Waiting for Heaven

Yesterday I was whiling away the hours on a restful Sunday afternoon by trolling Facebook. I came across a picture my brother-in-law posted that he had taken of a beautiful mountain landscape while on a hiking trip in Colorado. Oh! the memories that flooded back! How many times have I too gotten to enjoy the magnificent beauty of God’s creation during the years that I lived there? Whenever I reflect on that time of my life I am filled with a longing for the natural riches that Colorado has: mountains, favorite hangouts, and definitely family & friends that I don’t have here where I live in Beatrice, Nebraska. If it was up to me and money was no object, I’d move back to Colorado immediately. It isn’t up to me though, and money is very much an object that limits my choices in life right now, not to mention the fact that I have a family, a wife, and two amazing kids with another on the way (yep, you heard right!), and I love them immensely. My current residence is greatly effected by them. Still, in my most selfish moments I yearn for Colorado and all it represents: the closeness of my family and friends, the joy and beauty of the mountains that fill my heart. Since I cannot get these, I feel empty. If I dwell on this for too long, I despair. 

There is hope though. The Holy Spirit, very much God, and very much a person, feels my hurt and reminds me that this Earth, of which Colorado is just a small part, is not my home. I have Heaven to look forward to, and it will be greater than anything we can fathom. It is the dwelling place of all that the Apostle Paul shouts in praise to God in Romans 11:33, “Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out!” (NKJV). The wisdom of God issues forth from His throne in Heaven; The knowledge of God leads us to find Him in Heaven. He judges the Earth from Heaven, and all His ways begin and end in Heaven. Before the creation of the earth, God was in Heaven. When all this time has come to an end there will be a new Heaven and a new Earth for us to dwell in. The riches of Christ’s sacrificial love has opened the gates of Heaven to all who accept Him, and when we shuffle off this mortal coil,  Jesus will be waiting in paradise with open arms to usher us into His majestic city. While my flesh may long for Colorado, my soul, stirred up by The Spirit, cries, “Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good;
Blessed is the man who trusts in Him!” (Psalm 34:8, NKJV). If I trust in my flesh and my ability to satisfy it, I am finished. However, If I trust in The Lord Jesus Christ and look to eternity, I am bound for a Heaven filled with His presence forever! Amen! 

Which one do you trust? 

Why I listen to Praise & Worship Music

If you don't know me that well, it's very important to know that I LOVE music. If I'm not listening to music, I probably have a song or two stuck in my head. There is very little time in my day that isn't accompanied to some degree by music. The other (and much more important) thing you should know about me is that I love Jesus Christ, and I am striving to love Him with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength. The crossroads of these two loves in my life have brought much struggle.

     In high school I took my love of music and turned it into my hobby. If my homework was done and I had free time, I would be on my family's computer listening to music online, downloading music (back when it was legal to share music for free), and researching genres and sub-genres of music. I prided myself in the fact that when I said I liked every kind of music (at least all the major genres), I truly meant it. It's something I spent many hours working on, and I became quite knowledgable on the subject. Honestly, I became a music snob.

      So when confronted with the musical faire offered on Christian radio, I have had a tenuous relationship with it at best. I mean for such a  musically knowledgeable guy, why would I want to listen to that uncreative, commercial stuff? I couldn’t stand the dj’s and the arrogant, self-promoting-instead-of-God-promoting attitude of KLOVE so I just didn’t listen to it much. I argued, if I wouldn’t listen to the secular equivalent of this music, then I didn’t need to listen to the Christian version. I could go on and on with arguments about the lack of artistic creativity/integrity in modern Christian music. I did have some such music on my ipod, and maybe two or three artists that I genuinely liked, but if I didn’t really like them, I didn’t give them much listening time. 

The other side of the coin was the amount of secular music I was listening to. For most of my music listening life from high school until a few months ago, the majority of music I was listening to was secular. As I grew in my walk with God, who I have found to be ever so much more patient and merciful than I realized, I grew in this too. I slowly weeded out the truly filthy or evil secular artists that I had convinced myself were ok to listen to because I finally admitted I had no business as a follower of Jesus listening to them. So I lived my life that as long as there wasn’t anything blatantly anti-Christ or anti-Bible in it, that I was ok to listen to it. Until a few months ago.

As God has grown me in Him, I decided that the rule would be one and done: If an artist even had one song that blasphemed God or said something totally evil, then I could not justify listening to anything by that band. I was listening to a lot of heavy metal via Pandora radio and Spotify. If I had free time, I’d be on the computer listening to music. I had Pandora on my phone too, so I was almost never without music. And if I wasn’t listening to it, I was thinking about it. I realize now, I was at the point where I was worshiping the music and artists I was listening to. I was still walking with God, and I felt the tug of the Holy Spirit in my heart warning me that I was drifting from Him, but at first I didn’t listen. I mean, I still kept to my standard for secular music, and it was my free time, right? Still I felt that tugging. 

Little did I know, the avalanche was just around the corner: one of my ultimate favorite bands, Black Sabbath, released this last year their first new album with (most of) the original members in like 30+ years! I was so excited! Then I heard there first single: “God is Dead?” Now I’ve always known that Black Sabbath flirted with evil, but I had concluded that they didn’t say anything outright evil or blasphemous, so they were cool. Now though I couldn’t ignore the lyrics like, “With God and Satan at my side/from darkness will come light,” and the repetition of the phrase, “God is dead.” I couldn’t believe it! They were one of my favorites, why would they write such stuff now? Upon further research I discover that one of their least popular albums that I had never heard of from the 80’s had more stuff about Satan in the lyrics. And when the guitarist was asked about them, all he said was, “Our singer at the time wrote them and I never liked those lyrics.” So why didn’t he tell the singer to scrap them and write new lyrics? I couldn’t escape these questions and I could escape the terms with which I felt justified to listen to secular music, one and done, and this was way more than one, thus Black Sabbath had to go. 

Now for some of you this might seem like a simple thing, but for me it was devastating. Not only was Black Sabbath a favorite, but they were one of the first metal bands I ever got into, I owned many of their albums, and hardest of all was the fact that most of the metal I was listening to, especially the new stuff I was discovering, was HEAVILY influenced by them. Every time I listened to any such artist I was hearing the things that made me love Black Sabbath. The whole support structure for my love of Heavy Metal was collapsing around me. It hurt, but I knew Jesus was more important that any band, so despite my desire to continue listening to them, away they went. At first I thought well, I have plenty of other artists I’m listening to, so they will more than make up for the loss of Black Sabbath. I continued my frequent listening to secular heavy metal, and that’s when it began: everyday I would find a new band I liked, give their lyrics a look, and discover ONE SONG that was bad, and out they went. After just a few days of this I was really getting frustrated. Was their no secular band that kept from writing even one song, one line of evil or blasphemous lyrics? It sure didn’t seem like it. Up till now, my satisfaction with music came from the fact that if one band I liked turned out to be evil, I could find another band to take their place. Now though it seemed like this was failing. I was so in love with music, what was I to do?!

Slowly, quietly, patiently, The Holy Spirit kept tugging at my heart.  Then one night I was driving back from Lincoln with one of the individuals I work with and I had the local Christian radio station on. I’m still not sure why I turned it on. It was still the same music I had railed against so much to my wife, to my mother-in-law, and to others. It was still the music that I thought was good to sing in church, but boring to listen to any other time. As God The Holy Spirit moved in me that night, I just had an overwhelming sense of peace that I hadn’t had while listening to music in who knows how long. Then God showed me: It was the Christian music on the radio; it did make a difference! He also reminded me that a couple of years earlier when I was in a similar place,  worshiping some secular artists, He had called me to make Christian music the majority of my music. At that time I did it for a few days before wandering right back into my old habits, even if it was with different artists. Still, God waited. Then, years later this whole event came up, and He gently reminded me that He still wanted me to listen almost exclusively to Christian music, and after feeling the peace listening to the radio gave me, why wouldn’t I? 

So now I am really trying to make the vast majority of the music I listen to Christian, and most of the time it’s Praise & Worship/Christian contemporary. Don’t get me wrong: I still love metal music, but God has helped me rediscover some really talented, and most importantly God honoring Christian metal bands. There are a couple of big reasons though that I don’t listen to it as much: first, I’m still tempted, still drawn to the secular metal, and I do not want to get sucked in again! Second, you can’t worship to most Christian Metal! Sure they may say true things about Jesus and the Bible, but it’s not specifically written for the purpose of worship. And THAT is what makes the difference. There’s nothing about the style of Praise & Worship that makes it better than any other style of christian music, it’s simply that fact that’s it’s purposefully worshiping God. 

And God has also given me the epiphany recently that worship is why we are here. Dear brothers and sisters, don’t waste your life trying to figure out why God put you here. It’s quite simple: to learn how to worship him. Psalm 23 ends with this line, “And I will dwell in the House of The Lord forever.” While it is a beautiful piece of poetry, it still is God’s word, and it still is true: we who believe in Christ will in eternity dwell in the house of the Lord forever! I believe that Heaven will be one big church service forever. And if it’s going to last for all eternity, we have a lot of worshiping to get ready for, so shouldn’t we get started? But remember: everything we do in obedience to God is worship. Psalm 119:7 says, “As I learn your righteous regulations, I will thank you by living as I should!” So clearly we need to worship Jesus, and we need to see how our obedience to HIm is true worship!

To my brothers and sisters in Christ who still listen to secular music: I do not want you to think that I condemn you for your choices. I did write this with you in mind however, to hopefully shake you out of the complacency that we get into when we fail to take the time to examine our actions. Why do you think it’s ok to listen to secular music? Have you ever even thought about it? I don’t care whether or not you conclude that it is or isn’t ok to listen to secular music, I just want you to think about it, and search the Scriptures to find what you believe. And always, always brothers and sisters, may we ever grow closer to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and may we make the priority of our lives to worship Him in everything!