REALLY ONLY DUST

In about 3 weeks, we will be celebrating the most important event in all of human history.

That event is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. He proved that He conquered death itself by rising from the grave. By doing so, he displayed His glory.

He is now in Heaven... glorified!

Soon I hope to make another song available to download, entitled "Glorified". As I continue to work on the music in the studio, I want to talk about the glory of Jesus, and what it means for anyone who puts their faith in Him.

When God the Father sent His Son Jesus to die on that cruel cross, He knew there was no other way to save us.

He knew we would never be good enough to go to Heaven. Only perfect creatures can live there, because Heaven is a perfect place. It's where God's throne is. If you or I could go there in our present condition, Heaven would stop being Heaven. It wouldn't be perfect anymore. We would mess it up, just by being there.

Do you see why God can't let us into Heaven by our own efforts? We can't just be a "good person" and live a "good life". We will never be good enough. We will always fall short of perfection.

The Bible calls that sin. We were born sinners.

So if we can't go to Heaven, that means we would perish, and be separated from God forever. The Bible calls that Hell.

That's the bad news, because it's impossible for us to change our sin nature.

And yet, the Bible says that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

But what does it mean to "believe in Him"?

It all comes down to loving the truth.

It's not enough to say you believe in Jesus or even to believe He exists. That is not a faith that saves anyone. Even the devil and the demons believe Jesus is who He says He is, but here's the difference:

They don't love Him! They hate Him!

Believing Jesus means loving the truth, because Jesus said He is the truth.

Loving the truth means agreeing with Him (read the Bible to find out what He said) and seeing ourselves as we really are, as He says we are- as sinners needing forgiveness from God and needing to repent (turn from) our sins.

The first sin we need to repent from is the sin of unbelief in Jesus. That is the one sin that can keep us out of Heaven.

Do you believe Jesus is your Lord and Savior? The Bible says that God gives us the faith to believe. But it also says we must ask for it. We must show God we really want it.

When God gives us the gift of faith and we truly believe, we then believe what Jesus said, we love what He said, we hold on to what He said, and we have a desire to live according to what He said. Because what He said is Truth with a capital T. And we love the truth, so we love Him.

It doesn't mean we stop being sinners. But it does mean that God forgives our sins. All of them. Past, present, and future.

When we believe in Jesus and believe that His death on the Cross paid for our sins, it's like this:

Jesus shows up in God's court with payment for our sin debt to God, and we ask God to apply that payment to our sin account. We ask God to accept Christ's sacrifice as payment for our sins.

When God does that, our sin debt is paid in full. Once for all. He then treats us as if we were like Jesus and had no sin. Case dismissed!

We are now justified (made right) before God. Forever.

Once we are justified by repenting from unbelief in Jesus, God begins to help us repent from our other sins.

That's a process called sanctification. More on that in my next post.

"Through the LORD's mercies we are not consumed, 
Because His compassions fail not. 
They are new every morning; Great is Your faithfulness." 
(Lamentations 3:22-23)

You'd think it would be easy to thank God when everything is going our way, wouldn't you?

When our health is good, when we have the material things we want, when there's enough money to pay for everything, and when we're surrounded by loved ones, it's easy to think God is blessing us.

And so we naturally want to thank Him, right?

Unfortunately, that is not human nature.

It is said that prosperity makes monsters, and adversity makes men. Just like kids that get everything they want and are never told "no", we become spoiled when everything comes easy.

This is why persecuted Christians in the poorest countries are stronger in their faith. They are more thankful for what they have.

As fallen human beings, we have a natural tendency to be proud, selfish and entitled. So we take many of God's blessings for granted. Even something as simple as the next breath we take.

Be honest...

How often do you wake up in the morning and start to think about something other than thanking God for keeping you breathing throughout the night as you slept?

I will confess that gratitude for God's loving kindness and tender mercies doesn't come easily to me. I have to work at being thankful!

My natural tendency is to go through the day thinking about the things that are wrong with my life, not to count my blessings. Then I catch myself, confessing it and asking God for forgiveness.

But there is so much that God knows about my present and future circumstances that I can't possibly know. What if some of the bad things are actually blessings in disguise? 

What terrible job did He keep me from being hired for? What bad person did He keep me from getting close to? What if I got that last minute phone call that made me late leaving the house because He kept me from being in a car accident had I left on time?

How about you? What disasters has He helped you avoid? You will never know on this side of Heaven. But if you are reading this, through His loving kindness and tender mercies He has kept you alive another day. For that alone He is to be thanked!

However, we do have many other obvious material blessings to count and to thank Him for. You probably are healthy enough to get out of bed, have a roof over your head and clothes on your back. You probably have a family and friends that care.

I know some people don't have these things, so I'm not trying to ignore real problems. Jesus Himself said that in this world we would have many troubles. But He also said we should take heart, because He has overcome the world!

So, fellow Christian, there you have the first and greatest blessing we possess. That God, in His kindness and tender mercy, opened our eyes of understanding and gave us the faith to believe God's Word and Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh. And that by believing in Jesus, we have eternal life.

Each day, we have that eternal blessing from Jesus. At the end, that's the blessing that really counts.

Does this word make you think of people jumping up and down like maniacs? People looking like they've had too much sugar or caffeine... or some other drug? Is that what the Bible means when it talks about joy?

Judge for yourself:

Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. (James 1:2-4 NASB)

Keep in mind that when James the apostle wrote this, Christians were under severe persecution. They were being disowned by their families, fired from their jobs, and even killed. It cost something to profess faith in Jesus. Jesus Himself said that if anyone wanted to follow Him, they should count the cost.

And yet James wrote that we should count it all as joy??

So obviously the joy that James is writing about is a different kind of Joy. It's a settled confidence and peace in knowing God, and knowing (by faith) that He has everything under control and is using it to perfect and complete His children.

As we persevere (keep on keeping on) we develop endurance, which makes our faith stronger until we are "perfect and complete"... in faith and in everything else. In the life to come, for all eternity.

I know that I'm far from "perfect and complete". Let a trial come my way, and there goes my peace. And in comes fear, anger, doubt, impatience. Maybe for something as small as my phone breaking!

Does this sound a little like you?

What if we had to go through some really bad stuff? How would we hold up? Would our faith get stronger or weaker?

I don't think God expects you to have a silly grin on your face after you get hit with bad stuff. But if you have the joy that James is writing about, you have a smile on the inside and in your heart. It will enable you to go through some really bad stuff. And if God chooses to let you come out of it, you'll look back on it and wonder how you ever made it without cracking up.

I know. I've been there. In truth, it wasn't my great strength that kept me. It was God's.

Without the shedding of blood, there is no covering of sins.

It's a brutal fact.

Think about this: have you ever wondered why we wear clothes?

We read in Genesis that when God made Adam and Eve they were naked. But sin came into the world, and sin distorts everything. Sin distorts nakedness. Immediately Adam and Eve knew they were naked, and they tried to make coverings out of fig leaves. God came to their rescue, providing garments by killing an innocent animal. This was the first blood sacrifice; it was a covering for their sin. (Ken Ham, Answers in Genesis)

How unfair was that? An innocent animal had to die because of Adam's sin. Prior to that, Adam and Eve walked naked before God because they had never sinned and therefore had no shame about anything. Their relationship with God was perfect and they enjoyed perfect communion with Him. They trusted Him completely.

But once they believed the lie instead of the Truth (which is God, because He is truth and there is no lie in Him) the trust was broken.

And now they had betrayed Him. All because they chose to believe a lie about Him, despite the fact that God had done nothing but good for them.

And they knew it. Which is why they felt shame. It was not just because they were physically naked. They were spiritually naked before Him, and they knew that God knew they had sinned. And they felt shame for doing the dishonorable.

If you love God, you will know what I'm talking about. You will, like me, sin against Him and then hide behind spiritual "fig leaves". You may stop talking to Him and pretend He isn't there. You may even get angry at Him. You may try to distance yourself by getting involved in various distractions.

All of that is temporary, just like Adam and Eve's fig leaves.

The permanent covering for our sin is Jesus, the perfect blood sacrifice.

How unfair was that? An innocent man dying to cover our sins!

But only a perfect blood sacrifice could cover every single sin ever committed. It had to be Jesus, who had never sinned. Even His enemies never accused Him of committing a single sin (except for the sin of blasphemy when He made Himself equal with God).

And He was equal with God. Which is why nothing but the precious blood of Jesus covers all sins, including yours and mine.

I'm glad that God was not fair!

There are many hymns lyrics that are structured with verses followed by refrains. On the surface, this structure is similar to verses and choruses (A and B sections) used in many popular songs. But because of the emphasis on scriptural depth, hymns often employ many more verses than typical pop songs. It is not uncommon for hymn lyrics to have 4 or more verses. It's a great way to include a lot of rich content. But a lot of verses in a pop song format usually makes them way too long!  I wanted Condemned No More to have at least 4 verses, so I made the verses and choruses somewhat short. This allowed me to have a song under 5 minutes and still keep much of the lyrical content.

Many hymns have a short musical interlude (turnaround) between chorus and verse that provides the literal "breathing room" for the singer. After you sing a powerful chorus, it gives you a chance to catch your breath before singing the following verse. Typically, part of the end of the chorus is repeated to accomplish this. But I decided to use a motif played by guitar. This works as a "bridge" and makes the song more interesting because it incorporates the ethnic folk flavor that echoes the song melody.

I believe the best hymns incorporate both lyrical depth as well as memorable and accessible melodies. And it's important that the melody be simple enough for anyone to enjoy singing it. That's the whole point to worship music... God wants everyone to worship Him, not just good singers! So I tried to write Condemned No More with the singer in mind.

Some songs are born unexpectedly, and such was Condemned No More.

I became a Christian later in life, so I wasn't raised with the hymns. But after studying the Bible a few years, I started to appreciate the old hymns. They were like preaching set to music, very different from a lot of contemporary Christian music which sounded like secular pop music with watered-down Christian lyrics. But many hymns were written hundreds of years ago and come from the European classical music tradition, making them sound strange to the modern ear. Sometimes the melodies are difficult to follow and clumsy; sometimes they are downright boring. And sometimes the old English words seem out of place. I mean, who uses thou or thee in 2017? It's a shame that the timeless truths contained in these hymns should be shackled with antiquated constructs.

But what do hymns have to do with Condemned No More? One day I was singing a hymn, and as I thought about the lyrics I began to feel a deep sense of joy. I began to improvise spontaneously and came up with a chant for it. I liked the chant so much that I figured it was worth making it a brand new song. And it became the chorus for Condemned No More.

The hymns influenced me in other ways, too. I'll save that for another post.