing to God’s power to redeem.

3. We must retain our Christian composure in the heat of the battle.

Nebuchadnezzar responds to the Jewish nonconformists by having them thrown into the incinerator. They don’t resist arrest or spew vitriol, but retain composure as they are punished for their righteous deeds.

The lesson for American evangelicals is pointed, even painful. When we’re trusting God and decentering ourselves, we will not resort to unchristian behavior as a means of promoting Christian goals. We will not demonize, degrade, or misrepresent our opponents in order to score political points. We will prioritize long-term witness over short-term political victories. We will trust God is working in and through our convictional witness, even when it seems he’s not.

4. We must trust God will display his kingship through our witness.

In the conclusion of Daniel 3, God saves the three Jewish non-conformists. Just after Nebuchadnezzar throws them in the fire, he notices that the men aren’t being consumed and that a mysterious fourth person—whose appearance was like “the Son of God”—has joined them. Nebuchadnezzar casts aside his royal dignity, runs toward the incinerator, and invites them to come out. In an astonishing reversal of his position, Nebuchadnezzar praises the Jewish God, legitimizes the Jewish religion, and promotes the nonconformists.

Let’s be clear: American evangelicals should not conclude that God will give us visible political victories in response to our witness. Sometimes God gives us visible victories, and sometimes he doesn’t. We’re called to be faithful rather than victorious, witnesses rather than winners. Christ alone “wins” politically, and one day, his triumphant kingdom will be made manifest. The lesson to be gained, therefore, is that God will work in and through our faithfulness to glorify himself.

The narrative of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego offers the church in America an incredible vision of how to live faithfully in the midst of such social, cultural, and political idolatry. In fact, the book of Daniel reminds the church that Babylon is nearer than we think. And like the three Israelite men, God has sanctified and sent his redeemed people into the public square to proclaim with our lips and lives another King reigns—even if the furnace is “heated seven times more than it was usually heated” (Dan. 3:17).