Growth Pains

This Sunday in church, we sang a new hymn. Actually, it's not a new hymn, per se, just a new hymn for our congregation. Its words were written almost 250 years ago by John Newton (who also wrote Amazing Grace and many other hymns).

In an age where so many in the church seem to promise nothing but smiles and happiness for those who follow Jesus, our own experiences can quickly disavow us of such thinking. Sanctification is a struggle and the march to humble holiness is a long, hard, and (at times) painful one. For this reason, hymns like this one are necessary. I know it speaks to my experience. Perhaps it speaks to yours as well.

I Need Thee Every Hour...A Capella

I heard this yesterday really enjoyed it. All the parts are sung by one man, Sam Robson. His voice sounds really good with, well, his voice. Check out other a capella arrangements by Robson here.

Indelible Grace VI: Joy Beyond The Sorrow

I recently received the newest offering from the folks at Indelible Grace. It is entitled Indelible Grace VI: Joy Beyond The Sorrow and is exactly what fans of IG have come to expect: Rich theological content from hymnists such as John Newton, William Cowper, Horatius Bonar and Martin Luther set to newer tunes. Click here to read a review of the album from talented musician and fellow-pastor, Zac Hicks.

One of the things I have always appreciated about Indelible Grace is their recognition that the Christian life is not all "ups," but also inevitably includes many "downs." As the title suggests, this album deals largely with the fact that our hope for the former is largely what sustains us through the latter. 

The title Joy Beyond The Sorrow actually comes from the lyrics of one of Bonar's hymns on the album, Until the Day Break. Its lyrics are among my favorite on the album and they do a good job of capturing the spirit of the album as a whole.

Until The Day Break by Horatius Bonar

For the vision of the Bridegroom
Waits the well-beloved Bride,
Severed only for a season
From her Well-beloved's side.

For the hour when morn ascendeth,
And the shadows disappear,
For the signs of heavenly glory,
She is waiting, waiting here!

Morn of morns, it comes at last,
All the gloom of ages past.
For the day of days the brightest
She is waiting, waiting here!

For the coming of the Bridegroom,
Whom, though yet unseen, we love;
For the King of saints, returning
In His glory from above;

For the shout that shakes the prison,
For the trumpet loud and clear,
 For the voice of the archangel,
She is waiting, waiting here!

Morn of morns, it comes at last,
All the gloom of ages past.
For the day of days the brightest
She is waiting, waiting here!

For the light beyond the darkness,
When the reign of sin is done,
When the storm has ceased its raging,
And the haven has been won;

For the joy beyond the sorrow,
Joy of the eternal year,
For the resurrection splendor,
She is waiting, waiting here!

Morn of morns, it comes at last,
All the gloom of ages past.
For the day of days the brightest
She is waiting, waiting here!

Click here for more information or to purchase the album.

New Album from the Gettys

Of all the people writing new hymns for the church, Keith & Kristyn Getty are among my favorites. Their new album, Hymns for the Christian Life is available today.




(HT: David Crabb)

Wednesday's Words of Wisdom...Horton on Choosing the Right Hymns

"The best hymns of the historic Church, modeled on the Scriptures themselves (especially the Psalms) are rich with godly experience, but experience arising directly and explicitly in view of the mercies of God in his Son. When their goal is to make the word of Christ dwell in the saints richly, such hymns train generations of covenant heirs to invoke and to give thanks to the Triune God, not as an expression of autonomous zeal, but as a response to the Word that they hear and embrace. Depending on the wisdom that we exercise in selecting them, hymns can be a blessing or a curse in the church of God."

Michael Horton

Pensive, Doubting, Fearful Heart

I heard this song this morning for the first time. Originally a hymn penned by John Newton, it has been updated here by Red Mountain Music. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.



(HT: Challies)

Be A Part of Indelible Grace VI

Not too long ago, I wrote about a video I purchased which chronicled the history of one of the leading proponents of the Hymns Movement: Indelible Grace. I was excited to learn this weekend that Indelible Grace is embarking upon a new recording project this summer as they head to the studio to produce Indelible Grace VI.

The project is being funded in part by Kickstarter, and I would like to ask you to consider playing a part. Supporters of the project receive great rewards, including a digital download of the finished album. Please check out the videos below, and then click here for more information or to donate to this project.

Returning to Hymns

Today The Gospel Coalition posted this real good discussion between Mike Cosper, Isaac Wardell and Kevin Twit on why and how many churches are rediscovering the importance of hymns. Take a couple minutes to check it out.


Old Hymns for Our Day from The Gospel Coalition on Vimeo.

In the Bleak Midwinter

The Real Miracle of Christmas

The other day I read a story about anonymous people paying off layaway balances on Christmas gifts that random people had on hold for their children. One of the people who had been so blessed was quoted as saying something to the effect of, "I believe in Christmas again."

We consider these types of things (especially if and when they happen to us) to be "Christmas miracles." This morning though, I kept having the thought rattling around in my head that the true miracle of Christmas is that the Creator deigned to become the creature.

Last year I did a series of blog posts on Christmas hymns. One of them dealt with the wonder of this truth. Here were my thoughts:

John begins his gospel by saying, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."  This sets the stage for perhaps the most dramatic truth in human history, as described later in that same chapter in verse 14: "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth."

John tells us that, amazingly, the Word became flesh...God became a man.  In Philippians 2:6-8, Paul says Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God and the second person of the Deity, "though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross."

What an act of humility for God to submit himself even to death, and the most painful and humiliating form of death at that.  But even apart from this, the fact that God even became a human being in the first place is the most supreme act of gracious condescension one can imagine.

When John says he "dwelt among us," the literal language is "he pitched his tent" or "he tabernacled" in our midst.  It is an allusion to the fact that before the Temple was built, God's dwelling place in the midst of his people had been in the Tabernacle, essentially a tent-temple that moved with the people.  What John is implying here (and says outright in Revelation 21:22) is that the Christ is the true Temple, the place where God and man meet.

When Moses requested to see the glory of God, God's response was, "I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. But you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live" (Exodus 33:18-20).  But so great is the graciousness of God in Christ Jesus that John can truly say, "we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth."

I am reminded of what may be my favorite lines from any Christmas hymn:

Veiled in flesh the Godhead see;
Hail th'incarnate Deity,
Pleased as man with men to dwell,
Jesus our Emmanuel.

May we, with John, look to Christ and his glory.  And may we, with the herald angels sing, "Glory to the newborn king!"

Other posts in last year's Advent series included:

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel (part 1)

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel (part 2)

O Little Town of Bethlehem 

God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen

O Holy Night

Joy to the World (part 1)

Joy to the World (part 2)

Be Thou My Vision

Zach Nielsen's blog, Take Your Vitamin Z, is near the top of the list of blogs I check almost daily. In addition to being a blogger and a pastor, Zach is also a very talented musician. Yesterday he posted the video below of the hymn Be Thou My Vision. I really enjoyed it, so I thought I'd pass it along.

Faith Reviving by Augustus Toplady

Recently I came across the words to the hymn Faith Reviving by Augustus Toplady, who also more famously penned Rock of Ages.  I have no idea to what tune it Faith Reviving is sung, but I was struck by the poignancy of the great message of Christ's atonement for his Church.  What comfort we who are in Christ find in the fact that he not only died to make our salvation possible, but to make it sure!


From whence this fear and unbelief?
Hath not the Father put to grief
     His spotless Son for me?
And will the righteous Judge of men
Condemn me for that debt of sin
     Which, Lord, was charged on thee?

Complete atonement thou hast made,
And to the utmost farthing paid
     Whate’er thy people owed;
How then can wrath on me take place
If sheltered in thy righteousness,
     And sprinkled with thy blood?

If thou hast my discharge procured,
And freely in my room endured
     The whole of wrath divine,
Payment God cannot twice demand—
First at my bleeding Surety’s hand,
     And then again at mine.

Turn then, my soul, unto thy rest!
The merits of thy great High Priest
     Have bought thy liberty;
Trust in his efficacious blood,
Nor fear thy banishment from God,
     Since Jesus died for thee.

Before the Throne of God Above

This Sunday in worship I'm looking forward to singing one of my favorite hymns: Before the Throne of God Above.  The words were originally written in 1863 by Charitie Bancroft and the tune was composed by Vikki Cook.

I think my favorite lyrics in the hymn are the following:

Because the sinless Savior died
My sinful soul is counted free,
For God, the Just, is satisfied
To look on Him and pardon me.

Below is a beautiful version of the hymn from Edgewood Community Church in Waupun, Wisconsin.

Carrie Underwood: How Great Thou Art

I don't know if you saw this Friday night, but if you missed (or even if you saw it, for that matter), it's well worth watching.  CBS broadcasted Girls' Night Out: Superstar Women of Country, and Carrie Underwood (accompanied by Vince Gill) sang How Great Thou Art..

Watch the video below and be reminded that, as glorious a day as the first Easter morning was, there still is coming a yet more glorious day.  A day "when Christ shall come with shouts of acclamation..."

Christ the Lord is Risen Today!

He is risen, indeed!

Hark! the Herald Angels Sing

John begins his gospel by saying, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."  This sets the stage for perhaps the most dramatic truth in human history, as described later in that same chapter in verse 14: "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth."

John tells us that, amazingly, the Word became flesh...God became a man.  In Philippians 2:6-8, Paul says Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God and the second person of the Deity, "though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross."

What an act of humility for God to submit himself even to death, and the most painful and humiliating form of death at that.  But even apart from this, the fact that God even became a human being in the first place is the most supreme act of gracious condescension one can imagine.

When John says he "dwelt among us," the literal language is "he pitched his tent" or "he tabernacled" in our midst.  It is an allusion to the fact that before the Temple was built, God's dwelling place in the midst of his people had been in the Tabernacle, essentially a tent-temple that moved with the people.  What John is implying here (and says outright in Revelation 21:22) is that the Christ is the true Temple, the place where God and man meet.

When Moses requested to see the glory of God, God's response was, "I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. But you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live" (Exodus 33:18-20).  But so great is the graciousness of God in Christ Jesus that John can truly say, "we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth."

I am reminded of what may be my favorite lines from any Christmas hymn:

Veiled in flesh the Godhead see;
Hail th'incarnate Deity,
Pleased as man with men to dwell,
Jesus our Emmanuel.

May we, with John, look to Christ and his glory.  And may we, with the herald angels sing, "Glory to the newborn king!"

Previous posts in this series:

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel (part 1)

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel (part 2)

O Little Town of Bethlehem 

God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen

O Holy Night

Joy to the World (part 1)

Joy to the World (part 2)

Joy to the World (part 2)

In Genesis 3:17-19, we read God's proclamation to Adam of the curse that is a result of his sin.  "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, 'You shall not eat of it,' cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return."

Adam was originally created and placed by God in the Garden that he might tend it.  Work existed before the Fall and it was good.  We might struggle to understand this today, but that is because the very nature of work, just like all of creation, was dramatically changed as a result of Adam's sin.  What once was wholly good, became hard and painful and frustrating.  But this is not where the story ends.

As previous hymns in this series have suggested, God's plan of redemption is not just for the people he has created, but for his creation as a whole.  Often in the Church, we think of the ultimate goal of the Christian life as the escape from this world (to heaven).  But the Bible actually teaches a different thing.  It tells us in Revelation 21:1-3 that ultimately it is not we who will go to be with God in heaven, but rather, it is he who will bring heaven with him as he comes to be with us.

You see, Christ came to redeem his creation, that his redeemed people might eternally inhabit it.  One of my seminary professors, Michael Williams, has written, "To suggest that the sin of man so corrupted his creation that God cannot fix it but can only junk it in favor of some other world is to say that ultimately the kingdom of evil is more powerful than the kingdom of God.  It makes sin more powerful than redemption, and Satan the victor over God."

This Advent, let us remember that Christ came not only that I might be forgiven of my sins, but that I might one day live free of sin altogether.  And he came not to get rid of this creation, but ultimately to restore it to its original functionality, beauty and grandeur.  As Dr. Williams often said in class, God doesn't make junk, and God doesn't junk what he's made.  So it is that throughout Advent, and the rest of the year as well, we look forward to the great day of restoration when the words of the hymn will be realized,

No more let sin and sorrow grow,
Nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make his blessings flow
Far as the curse was found,
Far as the curse was found,
Far as, far as the curse was found.

Previous posts in this series:

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel (part 1)

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel (part 2)
O Little Town of Bethlehem 

God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen

O Holy Night
Joy to the World (part 1)

Joy to the World!

In the 98th Psalm we read in verse 4 and verses 7-9, "Make a joyful noise to the LORD, all the earth; break forth into joyous song and sing praises!...Let the sea roar, and all that fills it; the world and those who dwell in it! Let the rivers clap their hands; let the hills sing for joy together before the LORD, for he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world with righteousness, and the peoples with equity."

It is indeed ironic that one of the most loved of all Christmas hymns was never intended by its author to be a Christmas hymn at all.  Inspired by the 98th Psalm, Isaac Watts merely intended to give a more overtly Christian representation of the Psalm's meaning.  Drawing on and making allusions to other passages of Scripture, he penned the now famous hymn which, like many great hymns for Advent, looks forward both to Christmas and the celebration of the Lord's first coming, as well as to His second coming.

In addition to this, similarly to O Holy Night, Joy to the World speaks not only to the joy which humans are offered in Christ Jesus, but also to the joy that all of Creation itself is waiting to express as it longs for its release from bondage.  It points us to that day when this release will be realized, the day when He will judge the world with righteousness and the peoples with equity.  And on that day, the words of this hymn will be made manifest,

Joy to the earth, the Savior reigns!
Let men their songs employ;
While fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains
Repeat the sounding joy,
Repeat the sounding joy
Repeat, repeat, the sounding joy.

May it be said of us that we are a people who sing of the glories of God not only at Christmas, but year round. And may the Creation itself echo back those praises!

Previous posts in this series:

O Holy Night 

God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel (part 1)

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel (part 2)

O Little Town of Bethlehem

O Holy Night!

We read in Romans 8:19-22, "For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God.  For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.  For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now."

The Bible is clear that when Adam fell, not only did we fall with him, but so did all of creation.  That is why the world does not work perfectly and why disease and natural disasters can rightly be said to be a result of sin, even when there is evidently no direct one-to-one correspondence.

Christ Jesus came to save us from our sin and to free us from its effects.  On one hand, he did this by paying the penalty we owed for our sin and by making us righteous before God.  But it is also true that he came to free creation itself from its bondage to sin.  We often think of the former but fail to recognize the latter, but if we do recognize both, it brings a new depth of meaning to the words,

O holy night!  the stars are brightly shining;
It is the night of the dear Savior's birth.
Long lay the world in sin and error pining
Till He appeared and the soul felt its worth.
A thrill of hope -- a weary world rejoices;
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn!

That new and glorious morn broke when Christ Jesus was born.  The sun of that new and glorious morn continued to rise even as the crucified Son of God rose from the dead.  And now, along with creation itself, we long for the consummation of this day, when when faith becomes sight and sin and its effects are no more!

Previous posts in this series:

God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel (part 1)

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel (part 2)
O Little Town of Bethlehem

God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen

2 Corinthians 1:3-4a reads "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction..."

God nowhere promises to make your life comfortable free from trials and tribulation.  For the Christian, just as it was for Christ, precisely the opposite is true.  But God does promise that in times of affliction, he will be our comfort.  And we know that this promise is not an empty one because of the incarnation.  The second person of the trinity took on flesh and became a human being, just like you and me.  As a result, God's knowledge of our trials and temptations is not a mere cognitive awareness, but an experiential appreciation.  "For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin" (Hebrews 4:15).

Jesus has experienced every form of temptation we might experience, and he has endured more suffering than we will ever endure.  As a result, he can truly be a comfort to us in all situations, and we can sing, especially in the midst of times of great difficulty and unrest,

God rest ye merry, gentlemen Let nothing you dismay
Remember, Christ, our Saviour Was born on Christmas day
To save us all from Satan's power When we were gone astray
O tidings of comfort and joy, Comfort and joy
O tidings of comfort and joy

My prayer for you this Advent season is that Christ Jesus may indeed be your comfort and joy!

Previous posts in this series:

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel (part 1)

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel (part 2)

O Little Town of Bethlehem