Sunday Set List: March 31

| Build My Life – [New Song] 

| You Are Holy (Prince of Peace)

| Reckless Love

| No Longer Slaves |

…Anticipatory Reflections of Sunday…

Worship is the what and the why. We worship God, in that we both center our lives on Him [who He is in His truth] and we know why [who He is in His love]. While we share in baptisms this week, we sing two songs that convey this well. This I Believe is a song beautifully anchored in the theology of what we believe about God. It is the what of worship—God is true, and we believe! The song Reckless Love articulates why we put our lives in His life. It is the why of worship—God passionately demonstates His love for us!

There is no greater joy for me, while we are singing, than to join together with you, as we both know what we are singing and why! We sing to Jesus with our soul and with our mind! “…I will sing praise with my spirit, but I will sing with my mind also. – 1 Corinthians 14:15b.

My concern is that when we get to the song Reckless Love, we are not all understanding it all in unison. God’s nature is not haphazardous or careless, (we all agree here, I hope!) so for some, to sing “Oh the…reckless love of God” is attributing a false quality to God—God is not reckless, therefore, how could His love be reckless?

Is the songwriter slipping in heresy? Is everyone who sings buying into false doctrine? Or, is there something else going on? If so, what?

Before we get to the reckless concept, let’s understand his words within the context of the song.

Cory Asbury, the songwriter, anchors both of his two verses deeply in Scripture. As Jeff, our senior pastor, has led us in a Christmas series from this verse this past December, some of you may remember it well! “The LORD your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing. – Zephaniah 3:17

Thus, verse one begins…

Before I spoke a word / You were singing over me / You have been so, so good to me

In a world at war over the sanctity of human life, the Scriptures state that God begins life at conception “For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. – Psalm 139:13

Verse one continued…

Before I took a breathe / You breathed Your life in me / You have been so, so kind to me

In poetic fashion, verse one conveys that we were sovreignly known, and carefully, lovingly made. So far, so true.

The next Scripture verse referenced is a summary of several verses stating that we start of as enemies of God. I’ll stick with one for sake of (some semblance of) brevity: “[But] God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” – Romans 5:8

Verse two…

When I was Your for / still Your love fought for me / You have been so, so good to me

Now, we were not born with no worth—because as is written we were fearfully and wonderfully made—but born as enemies of God, and in life before being born again, it feels like we are worthless (and according to Scripture—without saving us/giving us everlasting life—we would have been worthless, according to Proverbs/Psalms usage of the phrase “worthless men”)

Paul, who knows that he is an Apostle, knows that in Jesus’ He is made perfect, used an expression that is in one sense true, saying of himself, under the perspective of one who is only seeing his sinful depravity that he is “wretched.” Now, he is not, by stating that he is wretched, arguing that the power of the cross is not strong enough to restore Him—in fact he is saying the opposite! His body —beautifully made, begins as God’s for, and is by nature death until Jesus brings it to life!

“Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! – Romans 7:24-25a

Verse two continued…

When I felt no worth / You paid it all for me / You have been so, so kind to me

Recalling the verses so far, we were sovreignly, dearly loved, and while unworthy enemies, Jesus paid the ultimate price for us.

Now, given Paul’s above-mentioned license for perspectival leniency, I want to remind you that songs — as we write them after David’s own patterns — are beautifully woven works of both literal and figurative expressions to God. When Scripture says “the strong arm of the Lord was with them” we know that the writer is using a metaphor—a bizarrely humongous arm is not hanging out with Israel. It is just a figure of speech—a term known as anthropomorphism, which means describing God using human characteristics.

We don’t accuse Psalmists or Moses, or anyone in Scripture for being blasphemous and lying about God’s nature. We don’t even complain that they are being confusing. Rather, poetry of metaphor is actually helping the reader to understand the feeling of God’s nature. In modern vernacular, I think I would say “when God is with me, it feels like a big arm is holding me.” Because everyone can see big arms—what we see helps explain what we cannot see.

Now, we can either understand this song as having beautiful, theologically anchored words all over, and a sudden acutely heretical word thrown in (Reckless) Which spoils the whole thing (if it were literal, in fact, it would ruin it, pitting God’s nature against itself) or, we can give the same application of poetry, and metaphor recognition that we give to God’s Word, the inspiration for this song, and apply that frame of reference to our song, written by a guy who both believes in the utter and zealous sovereignty of God, and also believes in Scripture’s style of creatively describing just what that sovereignty feels like, by using words we know to describe an extraordinarily wonderful feeling—the feeling of what being loved by God feels like.

Have you ever heard/learned the phrase “reckless abandon”? Today, in a ball game it happened: “Byron Buxton ran from home plate to second base with reckless abandon.”

We know that the base runner’s zeal for second base may cause his helmet to fly off, but he does if anyway. It may cause the runner an injury, but he runs at that frantic pace anyways.

Church, Jesus Christ decisively, approached humanity in a calculated way. Nevertheless, the word reckless fits precisely the nature of what His pursuit of us feels like—to us.

The quality of love affects us in that it feels overwhelming: it moves us to emotion. Daily, it feels never-ending: His pursuit of us is relentless, each day we breathe, to free us from the bondage to sin, then to sanctify us, to know Him more, and daily defeat the power of sin, to one day, ultimately, freeing us from the very presence of sin.

God’s love, therefore, poetically expressed, feels reckless, in that he came to us and gave up the grasp of Heaven with God (Phil. 2:8) and in his humanity, He pursues is in ways that exactly match the term reckless abandon.

He pursued us, giving up days worth of food; He pursued us, being insulted and treated as not-God from His very creation; He pursued us, being disobeyed by His disciples; He pursued us, being betrayed by a friend; He pursued us being whipped on His back (did you ever go through that? Would you feel like that was reckless/careless of your body, to do?). Brothers and sisters, in pursuit of your heart and your soul, Jesus made a calculated decisive invasion of sovereign salvation—but it was not without the quality that feels to us like recklessness. Culminated in the reckless abandon of His own body, broken graphically on a cross.

Jesus very description of His salvation mission in a parable, is that a shepherd would leave 99 sheep for one lost sheep. Again, in the eyes of the sheep, this feels reckless. This feels like a move of reckless abandon, and passionate pursuit of life, from the Author of life.

So, here is that chorus…

Oh the overwhelming, never ending, reckless love of God / Oh it chases me down / fights til I’m found / leaves the 99

I couldn’t earn it / I don’t deserve it / still You give Yourself away

And in our own poetic imagery, we sing the bridge:

There’s no shadow You won’t light up / mountain You won’t climb up / coming after me / there’s no wall You won’t kick down / lie you won’t tear down / coming after me.

I make you this plea. Please allow your heart to grant the Psalmists and other writers of Scripture poetic license—it will be—I fully believe—a joy to your soul as you imagine God’s nature with the Bible’s poetic flair—even as we remain anchored first in the literal truths that I admonish we never abandon (neither casually, nor recklessly)! Please, also, allow your heart to let the imagination of modern songwriters who are deeply in love with Jesus, inspire you as they carefully craft poetic prayers of praise.

Lastly, if you are in any way interested in cultivating/using your gifts of creative writing to create a song, and share it, I want you to. I want to know if you are interested in sharing that with our Praise Team. Village is a place where Jesus is treasured, held as priceless, and boldly worshipped—wholeheartedly from all that we are, heart, soul, mind and strength!

I love our Village Church. I love that you care about worship, and understanding it rightly! I love that two people asked me about Reckless Love, and cared to ask me about it, so that we mean what we praise!

I am SO pumped to share our time together, singing to Jesus, with you, with my newborn daughter, Ivy Jean, (who faithfully napped on my stomach the ENTIRE time I wrote this blog, thank you, sweet girl!) with my understanding and loving parents-in-law who came up from Michigan to bless us with quality time, extra sleep and yummy food, and to share this time with two dearly loved girls, Bailey and Megan—two faithful members of our youth group—who have decided to get baptized in their response to God’s truth and His love for them.

How I hope you will be there with us, tomorrow. Let’s celebrate God’s truth and His love! I hope you enjoy this song more fully from this post! Please share any thoughts with me at brian.pearson@villagechurch.com