Worship Lineup Meditations – September 22, 2022 (288/365)

Surely Love and Mercy

And Peace and Kindness

Will follow me

That there’s from the bridge of a rarely visited song by Hillsong, entitled Be Still. Just to keep on singing it, just reminds me of God’s promises for me, and God’s promises that have already been fulfilled. For see, Love, Mercy, Peace, and Kindness are sure to be with with, just as Christ is our literal living Love; He is the source of the Mercies we receive, new every morning; Just as He is our Prince of Peace, and just as His lovingkindness endures forever, oh, it just leads me to appreciate how God fulfilled and keeps fulfilling His promises through Christ, who is our Salvation, with us as He has been, here and now, to the end of time, and beyond.

And I’m just as led to believe that this same Love, Mercy, Peace, and Kindness that is with me wherever I go – well, when I am lost, anxious, and/or without any inspiration or direction, I am also brought to where Love, Mercy, Peace, and Kindness would lead me or literally bring me. Such a beautiful Truth to appreciate, both now and forever – Christ is with me, and I am with Christ. Nothing can separate me, and everything reminds me of His glory and goodness, His power and His peace.

To be honest I was going to get all that out of my chest before jumping into the ‘Charter’ I worked on earlier this month… only to find out that it’s not merely in the reading of what I’ve been writing back then that would get me back to my train of thought – It’ll take a little more focus and meditation to get back to that state.

With that said, I thought, if I was making commentary about songs anyway, I might as well jump into what I appreciate about the songs we’ll be singing here in church in the next couple of days.

All my life, all I know

God’s been good, good to my soul

This is the first half of a chorus of Sing Wherever I Go, by an artist I only heard about when I first listened to this song – We The Kingdom. It was a song recommended for my music team – well, for every music team of every Sunday service – to sing and perform during the celebration of the anniversary of our main church.

At first I was pretty jarred by the fact that this song was a required song to sing, without any sort of clarification or background to why we were singing it. It made me look at the song in a negative light, but as I continued to listen to it to familiarize myself, I was reminded – why should you base your reasoning as to why a song should be sung or not, on someone else’s opinion or mandate? The more I listened to this song, the more I owned it – and the more I enjoyed it. It does take a couple of tries and listens before you’re able to sing along, but it is charming and catchy – you didn’t need much to keep up.

You’d find yourself having fun in proclaiming God’s goodness, especially that chorus – Just that first part is enough, I believe, to minister to anyone and everyone who hears it, much more to those who sing it. And sure, just as I pointed out that it’s important to understand and appreciate how God’s presence is always with us, it’s also worth remembering, and constantly reminding ourselves and others that His presence is good – God’s good presence is always with us. Probably not to imply that we sing in adulation in each and every moment, as the rest of the chorus suggests, but I suppose it’s more than enough for us to realize and claim how He is with us in the mountains and in the valleys.

We are forgiven, accepted, redeemed by Your grace

Let the house of the Lord sing praise

This is from the bridge of the song House Of The Lord by Phil Wickham, another song which was ‘recommended’ for the Sunday services; A nice, mid-tempo song (compared to the other quick hits by Mr. Wickham), it has potential to get the entire congregation clapping together and just grooving with each other.

Personally, though I’m not so hyped about the bridge, more on the chorus, which just straight up has all of us singing that there’s joy in the house of the Lord – true, in the sense that we have rejoicing alive in us, just as the Lord has made His home in our hearts; Also true, in the sense that we come together as temples of the Holy Spirit, and worship in joy as the body of Christ. I feel that through us singing this we are reminded of our default state as believers in Christ – that is, no matter what we see or experience, we will always recognize a reason to worship, and a reason to give thanks, and a reason to rejoice.

We dance in Your freedom, awake and alive

Oh, Jesus, our Savior, Your name lifted high,

Oh God, You have done great things

This here’s the second half of the song Great Things by Phil Wickham – Not to be confused with Great Things by Elevation Worship, which is also an awesome song. I first heard Great Things when I was in the States around, oh, 2018 or 2019, and was immediately hooked. I wasn’t able to push for it to be sung back here, with the pandemic and change in leadership being some of the more prominent factors… but when they pushed for House Of The Lord to be sung, I immediately thought of Great Things as a good pair.

I find it beautiful that we can all come together and agree by way of song, that God is good, and He is good to our souls; And we can back this claim up, saying He is good because He has done good and great things to us, and sure as He has done good things, He does great things, and we are confident that He will continue to do great things. These realizations are already so revelatory on their own, but taken together they just cause us to overflow in worship, awe, and gratefulness – not only as individuals, but as a congregation.

As such, there truly is joy in the House of the Lord. What a nice way to approach all of it.

Until the next post, God bless you.