The Reason We Sing: Ask, Seek, Knock
Worshipping Jesus through edifying reflections of our Psalms, Hymns and Spiritual Songs
This blog post examines Be Thou My Vision & Pour Your Spirit Out
As I wrote previously, I will be periodically sharing the theological framework behind the songs we sing. This is to help us enjoy Jesus in our worship and avoid pitfalls that can trap our minds as we see words on a screen.
I believe we have a ditch on either side on the road as worshippers: overvaluing and undervaluing songs.
We undervalue hymns when we sing without caring to understand their confusing language, or when we deem then too old, irrelevant. We overvalue hymns when we prize them as the only accurate reflection of God’s steadfastness, and theological trustworthiness. We overvalue them when we look down on modern spiritual songs, deeming nothing else good enough for God. I was told by a worshipper “I wait to sing until the hymns. They are the only ones worth singing.”
We have a value problem with spiritual songs, too. We sometimes undervalue them, like when we don’t think they are spiritually good enough, or when they have repetition we feel was overdone. We overvalue spiritual songs when we pretend they are the truly better songs. When we only accept songs that are not caked with the dust of archaic language and dated mindsets (One worshipper told me “I can’t sing that hymn that ends ‘now I am happy all the day’…because God’s desire for my life is not ultimately obsessed in temporary happiness—that’s bad theology.”)
How, then, should we sing? I am convinced the worshipper does his or herself the best service when they position each song as if it is a gift for us/me to give back to God. I choose to consider each song I sing as if it is God’s song I am singing back to Him. After all, He inspired this song of praise at a point in history from someone’s heart, and I am here, today, to worship and adore Him, using this breath in my being to sing His praises.
I long for you to enjoy every song, not for each song’s sake, (I edify them here to keep from stumbling blocks, but I am not obsessed with the songs in themselves) but for the sake of your joy as you relate with Jesus, together with our church body, so that together we can mean the love we sing to Him.
Be Thou My Vision
This Sunday, one of the Hymns we will be singing is “Be Thou My Vision” which is one of the earliest songs we have sung at our church. The song was written in the ancient Irish language in the 700s. Yes, 700s! It was translated into English in 1912. The translation sounds very beautiful, so let’s make sure that when we sing the beautiful words, we worship Jesus as Paul counseled, so that I join with you and “sing with my mind” (Yes, Paul actually says that! Check out 1 Cor. 14:15).
When was the last time you said “Be thou my vision” to your friends? You didn’t. First, we don’t stay “thou” and second, the phrase is an urgent request for someone to be the one desire you seek. This is a prayer, and not one asking for special visions as if requesting heavenly clairvoyance to magically see into the future. Nor, even, is the worshipper asking God to do anything for us. Really, this hymn is a prayer asking for Jesus to be our main thing. I think this is why it has stood the test of time, remaining timeless in relevance.
In our own words, we take this and mean something like “Please, God, be the main thing in my life.” (It later says “first in my heart” … what a beautiful line.) In verse two, I have to admit to you, every time I say the words “be thou my wisdom” I sing the words correctly, but I ask God for wisdom. That’s what I just naturally thought it meant. It is not intending for us to be busy asking for wisdom–although that is something God invites us to do (James 1 tells us!). Rather, this is a prayer of commitment to the value to He alone as the source of supreme authority, not man’s/my own intellect (Proverbs 3:5-6).
Be Thou my wisdom, and Thou my true word / I ever with Thee and Thou with me, Lord
Lastly, I want to dispel the theological implication that could be inferred by a phrase in verse 4. When we sing “May I reach heaven’s joys…” We are not telling God “Well, shucks, God, as I sing to You here, and put on a good show about how great You are, I’m kinda hoping You’ll favor me so I can still go to heaven…Right?” That “may” is not pretending that God is still debating about who is in or out of His love. NO! His love is clear as the noonday sun. “May I reach” is in confident anticipation, anchored in the reality we are already living in which was expressed right before “High King of Heaven, my victory won” which is praying/living in the reality that our King reigns. He is our victory.
Let’s remember to mean what we sing, and take care to not settle for delight in familiar tune alone. There is rich meaning here. Let’s appreciate the song’s truth, and be willing to jump the linguistic hoops of an old Irish translation that uses old English. (If the old lingo has you tripped up, “Thou” means “You, God” and “Thine” means “Yours, God” — there! Now you are more ready to mean what you sing!)
“Pour Your Spirit Out”
One of the spiritual songs we now sing is “Pour Your Spirit Out” which is a new song to our church. Like many of the new songs, this one is packed with phrases from God’s Word. It is my desire to tease this out a bit, to add clarity to the new writing style of contemporary spiritual songs commonly thought to be notoriously vague. This trait of vagueness gained notoriety with the song “Oceans” as critical thinkers in the 2010s sensed cognitive dissonance with the open-ended nature of the song. Their concern was that we could be worshipping whatever we want, but worst of all, there was a fear that we could be worshipping ourselves, glorying in own bravery to try something new, for the sake of self-actualization.
Let me be clear: while “Pour Your Spirit Out” does contain a heavy does of Bible phrases, it is so chalk full of Biblical ideas, that they will produce good, deep worship. It will serve us to think about it from the context of the verses from which the phrases directly spring.
Let us anchor these two lines from the text in John 11 from whence the lion’s share came:
“Just like Lazarus out of that grave / our God re-writes history…”
“All we have to do is just ask, seek, knock / watch the doors swing wide open / roll back that stone”
My contemporary friends may have cringed at the archaic language of the hymn, but my sweet hymn favoring friends may have just cringed at the vagueness of “all we have to do is just” and the room that is left for the worshipper to be trite, potentially overly confident in self, and not fully confident in Christ’s authority in “roll back that stone.”
Friends, as we invite worshippers to bear with archaic language, and maintain a healthy value of hymns, let us also value what is true and valuable here: these words are, indeed, true—they do not need to be read as trite. Here’s John 11 on the matter:
Now when Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet, saying to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” 33 When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled. 34 And he said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” 35 Jesus wept… 38 Then Jesus, deeply moved again, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay against it. 39 Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, by this time there will be an odor, for he has been dead four days.” 40 Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?” 41 So they took away the stone.
What happened? Net result: Lazarus was raised from the grave. God re-wrote his history, his sisters’ history, his communities’ history. This was like what God does when someone’s cancer goes into full remission. It extends precious life!
I ask you: What did Mary have to do? Ask, seek, knock. Sort of… She didn’t fully ask…but who, grieving a death, doesn’t silently ask “can this please be just a bad dream I wake up from?” So what did Mary have to do? What did Martha have to do? (All we have to do is just…?) I believe all they had to do was believe–ask God, seek God, knock (knock? God gives us another tiny mental image, like knocking on a door, for someone to open, as a picture of a prayer being answered–knocking will result in the joy of watching a door “swing wide open” if it is in His will).
I have three suggestions for what our heart can be actively thinking about praying as we sing the phrase “Roll back that stone”:
- You can sing this like Mary or Martha! Each hoping God would do something. Each lacking the authority of raising her brother to life. Each praying like a fan, at a game cheering “roll back that stone.” When Jesus said that command, her heart was longing for Him to act! Her hopes were up! If you have your hopes up in Christ, sing like Mary, like Martha.
- You can sing as someone with a job to do! In our 40 days of prayer, we have been spending time recognizing that God gives us a role to play in prayer–like James says, faith is displayed in our actions. So, you can sing “roll back that stone” to God and yourself, simultaneously. We tell ourselves. When Jesus said the command, the people obeyed. We can think “I commit in this moment to do my part” knowing that rolling back the stone was the part God asked of man–He did the truly heavy lifting of raising from the dead. Also, in the same breath, we can be asking God “what is my part in the prayers I am asking?” Jesus could have spoken to the stone itself “be rolled away” and the stone would have rolled without a person touching it. He spoke to Lazarus “Lazarus, come out!” why didn’t Jesus just do everything for us? Why does God give us a part to play in prayer? What is your job to do in the prayers you are communicating currently with God?
- You can sing it with Jesus! He commanded the stone to be rolled away. If you are a believer, you are under the authority of the King of Kings. You can speak with authority “roll back that stone” directly interpreting this as “God, move that obstacle in the way between me and You; between longings You placed on my heart and the fulfillment of those longings.” The spiritual song “We Speak to the Nations” keeps coming to mind as I write this:
We speak to nations Be open / We speak to nations / Fall on your knees /
We speak to nations / The kingdom is coming near to you
Oh we speak to strongholds / Be broken / Power of darkness / You have to flee
We speak to nations / The kingdom is coming near to you / We speak to you / Be free be free
Finally, the urgent request to God in the title of the song “Pour Your Spirit Out” was anchored in the real experience of the early church in Acts who experienced it. I leave you with the words that would land Silas and Paul behind bars…bars that would not withhold them for long. Is the phrase short and able to be misinterpreted as more of a command than an urgent request? Sure, but so is “Be Thou My Vision.” Each, rather, came from a heart of pure worship—but, now that the song is being played by our Praise Team, the people who get to choose meaning in the moment we are together, is now you and me. Would you join me in singing “Thou and Thou only, first in my heart” and later “Jesus, you can have it all, won’t you pour Your Spirit out.” I am left wondering why I so rarely ask God directly to pour His Holy Spirit out. Could it be it is because the outcome can be so wild, uncharted and messy? Am I willing to just ask, and let God answer His way, on His terms?
May you be free to join me in passionately singing these two songs, on this and each subsequent Sunday. Here is where the title phrase is first anchored, (later made manifest in Acts 2, which I highly recommend!):
“And it shall come to pass afterward,
that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh;
your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
your old men shall dream dreams,
and your young men shall see visions.
Even on the male and female servants
in those days I will pour out my Spirit. ~ Joel 2:28-29
I invite you to sing these songs in the context of singing each song back to Him. Let us mean what we sing, with hearts of grace and gratitude (Colossians 3:16).