The Lord Will Provide

Though Troubles Assail Us
John Newton,1725-1807

Though troubles assail us and dangers affright,
Though friends should all fail us and foes all unite,
Yet one thing secures us, whatever betide,
This promise assures us: The Lord will provide.

The birds, without garner or storehouse, are fed;
From them let us learn to trust God for our bread.
His saints what is fitting shall ne’er be denied
So long as ’tis written, The Lord will provide.

We all may, like ships, by tempest be tossed
On perilous deeps, but cannot be lost;
Though Satan enrages the wind and the tide,
Yet Scripture engages, The Lord will provide.

His call we obey, like Abraham of old:
We know not the way, but our faith makes us bold;
For though we are strangers, we have a sure guide,
And trust in all dangers, The Lord will provide.

When Satan assails us to stop up our path,
And courage all fails us, we triumph by faith.
He cannot take from us, though oft he has tried,
This heart cheering promise, The Lord will provide.

He tells us we’re weak, our hope is in vain,
The good that we seek we shall never obtain,
But when such suggestions, our graces have tried,
This answers all questions: The Lord will provide.

No strength of our own and no goodness we claim;
Yet, since we have known of the Savior’s great name,
In this our strong tower for safety we hide:
The Lord is our power, The Lord will provide.

When life sinks apace, and death is in view,
The word of His grace shall comfort us through,
Not fearing or doubting, with Christ on our side,
We hope to die shouting, The Lord will provide.

Creating Redemptive Spaces in a Fallen World

Congratulations to my friend and seminary classmate, Mark Sheerin, for winning the recent common grace essay contest for Christianity Today.  His essay, Why I Left World Vision for Finance (and why my current work matters as much as my former work), is a great corrective to the mindset among so many Christians regarding work, ministry, and the sacred/secular divide.  Here is how his essay begins:

In my closet is a red silk tie, manufactured by a worker in one of the many industrial factories along the perimeter of Phnom Penh. I bought it at the city's largest outdoor market on a business trip with my former employer, World Vision, a Christian humanitarian agency that serves poor communities worldwide. For all I know, the Cambodians in the factory that made my tie were the same Cambodians living in the villages I was serving.

On that trip, I was working on a project aimed at rehabilitating children and women who were victims of trafficking and child labor. But yesterday, I reached for the tie to wear to my new job as part-owner of a financial planning and wealth management firm in Atlanta. The distance between my two worlds—my former life as an international aid worker, and my current life serving some of the world's most financially fortunate—seems unbridgeable some days.

On other days, the two worlds look more similar than I imagined.

I have had the privilege of working with people on both ends of the economic spectrum, from Sudanese refugees to suburban millionaires. Yet, if poverty is understood in terms of social constructs rather than economic ones, the playing field levels between the refugee and the investment banker (an idea that Christian thinkers like Bryant Myers and Tim Keller have written and preached on). I used to define my World Vision job as bringing opportunity to the poor so they might thrive. I used to define my new job in finance as providing guidance to people so that they could make the most prudent decisions to meet their goals and leave legacies. Now I describe both my careers in the same way: creating redemptive spaces in a fallen and tangled world.

Read the whole essay here.

Pondering Pleasure

Simple Pleasures?
M. Justin Wainscott, 2013

They say, "Simple minds
have simple pleasures."
And they may be right.
But I'd prefer to think
that I take pleasure
in the profundity
of simple things.

Of course, that might
just be because
I'm too simple-minded
to know the difference.

The Subject of Each Thankful Song

To Jesus, Our Victorious Lord
Anne Steele, 1717-1778

To Jesus, our victorious Lord,
The praises of our lives belong;
Forever be His name adored,
The subject of each thankful song.

Enslaved by sin, beset by foes,
Undone and perishing, we lay;
His pity melted o'er our woes,
To save the trembling, dying prey.

He fought, he conquered though He fell,
While with His last expiring breath,
He triumphed o'er the pow'rs of hell,
And by His dying, vanquished death.

Though still reviving foes arise,
Temptations, sins, and doubts appear,
And pain our hearts, and fill our eyes
With many a groan, and many a tear;

Still may we fight, and still prevail,
In our Almighty Captain's name;
His strength, whene'er our spirits fail,
Can all our active pow'rs inflame. 

Van Neste on "The Psalms as an Entryway to the Scriptures"

If you weren't able to make it to the Ryan Center Conference at Union University back in April, I encourage you to listen to Ray Van Neste's excellent theme interpretation on "Read, Pray, Sing: The Psalms as an Entryway to the Scriptures."

The audio can be found here.

And check out the book on the Psalms edited by Van Neste and Richard Wells, Forgotten Songs: Reclaiming the Psalms for Christian Worship, which can be found here.

Pastoral Ministry Is War

Paul Tripp's answer to the question, "Why is the ministry life of many pastors shockingly short?"

Perhaps we have forgotten that pastoral ministry is war and that you will never live successfully in the pastorate if you live with a peacetime mentality. Permit me to explain. The fundamental battle of pastoral ministry is not with the shifting values of the surrounding culture. It is not the struggle with resistant people who don't seem to esteem the gospel. It is not the fight for the success of the ministries of the church. And it is not the constant struggle of resources and personnel to accomplish the mission. No, the war of the pastorate is a deeply personal war. It is fought on the ground of the pastor's heart. It is a war of values, allegiances, and motivations. It is about subtle desires and foundational dreams. This war is the greatest threat to every pastor. Yet it is a war that we often naively ignore or quickly forget in the busyness of local-church ministry.

--Paul Tripp, Dangerous Calling

Thee We Own a Perfect Savior

Lamb of God, We Fall Before Thee
Joseph Hart, 1712-1768

Lamb of God, we fall before Thee,
Humbly trusting in Thy cross.
That alone be all our glory;
All things else are dung and dross.
Thee we own a perfect Savior,
Only source of all that’s good.
Every grace and every favor
Comes to us through Jesus’ blood.

Jesus gives us true repentance
By His Spirit sent from Heav’n;
 Jesus whispers this sweet sentence,
“Son, thy sins are all forgiven.”
Faith He gives us to believe it,
Grateful hearts His love to prize;
Want we wisdom? He must give it,
Hearing ears, and seeing eyes.

Jesus gives us pure affections,
Wills to do what He requires,
Makes us follow His directions,
And what He commands, inspires.
All our prayers and all our praises,
Rightly offered in His Name—
He that dictates them is Jesus;
He that answers is the same.

When we live on Jesus' merit,
Then we worship God aright,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
Then we savingly unite.
Hear the whole conclusion of it;
Great or good, whate'er we call,
God, or King, or Priest, or Prophet,
Jesus Christ is All in All.

Metrical Version of Psalm 131

Here is the ESV text of Psalm 131:

131 1 O Lord, my heart is not lifted up;

my eyes are not raised too high;

I do not occupy myself with things

too great and too marvelous for me.

2 But I have calmed and quieted my soul,

like a weaned child with its mother;

like a weaned child is my soul within me.

3 O Israel, hope in the Lord

from this time forth and forevermore.

And here is my metered version of Psalm 131, which is in Common Meter and can be sung to the tunes of hymns like "Amazing Grace," "O God, Our Help in Ages Past," or "Alas and Did My Savior Bleed." 

O Lord, My Heart's Not Lifted Up (Psalm 131)

Justin Wainscott

O Lord, my heart's not lifted up;

My eyes aren't raised too high;

With things too great and marvelous,

I am not occupied. 

I've learned to calm my fretful soul,

And hush my clam'ring fears;

My soul is like a weaned, young child,

Content his mother's near.

So in the Lord let all the hope

Of God's redeemed now be,

From this time forth and evermore,

Through all eternity.  

A Mother's Day Poem

This Verbal Tribute We Now Raise
M. Justin Wainscott

For my wife, Anna, on behalf of our children
Mother’s Day 2013

For all the toil and all the tears,
For countless pray’rs and list’ning ears,
For ev’ry long and sleepless night,
For finding joy in our delight;
For words of wisdom that you share,
For all the hats you’re made to wear,
For sacrificing time and health,
For always giving of yourself;
For ev’ry burden that you bear,
For all the ways you show you care,
For ev’ry kind and thoughtful deed,
For all you do that we don’t see;
For untold blessings still in store,
For all these things and so much more,
We find it hard to rightly show
The love you’re due, the thanks we owe.
So as an effort of our praise,
This verbal tribute we now raise.
It’s so much less than you deserve,
This meager monument of words,
But here it stands to honor you,
A symbol of our gratitude,
A way for us to somehow say:
We thank you, Mom, this Mother’s Day!

God's Love So Sure, Shall Still Endure

The Love of God
Frederick Lehman, 1868-1953

The love of God is greater far
Than tongue or pen can ever tell;
It goes beyond the highest star,
And reaches to the lowest hell;
The guilty pair, bowed down with care,
God gave His Son to win;
His erring child He reconciled,
And pardoned from his sin.

Refrain:

O love of God, how rich and pure!
How measureless and strong!
It shall forevermore endure
The saints’ and angels’ song.

When years of time shall pass away,
And earthly thrones and kingdoms fall,
When men, who here refuse to pray,
On rocks and hills and mountains call,
God’s love so sure, shall still endure,
All measureless and strong;
Redeeming grace to Adam’s race—
The saints’ and angels’ song.

Refrain

Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade,
To write the love of God above,
Would drain the ocean dry.
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky.

Refrain

Getting the Word Out, By Any Means Possible

Luther on the importance of communicating the Word of God:

The Word should be read, sung, preached, written, and set in poetry. Wherever it may be helpful and beneficial, I should gladly have it rung out by all bells and played on all organ pipes and proclaimed by everything that makes a sound.

Our Desperate Need for the Word of God

It has become all too common in our world today to hear well-meaning people say things like, "Look inside yourself" or "Listen to your heart" (and its twin, "Follow your heart").  The implied truth underneath such statements is that everything we need for guidance and governance in life can be found within.  We have no need for anything external to guide and govern our thoughts or our actions.

But the Word of God shatters such illusions, reminding us that our hearts are prone to lead us astray (and therefore should often not be listened to or followed).  We need to look outside ourselves to the Word of God in order to rightly find guidance and governance of our lives.  And sadly, we often need visible reminders to call our attention to the fact that we should not look within but without, to the external Word. 

Hear what the LORD told Moses to tell the Israelites in Numbers 15:37-39 (emphasis mine):

The LORD said to Moses, "Speak to the people of Israel, and tell them to make tassels on the corners of their garments throughout their generations, and to put a cord of blue on the tassel of each corner. And it shall be a tassel for you to look at and remember all the commandments of the LORD, to do them, not to follow after your own heart and your own eyes, which you are inclined to whore after."   

We Rejoice To See the Curse Removed

Not All the Blood of Beasts
Isaac Watts, 1674-1748

Not all the blood of beasts
On Jewish altars slain,
Could give the guilty conscience peace,
Or wash away the stain.

But Christ, the heavenly Lamb,
Takes all our sins away;
A sacrifice of nobler name,
And richer blood, than they.

My faith would lay her hand
On that dear head of Thine,
While like a penitent I stand,
And there confess my sin.

My soul looks back to see
The burdens Thou didst bear
When hanging on the cursed tree,
And hopes her guilt was there.

Believing, we rejoice
To see the curse remove;
We bless the Lamb with cheerful voice,
And sing His bleeding love.

Songs that Endure - The "Secret" Behind the Gettys' Success

The Christianity Today blog has a great post on the "secret" behind the success of modern hymnwriters, Keith and Kristyn Getty. What is that secret?  Instead of writing songs they hope will end up on the radio, they write songs they hope will last (and will one day end up in dusty old hymnbooks).

Read the article here.