Out of all the bands that I enjoy, I think that Relient K presents the most outstanding lyrics. They have done this for years and in my opinion their Mmhmm record is the most lyrically amazing album out there (Casting Crowns' Lifesong is a close second). Relient K recently released their latest album 5 Score and Seven Years Ago and this song is from that album. The band notes that restoration can be a difficult part of life but, if we allow Him, God can bless us even through devastation. We are not reformed to a life immediately hole, or complete (and I don't think that is God's promise), but from the shell of who we once were we can start anew through Christ.
Devastation And Reform
Fear can drive stick
And it's taking me down this road
A road down which I swore I'd never go
And here I sit
Thinking of God knows what
Afraid to admit I might self-destruct
So lock the windows
And bolt the door
Cuz I've got enough problems
Without creating more
I feel like I was born
To devastation and reform
Destroying everything I loved
And the worst part is
I pull my heart out, reconstruct
And in the end it's nothing but
The shell of what I had when I first started
Usually I'll cause my own first hit
It seems to me to be slightly masochistic
But there'd be no story
Without all this dissension
So I inflict the conflict
With the utmost of contemption
So lock the windows
And bolt the door
Cuz I've got enough problems
Without creating more
I feel like I was born
To devastation and reform
Destroying everything I loved
And the worst part is
I pull my heart out, reconstruct
And in the end it's nothing but
The shell of what I had when I first started
Thank you God
For giving me the insight
So I might make
These wrongs right
If and when
There ever is a next time
Cuz failure is a blessing in disguise
Pull my heart out, reconstruct
And in the end it's nothing but
The shell of what I had when I first started
The shell of what I had when I first started
I feel like I was born
To devastation and reform
Destroying everything I loved
And the worst part is
I pull my heart out, reconstruct
And in the end it's nothing but
The shell of what I had when I first started
Sunday, April 29, 2007
Friday, April 27, 2007
FCA
I had the privilege of sharing some of what God has been teaching me these last several months of life at a Fellowship of Christian Athletes meeting on March 28, 2007. I had meant to post this back then, but haven't gotten to it until now. I will do better at staying on top of things. Anyway, I have entered bellow, my notes for that evening. I thought I would share them. I hope they are meaningful to you.
Donald Miller tells a story:
He was speaking at a college to a group of students. No Christians in the room.
A girl raises her hand and says “Don you have presented a wonderful talk, but you mentioned only briefly looking into Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and landing on Christianity. I’m troubled to see how you made an objective search before landing on Christianity.”
He found this to be a very good question and confesses that yes, it wasn’t a very objective search. But, he notes, “I think you are coming to the table with a pre-supposition, and that pre-supposition is that Christianity is a religious or philosophical system. But it isn’t. It has been called one, it has been treated like one, but essentially I am not a Christian because I cognitively subscribe to certain ideas, I am a Christian because I know a Deity, a being, this is a relational system. I am a Christian because I have a relationship with Jesus and through Jesus a relationship with God.”
He goes on to say that essentially the question sounds like this. “Don, you are in love with your wife and yet you do not go on sleeping with hundreds of other women to find a greater love.” Do you see the difference, love in a relational sense, is exclusive.
I want you to consider two things. Why are you a Christian and how does this define you? & What does it mean to be a Christian athlete on this campus?
How can we affect the lives of our friends and teammates who are here? How do we show them, not a religion or system of beliefs, but what a relationship with Jesus is like?
These are some of the things that I have been learning. I realized I related to God as a product. I took a system of beliefs and treated it like a recipe check-list. I prayed today - check. I read the Bible today - check. I went to church this week - check.
I had the world around me telling me that I was incomplete and all I needed was belief in God and that would complete me. If I followed the system of beliefs, the recipe, then the product would be a personal relationship with God. This “personal relationship” is more of a genii in a bottle kind of thing. I can pray and God will answer and I’ll be rich and happy and completely fulfilled. Right?
But I wasn’t complete. I would pray the prayer I was supposed to pray and "bad things" still happened. God, the product, was not holding up to the guarantee on the box. Well maybe I read the recipe wrong. Maybe I should pray more, read more of the Bible, go to church more often, sing in the choir. But no, these things aren’t the answer.
You see God is not a product. The problem with God, the product, is this. I was presented with the fact that I am incomplete and I needed to be filled, so I adopt this system of beliefs that is supposed to complete me. Then I realize that not only has this not completed me, but I am also now aware that I wasn’t even complete in the first place, so things are even worse of then when I started.
How many of you have heard this? There is a hole in your life, a sense of incompleteness. And lets say this is a round hole and you have tried to fill it with the square peg of rock and roll or whatever and your job hasn’t filled this whole, athletics maybe hasn’t. But Jesus happens to be a round peg, who knew, and if you put Jesus in this hole he is the only one that can fit and you will be made complete.
Ever heard anything like that? . . . It’s a lie. How many of you are complete. This is not a biblical thought and yet it is presented to us all the time and it results in us seeing God as a product.
But what if, rather than a system of beliefs, we instead replace this with a relationship? We replace God, the product, with God, the Father.
You see, this is all though scripture. The gospels are not a 3 step sermon to salvation, but the story of Jesus’ life and his relationship with his Father. In this we see how to be in a relationship with Jesus and in turn with God. How does a relationship differ than a system of beliefs? There will be similar actions, but the purpose behind these actions will be different.
I will pray to God, but not because I am checking off my list or rubbing the magic lamp to get a wish, but instead because this is how I can communicate with God. I will read the Bible not in search of a magic formula that will then allow me to have all I have ever wanted but because in the writings of the Bible I can learn about who God is and who Jesus is. I can see what it means to love and to give to the poor and care for the widowed and live a life that is Christ-like, because just like a son loves his father and wants to grow up to be like his earthly dad, so do I, as a Christian want to know about Jesus and God, the father, and grow to be more like them.
See how it is changing? There is a shift from have to, to want to. This makes prayer and bible study so much more real in my life.
Then there is church. Living a life in community. While God is fathering me as an individual, he is also relating me, to us, as the body of Christ, the church, in a relational sense more so described as that of a bride and bridegroom. There is benefit to being involved in life communally. It gives us person to person relationships and this interaction teaches us so much about life and God and strengthens our relationships with God.
This is what God has been showing me. He very clearly allowed me to see how I related to him as a product. A way to fulfill my desires, to fill the round hole in my life. And he showed me that this is what he wanted instead. He wanted me to relate to him. To see that scripture is not a collection of stories that are formulas for personal growth rather they are stories to help me understand His character and nature and how to interact with him. He wanted me to see that prayer is not my chance to complain or beg or find wish fulfillment, but a time to be honest, to relate to God. To sometimes go to God in awe of who he is and other times talk to him like I would my dad. With this, the idea of praying continually makes so much more sense. To constantly be walking through the day communicating with God, much like you would a friend. This is God’s desire. When God is a product we are seeing things this way: “How can God help me get what I want?” When God is Father we ask, “Who is God, and how can I know him”.
Miller tells a story in his book Blue Like Jazz. I don't have it in front of me so I will probably butcher it, but it goes something like this.
Don was being interviewed on a radio station and the host asked him to defend Christianity. Miller responded by saying, no, I won't do that. He went on to explain to the radio host that Christianity has become a term that means so many different things to so many people and he didn't want to add to the ideas out there of what Christianity was. If he defended Christianity to someone who was abused in a church it's like he saying that was right and it wasn't. Miller said what he would do is talk about Jesus and what a relationship with him matters.
The radio announcer was speechless and after the interview they went out to eat together and he said he always wanted to believe in God, but just couldn't because of all the things that Christians do. They talked and Don showed a Father, not a product.
Donald Miller tells a story:
He was speaking at a college to a group of students. No Christians in the room.
A girl raises her hand and says “Don you have presented a wonderful talk, but you mentioned only briefly looking into Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and landing on Christianity. I’m troubled to see how you made an objective search before landing on Christianity.”
He found this to be a very good question and confesses that yes, it wasn’t a very objective search. But, he notes, “I think you are coming to the table with a pre-supposition, and that pre-supposition is that Christianity is a religious or philosophical system. But it isn’t. It has been called one, it has been treated like one, but essentially I am not a Christian because I cognitively subscribe to certain ideas, I am a Christian because I know a Deity, a being, this is a relational system. I am a Christian because I have a relationship with Jesus and through Jesus a relationship with God.”
He goes on to say that essentially the question sounds like this. “Don, you are in love with your wife and yet you do not go on sleeping with hundreds of other women to find a greater love.” Do you see the difference, love in a relational sense, is exclusive.
I want you to consider two things. Why are you a Christian and how does this define you? & What does it mean to be a Christian athlete on this campus?
How can we affect the lives of our friends and teammates who are here? How do we show them, not a religion or system of beliefs, but what a relationship with Jesus is like?
These are some of the things that I have been learning. I realized I related to God as a product. I took a system of beliefs and treated it like a recipe check-list. I prayed today - check. I read the Bible today - check. I went to church this week - check.
I had the world around me telling me that I was incomplete and all I needed was belief in God and that would complete me. If I followed the system of beliefs, the recipe, then the product would be a personal relationship with God. This “personal relationship” is more of a genii in a bottle kind of thing. I can pray and God will answer and I’ll be rich and happy and completely fulfilled. Right?
But I wasn’t complete. I would pray the prayer I was supposed to pray and "bad things" still happened. God, the product, was not holding up to the guarantee on the box. Well maybe I read the recipe wrong. Maybe I should pray more, read more of the Bible, go to church more often, sing in the choir. But no, these things aren’t the answer.
You see God is not a product. The problem with God, the product, is this. I was presented with the fact that I am incomplete and I needed to be filled, so I adopt this system of beliefs that is supposed to complete me. Then I realize that not only has this not completed me, but I am also now aware that I wasn’t even complete in the first place, so things are even worse of then when I started.
How many of you have heard this? There is a hole in your life, a sense of incompleteness. And lets say this is a round hole and you have tried to fill it with the square peg of rock and roll or whatever and your job hasn’t filled this whole, athletics maybe hasn’t. But Jesus happens to be a round peg, who knew, and if you put Jesus in this hole he is the only one that can fit and you will be made complete.
Ever heard anything like that? . . . It’s a lie. How many of you are complete. This is not a biblical thought and yet it is presented to us all the time and it results in us seeing God as a product.
But what if, rather than a system of beliefs, we instead replace this with a relationship? We replace God, the product, with God, the Father.
You see, this is all though scripture. The gospels are not a 3 step sermon to salvation, but the story of Jesus’ life and his relationship with his Father. In this we see how to be in a relationship with Jesus and in turn with God. How does a relationship differ than a system of beliefs? There will be similar actions, but the purpose behind these actions will be different.
I will pray to God, but not because I am checking off my list or rubbing the magic lamp to get a wish, but instead because this is how I can communicate with God. I will read the Bible not in search of a magic formula that will then allow me to have all I have ever wanted but because in the writings of the Bible I can learn about who God is and who Jesus is. I can see what it means to love and to give to the poor and care for the widowed and live a life that is Christ-like, because just like a son loves his father and wants to grow up to be like his earthly dad, so do I, as a Christian want to know about Jesus and God, the father, and grow to be more like them.
See how it is changing? There is a shift from have to, to want to. This makes prayer and bible study so much more real in my life.
Then there is church. Living a life in community. While God is fathering me as an individual, he is also relating me, to us, as the body of Christ, the church, in a relational sense more so described as that of a bride and bridegroom. There is benefit to being involved in life communally. It gives us person to person relationships and this interaction teaches us so much about life and God and strengthens our relationships with God.
This is what God has been showing me. He very clearly allowed me to see how I related to him as a product. A way to fulfill my desires, to fill the round hole in my life. And he showed me that this is what he wanted instead. He wanted me to relate to him. To see that scripture is not a collection of stories that are formulas for personal growth rather they are stories to help me understand His character and nature and how to interact with him. He wanted me to see that prayer is not my chance to complain or beg or find wish fulfillment, but a time to be honest, to relate to God. To sometimes go to God in awe of who he is and other times talk to him like I would my dad. With this, the idea of praying continually makes so much more sense. To constantly be walking through the day communicating with God, much like you would a friend. This is God’s desire. When God is a product we are seeing things this way: “How can God help me get what I want?” When God is Father we ask, “Who is God, and how can I know him”.
Miller tells a story in his book Blue Like Jazz. I don't have it in front of me so I will probably butcher it, but it goes something like this.
Don was being interviewed on a radio station and the host asked him to defend Christianity. Miller responded by saying, no, I won't do that. He went on to explain to the radio host that Christianity has become a term that means so many different things to so many people and he didn't want to add to the ideas out there of what Christianity was. If he defended Christianity to someone who was abused in a church it's like he saying that was right and it wasn't. Miller said what he would do is talk about Jesus and what a relationship with him matters.
The radio announcer was speechless and after the interview they went out to eat together and he said he always wanted to believe in God, but just couldn't because of all the things that Christians do. They talked and Don showed a Father, not a product.
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