Preaching to the Choir: rehearsing the wonder of the truths that form us.

 Sometimes, when we've been around church for a while, the simple truths that saved us can get dusty and cliche' for us. "You're preaching to the choir!" we may protest if we hear them again from a pastor, a parent or mentor. "I've already heard that a million times before! Tell me something I don't already know!"   

Because we are curious creatures with more access to new ideas than ever before, we can lose confidence in the truths we loved at first for fear that they are too simplistic to make sense of the complexity of life.  While curiosity and a willingness to wrestle with our faith are virtues, we make a dangerous assumption when we think that new ideas are necessarily true ideas. And in these days of turmoil and uncertainty, what is needed most is the tested truth of the gospel that anchors us in the tempest. 

What we get wrong in our post-truth age of relativism is this. Just because we get bored with the truth or doubt the truth does not make the truth untrue. The Scriptures tell us the same gospel that saved us is based on the historic fact of Jesus' resurrection from the dead and is still powerfully at work forming us. What we need then, is not necessarily new truth as much as a deeper grasp of old truth. We need to hear it again with new ears and a soft heart. The apostle Paul said it like this in his first letter to the Thessalonian church. "Our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction." We need the Holy Spirit to remind us of the power of the gospel again so that we believe and obey it's message with full conviction. 

My point is that sometimes the choir needs preaching to because it forgets! Sometimes the choir needs preaching to because it loses the wonder! Sometimes we need to rehearse the truths we first believed until they sing in our hearts again! 

Martin Luther was famously quoted as saying to his apprentices, "Teach the gospel as the central doctrine of Christianity. Beat it into people's heads every day!"

GK Chesterton, in his excellent book Orthodoxy, wrote about the child-like gift of repeating the same activities with wonder. He called it exulting in monotony. 

 “Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.”

Join us this Sunday at Southlands Brea as we journey through Paul's first letter to the Thessalonians,  rehearsing the wonder of the truths that form us.