Good News: You’re Not Job!

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First, know this: I am not making light of your experiences. You have lost friends and family members. You have experienced devastating relational fractures. You have suffered in body and spirit. We all have.

But you are not Job.

At first glance, I see why you think you might be him. Job was the most unfortunate of Old Testament figures. He is a man who lost everything and everyone he loved. He feels intense pain, and he knows he doesn’t deserve it. He is not afraid to ask why. Neither are you. His sorrows have multiplied onto more sorrows. You’ve felt that before. Maybe not now, but before. And you wonder why God is putting you through this.

But I tell you, you are not Job. And that is good news. Read more

Do Bad Worship Lyrics Keep Us Wretchy?

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I recently read a beautiful post by Addie Zierman over at her blog “How To Talk Evangelical” about hyperbole in worship. In it, Addie talks about our tendency to go over the top in the songs we sing, as if we really have had nothing but joy, joy, joy, joy, down in our hearts all the time and every day, since we gave our lives to Jesus. As if the Christian life is all unicorns and grassy hills full of strawberries. Her main point: Let’s be real, friends. We need authenticity in our worship.

Addie is right about all of this, but I want to take one more step. Our lyric problems do not end when we embrace authenticity. In fact, if we stop there, we might end up in spiritual defeatism. It happens accidentally, but it happens often. Read more