Home of the Steam Highwayman
I’ll be worshipping at Haven 90|60 in Milton Keynes this Saturday and leading a Workshop called Speak Out in Praise, helping believers learn how their passion for spoken word, rap and poetry can be put to the King’s service.
You can access my workshop handout here.
This mist on the Woolwich reach
And the glowing smoke of the clipper’s exhaust
Lie on the silver-silted wildfowl beach
Where every cold-shanked creature
From the dipper to the gull to the unemployed teacher
Treads in the silence the morning has enforced.
Silence in the world, frosted, stilled
But a spirit cry of sorrow melts inward ice.
I forgot. Meeting needs has filled
My day and been the building
I’ve been both brick-laying and gilding.
A melody makes me think twice.
It was a new song with a very old thought:
How far did they travel to give their treasure?
How many times wondered, how far the rest they sought?
And continued, purposed, refreshed with a water
Convincing star-seekers the way was getting shorter
And at last, in making a present, take pleasure.
You changed the reason that I should live
From managing to celebrating, from ‘enough’
To so much that I must learn to give
More frequently, more deeply, just to deliver
Others’ blessings, then, with a shiver,
Discover a smooth way that was rough.
I don’t yet do justice to the purpose you bring:
The world changed when you showed us real aid.
Guaranteed that all we do in honour should sing
With inner music, joy appear surprise-springing
Difficult days be the ones bells keep ringing
And I grasp it for a moment, weep, then act unafraid.
I was teaching a GCSE English Literature student about different sorts of rhyme yesterday, thinking about Browning and the Victorians – wanted to push myself to something a little more challenging.
The subject wanders from my window to the music I was listening to last night, my typical preoccupations with provision and purpose, and a very poor attempt to capture some of the joy I felt this morning, remembering that it is all new, that the story of Christmas is definitive, powerful, and that Jesus is the the point. It was as though I had forgotten for a while. Sorry, Lord.
Look upon my suffering and deliver me,
for I have not forgotten your law.
God cares to look on us and our circumstances – and he doesn’t confuse them. He knows what is being done to us and what state we are in. The memory of God’s law is the doing of God’s law: real remembering is enacting, and recalling and meditating on it is doing it – being changed by God’s word.
Defend my cause and redeem me;
preserve my life according to your promise.
What is my cause? The upright way – and in defending it and proving is, God redeems us. Through Jesus (who is the absolute example of, and the living truth of, the cause of God) we are redeemed. His promise has preserved our lives and has preserved my life.
Salvation is far from the wicked,
for they do not seek out your decrees.
How far we have to travel to be in daily salvation! And how much further when we become lax or passive! Seeking God’s decrees is vital. Unless we seek his laws for the time, for our communities, his words for our life and our families and our friends, we will fall behind the running tide of God’s salvation.
Your compassion is great, O Lord;
preserve my life according to your laws.
God’s compassion dissolves this great distance between wicked people and salvation: his laws are alive in Jesus, who preserves life, whose name means Saviour.
Many are the foes who persecute me,
but I have not turned away from your statutes.
Constant prickles of temptation and worldliness are frequent, but tiny. They alone cannot turn you from the path, the right way. That comes with the decision to stop seeking.
I look upon the faithless with loathing,
for they do not obey your word.
To grow in faith is to do with obedience. A faithful friend obeys his conscience, the Spirit, Jesus’ life – all of God’s Word. So how natural that we will loathe the life of faithlessness. How horrible to be without God’s presence in life, staying unadvised and unhelped.
See how I love your precepts;
preserve my life, O Lord, according to your love.
And I am amazed at myself! Not boasting to God, but in amazement and wonder at the passion that arises inside me. And now, for the third time, life comes from God’s love. Jesus.
All your words are true;
all your righteous laws are eternal.
Yes – true and applicable, living, responsive, reactive, initial and prioritising. This is the nature of righteous judgement – to go first, to live by the Spirit, to respond to different situations – and this is what is true about the Word.
This song has a thousand different aspects on account of its simplicity. It’s a declaration song – and that gives it a power when we sing it in the face of trial or suffering. Those first words, echoed in affirmation, have a simple melody, only intensifying the sense that we choose to sing this song. It begins with ‘I’, takes the starting point of the individual’s decision, their ‘will’ to worship. Worship is always a decision – it cannot simply be an action.
How shall I worship? ‘With all of my heart.’ Having first declared that at the time we’re singing and in the future I individually choose to honour God with adoration and praise and service, I then state aloud for my family to hear that I will do it whole-heartedly. We’re choosing Jesus’ way: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind’ [Matthew 22:37, quoting Deuteronomy 6:5].
The repeating melody creates a parallel between the first line, ‘I will worship’ and the fifth, ‘I will seek you’, implying an equality between them. To worship God is to seek God – to seek first the Kingdom of God is to give him his rightful place as Lord of all, to seek his face is an act of love and adoration. And the promise to do this ‘All of my days’ echoes God’s promises to act in our lifetime, but also serves to remind us that our promise binds us to a daily life of small actions of worship – that today is as vital as the first or last in this life-marathon of worship.
I like the part ‘I will follow all of your ways’. For me I hear, ‘I will walk and travel to the places that you go’ as well as ‘I will seek to understand how you do things’ and ‘I will try to learn to copy your manner of going about life’.
The song is very clearly voiced in the first person, but it doesn’t have to be an isolating declaration. No, rather when we sing it together we become aware of the great purpose we share with people around us, different to us, and all of creation. Each person and each thing can sing, in their own voice, ‘I will worship’.
When you want to emphasise the corporate side of this, simply switch pronouns! ‘We will worship with all of our hearts… We will praise you with all of our strength.’ No problem with rhythm or rhyme.
You can’t argue with this song. It isn’t sung to people and it can’t be sung to anything less than an awesome, all-powerful God, someone whom we will ‘give everything’, ‘serve’, ‘hail’ and ‘trust’. When in the chorus we declare again why we live and what we’re doing – ‘I wil give You all my worship, I will give you all my praise’ we have to admit that this is what we long to do and what we live to do. I believe that all people and all created things deeply desire to worship God in an unashamed, honest, free relationship of love, gratitude and adoration. As we grow in Christian faith, that desire and longing seeps out from the the core our being where it may have lain dormant for a long, long time. But out it comes and we find that singing, dancing, and acting in ways that glorify our Father in heaven become more and more delightful, more and more purposeful. We should grow in it all our lives.
And the truth is that we can still sing this song in Heaven. We can still sing that ‘You alone are worthy of my praise.’
Practically, in congregation, this song is a great starter, but the family have to be ready to sing it. It’s very difficult to mean it if you’ve only just woken up, and it’s a hard song to sing well softly. It can be done – particularly the chorus, sung on a loop, with just voices or a minimal instrumentation. It can be an excellent expression of our desire to honour God as we leave the gathered church, or a quiet way to prepare to leave in silence after a late-night offering of praise. It does do very well as an acappella piece because of it’s simplicity, as well as the call-and-response structure. This is about the heart of worship, not the instruments or the expression, but about the will, the decision, the voice and the desire for God. Whether that desire roars like a furnace or glimmers clearly like a candle flame, we can sing this song and mean every word.
The fortress will be abandoned, the noisy city. deserted; citadel and watchtower will become a wasteland forever, the delight of donkeys, a pasture for flocks,
These words of Isaiah are concluding a section in which he promises, in God’s name, that things are going to change! He directly addresses complacency, warning that the very things we can delight in are the most liable to changing – but the rhythm of these chapters has a pattern of renewal, not destruction. We all need renewal at stages in our life of faith, particularly when we have become too attached to the ‘pleasant fields and fruitful vines’ or have begun to trust in ‘citadel and watchtower’ instead of in the person of God. Things can change in an instant!
till the Spirit is poured on us from on high, and the desert becomes like a fertile field and the fertile field seems like a forest.
Jesus’ ministry was the long pouring out of the Spirit of God. Although he promised his disciples that the Helper would come ‘after’ him, he himself, ‘filled with God’s spirit’, had brought God near and their awakening faith – which is the gift only of God’s spirit – proved that they had begun to receive. This also has the sense that times of renewal and over-turning will necessarily end in a pouring-out of God’s spirit upon us.
The Lord’s justice will dwell in the desert, his righteousness live in the fertile field.
Reading this today I saw the person of the Lord’s justice, Jesus, heading out into the desert to dwell there before his ministry and I heard a voice like is written so many times in the Gospel saying, ‘As it is written…’ I’m sure that as he went, consciously choosing to and unconsciously fulfilling all the prophecies made about him, Jesus would have had these words of Isaiah in his head. The desert is easy to recognise – where is the fertile field? Well, Jesus loved to talk in the metaphors of a farmer. He called himself a sower in a field. Was he choosing to align his behaviour with an ancient prophecy? That seems like inspired marketing to me.
The fruit of that righteousness will be peace; its effect will be quietness and confidence forever.
Every cycle of disruption and calming does have permanent effects in our character, in the same way that every storm that bends the branches of a tree leaves that tree stronger in places, barer in others. I’m increasingly aware of ‘renewal’ cycles, which I think happen constantly at different scales in our lives. At this time of year I love to attend the Renewal conference in South London, where I personally challenge myself to accept disruption of my habits of sung worship – and danced worship – to receive a lasting confidence and quietness. I can attribute significant changes in my character and my way of life to going to Renewal like this in the last few years and I can’t wait to be there on January 30th.
My people will live in peaceful dwelling places, in secure homes, in undisturbed places of rest. Though hail flattens the forest and the city is levelled completely, how blessed will you be, sowing your seed by every stream and letting your cattle and donkeys range free.
God does not want us to bind ourselves up in the ‘security’ of wealth, you see. We are less able to sow, less able to care for our responsibilities – whether animals, the natural world, communities or individuals. He will disrupt us. We can accept that and grow to depend on him more or be left like those barren ruins. I don’t think this a threat from the prophet – he is simply explaining a truth about the process of change. His inspiration, his insight, as a gift from God, should prompt us to obedience and a keenness to live in reality, but with an insider’s knowledge of what is to come. Roll on the new year!
We have a role and responsibility in the Kingdom of Heaven.
Isaiah prophesied this in Ch 32: See, a king will reign in righteousness and rulers will rule with justice.
When Jesus comes, and come he has, he invites rulers to rule for him. Not to follow their own desires but to administer justice – fairness, obedience to God and concern for the needy.
Each one, says Isaiah, will be like a shelter from the wind and a refuge from the storm, like streams of water in the desert and the shadow of a great rock in a thirsty land.
We each cast a shadow, and Jesus gave us a promise about this in John 7: Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink! Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.
Your faith in Jesus, friends, and your obedience to th Holy Spirit as you discover him within you, is God’s Plan for the Kingdom of heaven. You might not feel influential, but let me tell you, this doesn’t depend on your skills or strength of character. The rock casts a shadow because of the brightness of the sun – the waters spring from the aquifers beneath the earth. He will make his power work in you and you will create safe places and shelters for people around you.
Pay attention today. Who prefers your company? Those in need? Then offer them the rest they seek by sharing your story.
All this was prophesied 2500 years ago. God gave Isaiah a picture for you. Jesus gave you the power to live in it through his name.
I have done what is righteous and just;
do not leave me to my oppressors.
How can I, a man, claim to have acted righteously? By God’s indwelling: he cannot leave me because he binds himself by his promise, like a husband to a wife, and we have a thousand proofs of his faithfulness. I am now founded on him and his character. So I can ask God not to leave me to my once-while, erstwhile oppressors – the temptations and habits of an unrighteous past.
Ensure your servant’s well-being;
let not the arrogant oppress me.
Well-being relates to our identity as servants of a good master. It may not be a very English thing to pray, but God wills our well-being – that we should say ‘It is well, it is well with my soul’. We are free of the oppression of the arrogance because the arrogant admit no higher authority – and they cannot assume authority over us as we now live in a much more direct, essential chain of command.
My eyes fail, looking for your salvation,
looking for your righteous promise.
It’s a full-time job. I see your kingdom on Earth, Lord, your salvation for the people, until day fails and night falls. Hence Simeon’s release when he could say ‘My eyes have seen your salvation’.
Deal with your servant according to your love
and teach me your decrees.
This may be a prayer but really it is only an echo of God’s promise: that he WILL deal with us in love, not wrath, and that he intends to teach us his way, his style and his intentions, that we would be made holy in him. ‘May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.’ 1 Thessalonians 5:23. To do all the things of this Psalm we must embrace first the Father’s – the Master’s – love for us and let him change us. Then what a relief to be taught, not a struggle or a duty, since we know we are loved! Much of the struggle in learning comes from not realising that the one teaching us cares for us – parent, teacher or God.
I am your servant; give me discernment
that I may understand your statutes.
The servant should resemble the master: God is wise and he wants us to be wise. ‘No longer do I call you servants,’ John 15:15, because God by his spirit has given us the keys to his wealth, including this discernment or understanding. We no longer have to obey in ignorance but can be changed to understand the principles of God with our heart. I’ve read about ‘the role of a servant but the position of a son’, which seems like the fine sort of legal distinction Jesus laughed at, but maybe that’s how to reconcile these scriptures for now.
It is time for you to act, O Lord;
your law is being broken.
A bold plea – from the servant to the master – asking him to intervene wherever his law is broken – primarily within myself. Whenever I note that God’s law of love is broken, in myself or otherwise, my first response should not be to fix it myself by to cry to the master ‘It is time for you to act’. And that cry can be made with confidence because of the proof that he does and will act to save.
Because I love your commands more than gold,
more than pure gold,
This is what it means to be secure against sin and unrighteousness – to cultivate a deep love – a passion – for God’s word. A desire so strong that the desire for gold looks like a passing fancy.
and because I consider all your precepts right,
I hate every wrong path.
Preference for one path, this path, however difficult, is based on considering God’s instruction preferable to every other possible choice. Everything God has done has brought about life and freedom and all the good we see, so any path diverting me from considering or following this way is an evil distraction.
The words of John Milton, Book XII of Paradise Lost, written in the 1660s-70s and still the best answer I can find to Rick Warren’s challenge to formulate a life purpose statement.
When I read or recite this, I feel intensely glad to be who I am, in this age and in this place, yet so appreciative of my forebears. I know that the things I love best about being English are Gospel things – ‘by small | Accomplishing great things’ – and that a life lived ‘as in His presence’ is a life of significance and purpose whether joyful, sad, achieving or resting.
And I know this because I have His example – the same Redeemer a blind Puritan Poet four hundred years my senior knew.
I hate double-minded men,
But I love your law.
How can we have anything but the strongest antithetical reaction to men – and that part of all men – when they are changeable, deathly, deceitful, unintentional, when we profess to love a living word that is secure, alive, honest, purposeful and good?
You are my refuge and my shield;
I have put my hope in your word.
God is a cave – an overhanging tree – a windbreak – a stormwall – a dam, a cordon, a barrier. My belief for the good in tomorrow resides entirely within his word, nestled inside it. You have to unfold the flaps of God;s voice and there, beautifully hidden, you see your hope – your own belief. Find it!
Away from me, you evildoers,
That I may keep the commands of God!
Harsh words – but the price is great. You cannot save a drowning man unless you are secure in the boat. Distance is important – it brings clarity and freedom of sight – and allows me to keep God’s commands – not simply begin them.
Sustain me according to your promise, and I shall live;
Do not let my hopes be dashed.
This strength to see things through to the end is to be found in God’s promise to us. Life is when something is being continued, sustained, not otherwise. Your hopes – all of them – are secure in that single word – undashable.
Uphold me, and I shall be delivered;
I shall always have regard for your decrees.
Keeping God’s law is prominent, upheld like an offering in the sight of the people – but for delivery – and this is eternal life – satisfaction in his word!
You reject all who stray from your decrees,
For their deceitfulness is in vain.
Shortcuts are a waste of time – self-defeating. Attempts to trick God are folly. Those who stray are choosing a path that will be harder and less profitable.
All the wicked of the earth you discard like dross;
Therefore I love your statutes,
Here, there is some fear – not to be discarded – but you can see the poet’s value on his relationship with God. I do not want to be unnecessary to the purpose, for wickedness makes us unusable – cannot be forged into good tools.
My flesh trembles in fear of you;
I stand in awe of your laws.
For his word is like a furnace – burning, changing, melting – on a vast scale. More terrifyingly hot that a furnace crucible – than all the molten metal in the world – the process is on such a scale and is so effective. This is what the word of God does – refine!
So we might learn distaste for the company of evil, but God effects our separation. This verse of the Psalm is a window into his process in our hearts, convincing us through shows of strength and mercy. The mercy is in his sustenance – we can only keep his laws because he hears our prayers and does his will.
Your word is a lamp to my feet
And a light for my path.
God’s Word is both the path and the light to see the path – the way, the truth and the light, in fact. Light for planting our feet – ie for making decisions – not that he controls where we tread but that he gives light to us to choose where to tread. Light like this is strong, but silent. We’re not meant to walk in the dark – the Word should be showing us the way clearly.
I have taken an oath and confirmed it,
That I will follow your righteous laws.
Double charge! How do we confirm our promises to God – do we back them up with sacrifice or gift? A vow to follow this new path – the long path! Baptism is such a time of dedication and vow and confirmation.
I have suffered much,
Preserve my life, O Lord, according to your word.
Some pains – like blisters – are simply the result of walking so far for so long. Then there are attacks from enemies, but God’s promise is to defend and protect his pilgrims.
Accept, O Lord, the willing praise of my mouth,
And teach me your laws.
Teach me as I praise – after I praise – and only willing praise counts!
Though I constantly take my life in my hands,
I will not forget your law.
I will not focus on my own preservation or the threat to me. I will have to willingly forget myself so that I can concentrate on the truth of your word – and I would have to willingly forget you, God, to think of myself after this praise.
The wicked have set a snare for me,
But I have not strayed from your statutes.
They have – they will have. It’s certain. But it doesn’t just affect me. Everyone set on this path has these challenges.
Your statutes are my heritage for ever;
They are the joy of my heart.
Praise Him! What an heirloom to receive from previous generations. No wonder I am glad. All of the people of my house – all the pleasure within me is because of your law. Gladness and deep satisfaction has only ever come to me through your good law of forgiveness, freedom, righteousness and truth.
My heart is set on keeping your decrees
To the very end.
My heart is now set. My decisions are made, my bag packed, emotions decided, will submitted, spirit conquered. To the very end I will walk after you, O Lord, because of joy – the joy of inheriting your word!