Militant Praise
Written by Ed Allen
Sunday, 28 November 2010 10:00
This past week we celebrated Thanksgiving – many of us sharing time with our families. For those of you who spent the week working through the Daily Office Project, you know we spent a week giving thanks. And sometimes giving thanks helps us achieve a new and better perspective. When things start to go wrong we can sometimes remind ourselves to think of all that we have to be thankful for. “Besides it could be so much worse,” we remember.
I’m reminded of a letter I heard about years ago.
"Dear Mom: Sorry I haven’t written sooner. My arm really has been broken. I broke it, and my left leg, when I jumped from the second floor of my dormitory...when we had the fire. We were lucky. A young service station attendant saw the blaze and called the Fire Department. They were there in minutes. I was in the hospital for a few days. Paul, the service station attendant, came to see me every day. And because it was taking so long to get our dormitory livable again, I moved in with him. He has been so nice. I must admit that I am pregnant. Paul and I plan to get married just as soon as he can get a divorce. I hope things are fine at home. I’m doing fine, and will write more when I get the chance. Love, Your daughter, Susie
P.S. None of the above is true. But I did get a "C" in Sociology and flunked Chemistry. I just wanted you to receive this news in its "Proper Perspective!"
So, sometimes giving thanks helps us achieve a much better perspective.
But often thanks is much more than just a perspective changer. Often thanks - at least God honoring thanks – is a form of radical faithfulness. Often thanks is a form of radical dependence on God. As such, often thanks is militant. Its part of how we wage war against those things that set themselves against our faith and against what God has for us. It is part of how we adopt the right spiritual posture in all circumstances.
Ephesians 5:19,20 "Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, ALWAYS giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ."
I Thessalonians 5:16-18 "Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus."
Last week we talked about the importance of having the right spiritual posture in the face of trials. We said that you cannot make your way through difficult circumstances without emotional and spiritual scars unless you choose to joyfully endure them.
Today we learn, militant thanks is a part of that right spiritual posture.
Read 2 Chronicles 20:1-30
1. Their thanks led the way in battle
- Jehoshaphat’s first response is to seek the Lord – not strategic plan, not build his resources … He inquires of the Lord (verse 3)
- Then he put the choir at the front of the army.
2. Their thanks was liturgical
- “Give thanks to the Lord, for his love endures forever”
- Sometimes get the impression in a church like Gateway that liturgy is a bad thing.
- We all have liturgy, just have to make sure that it is real and heartfelt.
- Get the clear impression that this thanks was deeply heartfelt
3. Their thanks was current; it was rooted in the present
- “His love endures forever”
- It was based on what was happening in front of them, their current crisis!
- See mind wandering story below
- Isn’t it interesting that God-honoring thanks roots us in the present, while worry roots us in the mind-wandering future.
4. Their thanks was accompanied by praise
- The two movements (thanks and praise) are interwoven throughout the passage – and through much of the Bible.
- This may be because genuine thanks can’t exist without a recognition of who God is and what He’s doing. Thanks by definition focuses us beyond ourselves.
- As such, their thanks enabled their dependence. Their thanks freed them to rest in God and glorify God.
- See DiMaggio below
5. Their thanks was rooted in a clear word from God
- As such it is different from the power of positive thinking.
- The kind of thanks that honors God is thanks that is rooted in reality. Our God honoring thanks is rooted in the reality of our circumstances and God’s word to us.
- Florence Jenkins illustration
- Because their thanks was rooted in a clear word from God, it was based on faith.
- Nothing had happened when they started giving thanks. The armies were still set against them.
- Plus they did not know what the result of the battle would be. Lives lost …?
Conclusion:
Illustration from Joni Tada Erickson that ties in what we’ve talked about the last two weeks with what we’re talking about today.
- Sandblast illustration
This is why Paul can say give thanks in all circumstances. In fact, this is why militant thanks is such an important part of our spiritual posture. It keeps us in the present and frees us from worry; it allows us to depend on God; it builds worship and praise into our hearts and it can facilitate victory in our lives.
Florence Jenkins illustration
Florence Foster Jenkins, a soprano, loved to sing—especially the great operatic classics. She inherited money when she was in her 50s, which funded her musical career. It wasn't long before her popularity skyrocketed, holding annual recitals at the Ritz-Carlton in New York throughout the 1930s and 40s. But as one writer puts it, "History agrees, with hands held over its ears, that she couldn't sing for sour apples. Jenkins' nickname, behind her back, was 'the Tone-Deaf Diva,' or 'The Terror of the High C's.'" The writer adds that if you ever hear one of her old recordings, all that you'll hear will be "squeaks, squawks, and barks."
But get this: she didn't ever grasp that she was bad! When people laughed and hooted as she sang, she took it to be delirious enthusiasm for great music. She thought they loved her and her music.
In 1944, when she was 76-years-old, she did a benefit concert for the armed forces at Carnegie Hall in New York. Thousands lined the streets to get tickets, and the performance sold out in minutes. The recording of that concert is still the third most requested album from Carnegie Hall recordings, punctuated by a painful rendition of "Ave Maria."
Mind wandering story
A new study conducted by Harvard psychologists Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert leads to the conclusion that people who daydream more than half of their waking hours are less happy than those who are more firmly rooted in the present. They summarized their findings in the journal Science like this: "A human mind is a wandering mind, and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind. People are prone to spend about half of their time thinking about being somewhere else, or doing something other than what they are doing, and this perpetual act of mind-wandering makes them unhappy.”
The study tracked more than 2,200 people via an iPhone app. When the results were tallied, people had answered that their minds were wandering 46.9 percent of the time and these times tended to be by far less happy times. Interestingly, subjects reported being happiest while having sex, exercising or having a conversation. They reported being least happy while using a home computer, resting or working.
DiMaggio story:
In an article for The Wall Street Journal, writer Leonard Mlodinow shares a funny story from the life of baseball great Joe DiMaggio:
It was the summer of 1945, and World War II had ended. Former soldiers, including famous baseball stars, streamed back into America and American life. Yankee slugger Joe DiMaggio was trying to be "Yankee fan Joe DiMaggio," sneaking into a mezzanine seat with his four-year-old son, Joe, Jr., before rejoining his team. A fan noticed him, then another. Soon throughout the stadium people were chanting, "Joe, Joe, Joe DiMaggio!" DiMaggio, moved, gazed down to see if his son had noticed the tribute. He had. "See, Daddy," said the little DiMaggio, "everybody knows me!"
Sandblast illustration
In her book A Place of Healing, Joni Eareckson Tada reflects on how we tend to worry that the cares, troubles, and afflictions of life will wear us down, dulling our joy, diluting our hope, and robbing us of the radiance we once experienced as believers. "In fact," writes Tada, "it may be the very opposite. It isn't the hurts, blows, and bruises that rob us of the freshness of Christ's beauty in our lives. More likely, it is careless ease, empty pride, earthly preoccupations, and too much prosperity that will put layers of dirty film over our souls.” She then illustrates the point:
I'll never forget years ago when I had the chance to visit Notre Dame Cathedral while I was in Paris. There it was, almost one thousand years old, standing there so huge and…black. I had never seen such a dirty cathedral! After hundreds of years of soot, dust, and smoke, Notre Dame was covered in layers of black grime.
But then the grand old cathedral went though a year-long restoration. Scaffolding was erected, and the entire exterior was sandblasted. I was stunned when I saw a recent photograph of the cathedral. It was beautiful—and so very different from the way I remembered it. … The ancient stones glowed bright and golden. You could see details on carvings that hadn't been visible in decades. It was like a different cathedral. What a wonder a bit of sandblasting can accomplish...
When I use the word "sandblasting"—and when I think of how that process changed that cathedral in Paris—I can't help but consider the way God uses suffering to sandblast you and me. There's nothing like real hardships to strip off the veneer in which you and I so carefully cloak ourselves. Heartache and physical pain reach below the superficial, surface places of our lives, stripping away years of accumulated indifference and neglect. When pain and problems press up against a holy God, suffering can't help but strip away years of dirt. Affliction has a way of jackhammering our character, shaking us up and loosening our grip on everything we hold tightly. But the beauty of being stripped down to the basics, sandblasted until we reach a place where we fell empty and helpless, is that God can fill us up with himself.