Sola Christo

In church today, while Pastor Loggans was preaching, I happened to be thinking about what the music pastor at my home church, Pastor Hunter, said once. We had had music evangelist Larry Brubaker (not sure if I spelled that right) in to, well, be a music evangelist. And after he was gone, Pastor Hunter said something like, “Well, I really enjoyed that, but I don’t think we could handle it every week,” referring to Mr. Brubaker’s rather excited and enthusiastic style of music. So I started to jot a few thoughts down, and here they are.

Why couldn’t we handle that every week? What is music but praise to God? Music was not created for us; it was around long before we were even created. Music in the church, especially, is not about us. It is about God and what he has done or is, or sometimes personal testimony of what he has done or is. We should get excited about that! Why is it that people don’t get as excited over the “song service” as they do over the preaching? Where did the thinking come from that it’s not a “real” church service unless there’s preaching? Isn’t praise to God just as important as learning what else he has to say? So, I think that we should get excited about our singing every week. We should get excited about praising God!

So why don’t we? Why does it seem like it takes a congregation of a thousand to even begin to “make a joyful noise”? Is it because we don’t really believe that God is truly worth our praise? Somehow, I think that may be one of the problems. I know it is in my own heart. Why don’t I sing out as much as I could? It’s because I’m afraid of what people would think of me, isn’t it? Or on the flipside, sometimes I do sing out, and I do because I want people to hear me, and to hear how good I sound. Both attitudes are saying the same thing: my singing is all about me, not all about God.

What’s the solution to this issue? Obviously it’s wrong for me or anybody to make the song service all about me, so what do we do to take the focus off of ourselves and fix it onto God, where it truly belongs? I think the answer to that question lies in another question: Just who is God…to you? Is he that Person who made you a Christian and that you go to visit every Sunday and Wednesday? That One you think about twice a week? Or maybe he’s that one you spend half an hour with every morning and then forget about the rest of the day. If that’s what God is to you or me, then no wonder our singing is all about us; it’s only a reflection of an entire life that is all about us. On the other hand, is God the Person who is our very best friend? Is he that One we look forward to learning about on Sundays and Wednesdays? Is he the one we spend not just a half an hour in the morning, but all day in fellowship with? If that is who God is to me, then my singing in church can’t help but be what it is intended: praise to the One who is everything to me.

So, in contrast to not being “able to handle that” every week, I think we should strive to have that same excitement about praising God, not just through singing in church, but in living our lives every moment of every day.

I just thought I’d start out by saying that I take sermon notes in a very haphazard way sometimes. Sometimes, I’ll write down the speaker’s main points in outline form, all nice and neat. Other times, like today, I hear a thought from the speaker, and then I go and start writing down whatever comes to my head about that thought, whether from Scripture, personal experience, or whatever. I sometimes even, as in the case of today, write a poem about it! Anyway, I’m just explaining what this post is all about, so that it won’t be confusing to anyone.

It should be no surprise that music is such an integral part of our culture. God has built a love for, desire for, and appreciation of music into every one of us. Even the description of Lucifer in the Old Testament is one of a very musical creature. So it is not surprising that we are so musical. What is surprising, though, is that man has perverted music into what it is called today, or at least, that is what we as fundamental Baptists would like to say. Although, I hardly think that when David danced before the Lord, he did it to the strains of “Amazing Grace,” unless he was dancing ballet or something like that.

Should music be used for evangelization? Regardless of whether or not it would work, the answer must be “No!” Out of all of the ways God has given us for evangelization, music is not involved. Music, in the church, is between us and God, not us, God and the lost.

As the great debate over music is raging,
And we through the Scriptures are paging,
As we try to find a “checkable” song,
I think the question we’re asking is wrong.
We say, “But, I can!” And you know what? We’re right,
But I think we’ve become near of sight.
We look at “why not?” and forget “what’s best?”
Just choose “best” and leave all the rest!

Okay, I know that was kind of a dumb poem, but it was sure fun to write!

I think that I have already referenced this in an earlier post, but I think it bears deeper examination. Plus, I was listening to a sermon the other day while I was at work, and it kind of touched on the same idea. Just for reference sake, the sermon was called “Putting Out the Fire,” preached by Steve Stodola at Highlands Baptist Church in Colorado. Why that matters, I’m not sure, but I wouldn’t want to plagiarize or anything. To give you an idea of what he said, I’ll just list his main points here.

1. My greatest problem is sin.
2. My greatest sin problem is unbelief.
3. My greatest opportunity is to believe God.

My greatest problem is sin. “Well,” my first reaction was, “duh. If you’re a Christian and you don’t know that, you’ve been living under a rock or something.” And that is true. All Christians know that our biggest problem, the biggest obstacle to obeying God and even to truly knowing who God is, is sin. So then, Mr. Stodola is like, “Make a list of the major sins facing you right now, the ones you struggle with.” So I’m like, okay, I can do that. I started listing, and you know, I was humbled by all the ones I came up with. But that’s off the subject. I was thinking things like being lazy, not having the right priorities, discontentment, pride, and stuff like that. Mostly stuff in my mind, because outwardly, I’m a very good actor, and I don’t do that much that is bad, I just think things that are not godly.

So then he says, “My biggest sin problem is unbelief.” And I’m thinking, wait a minute here. I just listed my biggest sin problems, and unbelief is not on the list. I believe in God, and I believe God (not necessarily the same thing). I don’t have a problem with unbelief. But as he went on, I was forced to admit, that, indeed, I don’t believe God. I guess this ties in with the post I published earlier, “Trust,” but I wanted to go more into it than I did in that one. Every time I sin, I am saying, “God, I don’t believe you are who you say you are. You say you are holy, and I say I am trying to be like you, but when I do this, I don’t really believe you are holy. I don’t believe that you will do what you say you will do. I say I believe you will do it, but I don’t really believe you will punish me for this sin, because if I did, I wouldn’t do it.” Do you (the readers of my blog, few though you be) understand what I am saying? Every sin indicates a lack of belief in some part of who God is and what he does.

That brings me to the last point: “My biggest opportunity is to trust God.” And isn’t that true? If my biggest problem is sin, and my biggest sin problem is unbelief, then it makes sense that my biggest opportunity, then, would be to trust him. And now we are back to the trust part. I am starting to believe that the Christian life is all about trusting God (no, duh!). If God is good, then I can trust him, and I will obey him; if not, then I can’t and I won’t.

I think that one of the biggest issues facing me right now is hurt. Not my own, no, at least not directly. Indirectly, I hurt because so many people around me are hurting. I hurt because I can do nothing to change what is happening in their lives. I don’t even know what the right thing is to say! All I can do is listen. Fortunately, I’m good at that. (Yes, I know that surprises some of you, but life is full of surprises.) Anyway, since this blog is supposed to be my “spouting place,” I decided that it was a good place to spout today. Obviously.

Well, since I have stopped being coherent, I’m going to stop now. You (all the three of you out there that read my blog) can expect more from me later.

I think that one of the things that God has really been teaching me is the meaning of trust. I know that many times in my life, if someone had asked me, “Do you trust God?” I would have been like, well, yeah, of course I trust God. What Christian doesn’t trust God, you know?

Something has changed this semester. It started with God actually preparing my heart to trust him back in December. Oh, I knew that I didn’t really trust God. I said I did, but how could I have trusted a God who was barely part of my life? Over Christmas break, however, as I started to really learn who my God is, he started teaching me to trust him. At that point, it was in the simple things, like, knowing that there is a purpose for my having a job at Meijer, of all places. Then we had my pastor’s retirement service. I can’t talk in a public place like this about all that when into that, but suffice it to say, my pastor can really still preach! God convicted me about not trusting his plan for the future. Some people don’t believe that God really has a plan for each individual life–I don’t see how they can read the Bible and believe that, but whatever. If I didn’t believe it, I would be completely lost.

After that, so many things started happening at once. My church no longer has a senior pastor–that was a big blow. Then my dad lost his job. I had nowhere near enough money to pay my school bill when I came back to school. I didn’t know what my plans for the rest of the semester or even for this summer were. I had a problem with a sin that I abhorred, but yet it kept coming back. It seemed like everything that could go wrong, did. And I had to learn really fast how to trust God.

When I was younger, I always made the excuse that I didn’t know how to trust God. I think what I was really saying is that I had nothing to trust God about. I sure do now! Even as these things were happening to me, however, I learned that there isn’t really a “how” to trusting God. I didn’t sit down one day and say, “Now I am going to do such and such and such, which will make me trust God.” That isn’t the way it works. When all these things hit me at once, I knew that I couldn’t handle them all. As I told my dorm sup, “If I try to worry about all these things at once, I’ll go crazy!” And I would have.

I say all that to bring me to what this blog is really supposed to be about: the meaning of trust. Trust isn’t some abstract term that has no meaning for my daily life. I have to trust God everyday, for everything. I cannot possibly mistrust God. How could I say to him, “God, I don’t believe you know what you’re doing. I don’t believe that you are good, God”? In one sense, the sense that I am talking about, trust is simply believing, everyday and about everything, that God is good. He is good when bad things happen to me and when good things happen. He knows what he is doing. In I Corinthians 12:9, God says, “My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness.”

I haven’t even gone into yet what God has showed me as I trust him. Maybe I will in some other post. It doesn’t really matter, though. I will trust God even if I never know why I have to go through the things that I do. I trust God.

I am afraid I have been sadly derelict in my blogging as of late. So much has happened in my life that I feel as if my head is still spinning. God has shown me one though–that he is the one in control, and will always be the one in control.

Here are some ways that I know that God is in control.

• He convicts me of sin–so much!
• He forgives me even before I ask
• He has used so many godly people in my life
• He uses the everday circumstances of life to bring me closer to him

Welcome to Picking Katy’s Brain.

This is my first blog ever. That said, I would like to introduce myself. My name is Katy and I am a freshman in college. I attend Maranatha Baptist Bible College. I have four brothers, a dog and two cats. Oh, and parents of course.

As my brother says, everyone needs a spouting place, and this is mine. That means you can expect posts about anything and everything on here. This is all for this one, though.