Stop Me if You've Heard This One Before

I was talking with my wife about a popular Christian author, and she commented that his last several books have been recycled from earlier ones. I heard another writer, a favorite of mine, joke that all his many books are about the same basic truth.

In music you might call this a “one-hit wonder”  - somebody who made a career singing variations of one great song.

I know there are a few wonderfully imaginative, endlessly brilliant people out there whose creativity bubbles up like a fountain all their lives. They seem always to be able to share new ideas, different plots and characters, diverse themes and insights. But most of us aren’t that creative. We may have one or two good ideas in our whole life, and so if you’re a teacher or writer or composer (or blogger), you might eventually sound like a broken record.

 

We’ve all had friends or loved ones who launch into the same story over and over again. "Stop me if you've heard this one before," they might say. Sometimes we listen politely and laugh in the right spots. Or we may get impatient and interrupt: "Yeah, Grandpa, you already told that one…”

Maybe I am approaching the broken record stage in my own life. Maybe I’ve run out of ideas. But I think it makes all the difference what story you keep telling.

When the Lord takes me home, and I’m no longer writing or telling stories, I would be pleased if what people remembered is that the story I kept telling, the song I kept singing, was how wonderful my Savior is. Actually, I don't mind at all if they've heard it before. I intend to kept telling it.

I stand amazed in the presence
Of Jesus the Nazarene,
And wonder how He could love me,
A sinner, condemned, unclean.

O how marvelous! O how wonderful!
And my song shall ever be:
O how marvelous! O how wonderful!
Is my Savior’s love for me!

An Exercise in Praise: The Fruit of the Spirit

I don’t know about you, but I need all the help I can get to worship and pray. Sometimes I'm not sure what to say next. Honestly, there are times when I feel like I've run out of words. 

So for what it’s worth, I’m sharing with you a praise time I had recently. Several times a week I try to jog around a 5K track across the street from my office. I’ve been at it for five or six years. I wasn’t fast when I started running, and I’m even slower now. But still I labor on, and the best thing about it is the 30 minutes or so it gives me to pray. The other day I had a particularly joyous time with the Lord.

Here’s a little context. The fruit of the Spirit, as you may know, is a description of nine virtues, character qualities, that are listed in Galatians 5:22-23. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. These nine “fruit” are the evidence and outgrowth of Christ’s life within us. Just as the lemons on my lemon tree confirm that the tree is alive and healthy, so these nine qualities reveal something of the progress of Christ’s life in us.

Okay. So it hit me that any evidence of these qualities in my life is only because of Jesus. And I decided as part of my prayer time to declare this to the Lord for each one of the nine. For example...

• Jesus, I know that without You, I would have no love, none at all. 
• Christ, joy comes from You. And there is no joy, not really, apart from You.
• Lord, only You have brought peace to my life. Without You I would not know peace.

So I made that declaration for all nine, a simple confession of the barrenness of my life apart from Jesus. That took a few minutes, I suppose.

But then I decided to go back to each of the nine, and try to think about the first time I ever experienced Christ’s love, or joy, or peace. And then I would try to praise Him for the experience and gift of these virtues in my life.

Let me give you just three examples of what I mean.

•  Thank You, Jesus, for showing Your love to me. I think the first time I ever really understood it at all was the summer I heard the gospel for the first time, and realized You had loved me enough to die for me. Thank You so much.

•  And Jesus, I remember experiencing Your peace when I was just a teenager. It was the time I came home from school to discover that my mom had been hospitalized. Dad had recently died, and now Mom was gone. How alone I felt, but then You gave me such an overwhelming feeling of calm, and somehow I knew everything would be okay. Thank You for Your peace that I have experienced so many times since then.

• Dear Lord, I am aware of Your patience toward me nearly every day. I’m disappointed in myself so often, and the fact that I still trip up and don’t honor You as I should bums me out. But You never condemn me. You’ve put up with me all these years, and I don’t ever get the feeling that you're upset. Thank You for Your patience.

You get the idea. I thought and prayed and praised through each of the nine “fruit” in turn. It was such a blessing to spend the time reflecting on the character of my Savior, and to worship Him.

Maybe you'd like to give it a try. He is so worthy of all praise.