Prone to forget our wedding vows

“Do you remember your wedding vows?”

Someone asked us this recently.

I started with a few words – “Cheryl, I vow… to…”

…but then had to stop.

I had to admit I couldn’t remember them well. Even though they’re stuck on our fridge door, which we walk past every day!

Thankfully, we’re reminded of our vows (in splendid colour!) from 1:40 – 2:10, and 2:58 – 3:40 of our wedding video.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAbTyQyxRro?rel=0]

 

On hearing us make those vows again today, three years on, these were the bits that stuck out to me afresh:

“I vow…to commit my entire life to knowing and loving God, and to knowing and loving you.”

… only Jesus Himself can provide that sort of servant-hearted love!

“…so that our marriage will be better on its last day than its first.”

… only Christ can supply the day-to-day dying to self and living for the other that could possibly enable this!

It’s helpful to remind ourselves that, in  the words of Tim Keller:

“Wedding vows are not a declaration of present love but a mutually binding promise of future love.”

So for what it’s worth, Cheryl, everything we’ve been through so far has been worth it to get a front-row seat to the beautiful woman God is shaping you to be!

 

William and Cheryl collage - tekapo 2010

 

Happy 3rd anniversary my love!

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A word about new worship music

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“…There are several reasons for opposing it. One, it’s too new. Two, it’s often worldly, even blasphemous. The new Christian music is not as pleasant as the more established style. Because there are so many new songs you can’t learn them all. It puts too much emphasis on instrumental music rather than Godly lyrics. This new music creates disturbances making people act indecently and disorderly. The preceding generation got along without it. It’s a money making scene and some of these new music upstarts are lewd and loose.”

1723 newspaper editorial,  written in  opposition to the hymns of Isaac Watts  (who wrote hymns like “When I Survey”, “Joy to the World”, and “Alas! And Did My Saviour Bleed”)

 

Many of us might read this quote now and chuckle, but it helps to illustrate that every song was once new, and was once contentious!

As a child of the 90’s, my musical tastes lean towards the contemporary. Yet I’m currently in a delightful season of rediscovering hymns – historical songs set to a regular meter, and crafted to make God’s truths poetic and melodious for the benefit of the church.

For example, we sang “All Creatures of our God and King” at church yesterday for the first time. Other really neat ones I’ve come across include I Asked the Lord, Hast Thou Heard Him, Dear Refuge of My Weary Soul, Jesus Your Blood and Righteousness, and God Moves in a Mysterious Way.

If you’ve grown up singing hymns, you might be curiously amused at my enthusiasm. Yet I’ve noticed that it’s an odd thing for a guy in his 20’s to be really captivated by the beauty and eloquence of reformation-era hymnody.

I can’t quite pick out exactly why I’m so enamoured by these worship songs at the moment.

Perhaps it’s because I’m really enjoying the “re-tuned” hymns from singers and songwriters such as Indelible Grace and Red Mountain Music. For example, Cheryl and I had this setting of “From the Depths of Woe (Psalm 130)” by Martin Luther on repeat at home for at least 2 weeks:

 

Or perhaps I’m fascinated by hymns at the moment because I’m realising as I sing them to my daughter, that I never got the opportunity to be immersed in them in my own childhood (I became a Christian at 18, from a nominally Buddhist/materialistic upbringing).

Perhaps by God’s grace I missed out so I could cherish them more today, and they would be as new worship music to me!

Anyways – whatever your own preferences are on the use of historical hymns in your sung worship, I also really appreciate Jamie Brown’s point on this topic:

The point isn’t the song. The point is the Saviour.  We should not be primarily interested in preserving a certain library of songs, protecting against an invasion of new music, persuading people that what they like is bad, or advancing our own musical preferences.

We should primarily, secondarily, and thirdly be interested in magnifying the greatness of God as revealed to us in the face of Jesus Christ. If we can best do this with an old Isaac Watts hymn, then let’s do it. If we can best do it with a song written yesterday and found on iTunes, then let’s not hesitate.

If our focus on song style blinds us to the primacy of God’s glory, woe to us.

 

God, help me to keep this perspective too!

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Wake up you sleeper!

Credit: Arizona Oddities – Tumbleweed

I must apologise to all three(!) readers of this website – I had a look and realise I only wrote 6 posts on this site over the last year…

Surely there is more going on in our marriage, parenting and ministry than that!

Anyways – I’ll look for more opportunities to share more about what’s going on in our lives.

What would you like to hear from us though?

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The empty space next to our bed

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We just put our daughter to bed. But for the first time, she’s in her own green room, and there’s just remnants in our room.

It’s strange how God changes your heart as a parent. Before your child entered the world, there was no space for her – in our hearts, our minds, our rooms. Tonight, that space seems so big, it’s as if God carved out this aching hole in our hearts just so that there’d be room to love one more person.

(I wonder – did he do the same thing before? Did he carve out a gap in our hearts so that we would love his Chosen-King Son, Jesus?)

So thanks be to God in Christ, who gives generous gifts such as this sweetly sleeping, previously screaming, adorable, growing-too-fast, 4 1/4 month old baby EW.

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Letting the Gospel Shape our Gathered Worship (preview)

 

In the midst of serving my family (two leading ladies), work (gracious employer) and church family (at Howick Baptist), I’m also excited to be planning the worship music for the upcoming Stand for the Gospel conference that our church is hosting. I’ve had the opportunity to do this for the past two years (2010 and 2011) and though life is a bit more hectic with a larger family this year, hope to do the same this year with help from other servant-hearted leaders and musicians.

In addition, during this year’s conference, for the first time I’ll be facilitating a workshop related to gathered worship. Those of us involved in planning worship services often struggle with many different questions, such as: “What songs should we do first?”  “Why do we have a call to worship?” “Where should announcements go?” “Why does our liturgy do this first?” “Should we sing more before or after the message?”

The aim of the workshop is to summarise (in 45 minutes!) the main thesis from Bryan Chappell’s book, “Christ-Centered Worship” – that we should aim to let the gospel of Jesus Christ shape our worship practices.

My hope is by doing this, we can actually develop a framework for structuring and planning our Sunday services that’s more helpful than relying too greatly on our common reasons, such as  arbitrary rule (e.g. “I’ve decided…”), personal taste (e.g. “What I like is…”), church tradition (“What we have always done is…”) or cultural preference (e.g. “What the people will accept, find attractive…”)

I’ll also be drawing on thoughts on what we can learn about gospel-shaped gatherings from 1 Cor 15, various passages related to gathered church, and other worship-related books by DA Carson, Bob Kauflin, and David Peterson.

I anticipate this discussion would be helpful for myself (firstly!), but also pastors, worship/service leaders, musicians and others involved or invested in the planning and leadership of worship meetings.

If the topic interests you, I’d encourage you to sign up for the conference (it’s free until 1 Oct) on the website.

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Update (30-Jan-2013): here’s what I presented at STAND 2012. Let me know if it’s helpful to you!

[slideshare id=14763107&doc=william-stand2012workshopsupportingslides-121017040420-phpapp02]

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