The Lord is my song
Helen Barrett - Jan 7th 2017
Thank you for asking me to talk. I really do believe it’s so important to get women together to support and encourage each other. I’m always drawn back to the verses in Titus about older women teaching younger women “what is good”. I’m not sure which category I fit into anymore (!) but I think that perhaps we all fit into both at times, sometimes able to pass on some wisdom and encouragement to someone younger and sometimes able to receive that from an older wiser woman.
All write down 5 things to say thank you to God for….
So – a new year. I don’t know if you’re very pragmatic about these things – it’s just another day - or whether, like me, you get a bit reflective about life at this time of year…
But I started thinking about how it would perhaps be helpful to have a new year’s SPIRITUAL resolution….not setting ourselves goals that might be broken by the 10th of January...I will keep a journal, I will without fail spend an hour praying every day….but something that will shape and colour our year ahead and our relationship with God.
So, let us look at this verse from Exodus 15:2
“The Lord is my strength and my song;
he has become my salvation.
He is my God, and I will praise him,
my father’s God, and I will exalt him”.
Think about your relationship with God. Do you rely on God for your strength? I hope so. Do you know that you are saved by God? If you believe and trust in Jesus I hope you do. But how often is God our song? How much do we praise him and say thank you?
So – how about making this, the year that we make God our song.
So we’re in Exodus. God’s people have endured 430 years of cruel slavery in Egypt and have fallen so far from the grace and power of Joseph’s reign of power. The Israelites must have wondered if God had deserted them but He heard their cries and sent a stuttering Moses and his brother Aaron (who actually ended up doing much of the talking for him) to call on Pharoah to “Let my people go”! After all those plagues the Egyptians eventually pleaded with the Israelites to leave, here take my jewelry, clothing etc – just go! It’s estimated that 2 million Israelites left Egypt lead by God’s reluctant leader Moses to start off on an epic journey into the wilderness. They encounter the Red Sea and God shows his power in letting them across but drowning the Egyptians who’d changed their minds and were chasing them down.
So our passage is their song of praise when they reached the other side. They stopped and praised God in a song for their salvation and redemption...words that pre-figure, for us post-New Testament, what Jesus has done for us. It’s a song echoed in Psalm 118:14 and in Revelation 15.
And there are so many beautiful songs of praise in the Bible – Mary, Hannah when she dedicates Samuel to the Lord, Simeon, Zachariah, Song of Songs and of course, the most prolific of song writers – David with his Psalms. I’m not suggesting that we run half dressed in the street praising God like he did but we can have a constant heart-attitude of praise. And of course we can really sing….often a CD of worship music will work when you’re struggling to pray….I often play them in the car, cooking tea.…
As I was mulling over this verse from Exodus it struck me and made me smile as I thought about our journey to Jersey. As many of you know, Mark, the children and I got on the Condor Liberation last August to find our promised land of milk and honey (milk and potatoes)! I don’t know how wide the Red Sea was but the Channel was wide enough for me. I would have preferred a parting of the seas than hanging over the edge of the railings for 4 hours with a sick bag in hand...
While Mike and Lindy were seeking God’s will about a new ministry, Mark and I were doing the same in Devon.
The Israelites once they’d crossed the Red Sea were led by God’s pillar of cloud by day and fire by night (wouldn’t we love that clear a signpost sometimes)?! But have you thought about their journey to Canaan? They were led down into the Sinai desert and were travelling for 40 years. This was nowhere near the most direct route...they could have cut straight across the top and it would have probably taken them a month tops. God was protecting them from running headlong into the Philistines. But the important thing here is relationship…. They sinned over and over again, they were trying to work out who their God was and what he looked like (hence the idols) and of course they would have missed Moses’ encounter with God on Mount Sinai along with so many other important lessons.
Do you think that perhaps our lives are sometimes like that? We don’t always end up taking the route we would have thought. But on the journey we learn more about God and about our relationship to Him.
The first job that Mark and I looked at (or should I say, Mark looked at!) was in the Outer Hebrides! (An island community too – yes, weather – no)….
Then Tenerife.
St Andrews in Scotland.
Bodmin.
Plus a couple of dozen others in between.
We were offered a job in central Plymouth and agonised over it...and eventually turned it down….
Mark went for a job at a school in Brecon, Wales – and we were at the time disappointed when we didn’t get it – great opportunities for the children at the school, nearer my family….
Then Mark’s boss left and there was the possibility of staying on where we were with friends, with all that was familiar.
We were pushed to the wire timing wise and then 11th hour (why does that happen?) we found ourselves in Jersey and sensed it was absolutely the right place to be. And the rest is history as they say...and we have found many, many reasons to say that God is our song.
As we were moving here I was reading a book:
One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp – a Canadian farmer’s wife living in the Menonite countryside near Ontario.
It is a beautiful book, beautifully written.
In a life that has known pain and sorrow she began recognising the importance of thanksgiving, back to our theme of God is our song. Many of us know well the verse from Philippians 4:6
“Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God”.
So, thanking God is one way of making Him our song. And I’m talking to myself here too – but do we do this? Do we thank and praise God all the time?
So Ann, began writing down in notebooks dotted around her house, in her bag things to thank God for ...small things, big things….one thousand things.
1. morning shadows across the old floors
2. jam piled high on toast
243. clean sheets smelling like wind
362. suds...all colors in the sun
664. nylons without runs (!)
783. forgiveness of a sister
971. kettle whistling for tea on a cold afternoon
And when she got to a thousand she started again.
And so I started doing the same.
The premise is that we can shift our mindset to one of gratitude, of thanking God, of the Lord being our song. Slowly, slowly, step by step, one thank you at a time. We begin praising our awesome God for the many small ways around us that He shows He loves us. And we may not sing and dance down the street as David did but we can thank God with our heart, with our lives.
Now some of us are more wired to being glass half full and for some it doesn’t come as naturally. And please, please don’t think I say all this flippantly because I absolutely recognise that many of us have very real pain in our lives – wearing, draining, exhausting physical pain; the aching heart-breaking sorrow of loss; the empty hollow of loneliness, relationship breakdown, mental health issues to struggle with.
Why is it we’re called to thank God in our sorrows and trials?
James says “ Count it joy...when you meet trials of various kinds (and then does qualify this) for you know that the testing of your faith produces streadfastness” (1 v2)
God will let us wallow and cry and rant. He knows the real us.
It is said that you can take the Israelites out of Egypt but you can’t take Egypt out of the Israelites. They kept looking back – it would have been better if we’d have stayed there and died there, at least we had food there etc etc. But when we have nothing left – we have God. At times like this we can ask WHY? But what we need to say is WHO and that who is our faithful, loving God who never leaves us. The desert for the Israelites was a time for learning about their relationship with Yahweh.
I’m not going to dwell on this for long – but 4 years ago I was diagnosed with ME/CFS. Mark was just starting his curacy, having in the last month lost his Dad suddenly to cancer (though on what I’m sure was a ‘God-timed’ trip he’d gone out to help him with his chemo and ended up being by his bedside as he died, being at his funeral and scattering his ashes). All this whilst finishing his dissertation, moving towns, starting a new job….Hope, our daughter then 3 ½ had meningitis and then I got ill.
I just didn’t get it – I thought I needed to be fit for ministry and I can’t say I was singing a song to God everyday but it’s actually been in the tough times that I have actively been thinking about and seeking JOY. When things were going well there can be the tendency to take it all for granted and I have learned to appreciate the good days and have learned to appreciate small miracles and larger ones (partial healing for certain symptoms). And I have learned that whatever our external circumstances we have a God who is unchanging, who is love, who will be waiting for us when life is done. And in the meantime, we all need more joy!
We can often thank God as we look back (and I do – He has sustained me, He has brought lovely people around me, He has brought us here!) but our challenge is to show that fruit of the spirit JOY, to thank Him, to sing a new song in the midst of the rubbish too. For 40 years in the desert! God’s promises are watertight.
None of us knows what this year holds. There will no doubt be times ahead when it will be easy to celebrate with you and times when you may have to remind me of what I’ve been saying this morning.
Another great book I really recommend is 7 Women and the secret of their greatness by Eric Metaxes. What I love about this book – apart from loving other women’s stories – is that they were, as the Queen was saying in her Christmas speech, ordinary people doing extra-ordinary things….in God’s strength.
Can I read a passage to you where Corrie ten Boom was really struggling with thanking God while she was in Ravensbruck concentration camp.
(Read passage re Corrie struggling to thank God for the fleas - which she eventually discovered were what kept the guards away from them).
SO – can we today add to our list of thank you’s, can you get to a 1000 and can we make 2017 the year where the Lord really becomes our song?
In the words of Ann Voskamp:
“Make everyday a cathedral, giving glory to God”
All write down 5 things to say thank you to God for….
So – a new year. I don’t know if you’re very pragmatic about these things – it’s just another day - or whether, like me, you get a bit reflective about life at this time of year…
But I started thinking about how it would perhaps be helpful to have a new year’s SPIRITUAL resolution….not setting ourselves goals that might be broken by the 10th of January...I will keep a journal, I will without fail spend an hour praying every day….but something that will shape and colour our year ahead and our relationship with God.
So, let us look at this verse from Exodus 15:2
“The Lord is my strength and my song;
he has become my salvation.
He is my God, and I will praise him,
my father’s God, and I will exalt him”.
Think about your relationship with God. Do you rely on God for your strength? I hope so. Do you know that you are saved by God? If you believe and trust in Jesus I hope you do. But how often is God our song? How much do we praise him and say thank you?
So – how about making this, the year that we make God our song.
So we’re in Exodus. God’s people have endured 430 years of cruel slavery in Egypt and have fallen so far from the grace and power of Joseph’s reign of power. The Israelites must have wondered if God had deserted them but He heard their cries and sent a stuttering Moses and his brother Aaron (who actually ended up doing much of the talking for him) to call on Pharoah to “Let my people go”! After all those plagues the Egyptians eventually pleaded with the Israelites to leave, here take my jewelry, clothing etc – just go! It’s estimated that 2 million Israelites left Egypt lead by God’s reluctant leader Moses to start off on an epic journey into the wilderness. They encounter the Red Sea and God shows his power in letting them across but drowning the Egyptians who’d changed their minds and were chasing them down.
So our passage is their song of praise when they reached the other side. They stopped and praised God in a song for their salvation and redemption...words that pre-figure, for us post-New Testament, what Jesus has done for us. It’s a song echoed in Psalm 118:14 and in Revelation 15.
And there are so many beautiful songs of praise in the Bible – Mary, Hannah when she dedicates Samuel to the Lord, Simeon, Zachariah, Song of Songs and of course, the most prolific of song writers – David with his Psalms. I’m not suggesting that we run half dressed in the street praising God like he did but we can have a constant heart-attitude of praise. And of course we can really sing….often a CD of worship music will work when you’re struggling to pray….I often play them in the car, cooking tea.…
As I was mulling over this verse from Exodus it struck me and made me smile as I thought about our journey to Jersey. As many of you know, Mark, the children and I got on the Condor Liberation last August to find our promised land of milk and honey (milk and potatoes)! I don’t know how wide the Red Sea was but the Channel was wide enough for me. I would have preferred a parting of the seas than hanging over the edge of the railings for 4 hours with a sick bag in hand...
While Mike and Lindy were seeking God’s will about a new ministry, Mark and I were doing the same in Devon.
The Israelites once they’d crossed the Red Sea were led by God’s pillar of cloud by day and fire by night (wouldn’t we love that clear a signpost sometimes)?! But have you thought about their journey to Canaan? They were led down into the Sinai desert and were travelling for 40 years. This was nowhere near the most direct route...they could have cut straight across the top and it would have probably taken them a month tops. God was protecting them from running headlong into the Philistines. But the important thing here is relationship…. They sinned over and over again, they were trying to work out who their God was and what he looked like (hence the idols) and of course they would have missed Moses’ encounter with God on Mount Sinai along with so many other important lessons.
Do you think that perhaps our lives are sometimes like that? We don’t always end up taking the route we would have thought. But on the journey we learn more about God and about our relationship to Him.
The first job that Mark and I looked at (or should I say, Mark looked at!) was in the Outer Hebrides! (An island community too – yes, weather – no)….
Then Tenerife.
St Andrews in Scotland.
Bodmin.
Plus a couple of dozen others in between.
We were offered a job in central Plymouth and agonised over it...and eventually turned it down….
Mark went for a job at a school in Brecon, Wales – and we were at the time disappointed when we didn’t get it – great opportunities for the children at the school, nearer my family….
Then Mark’s boss left and there was the possibility of staying on where we were with friends, with all that was familiar.
We were pushed to the wire timing wise and then 11th hour (why does that happen?) we found ourselves in Jersey and sensed it was absolutely the right place to be. And the rest is history as they say...and we have found many, many reasons to say that God is our song.
As we were moving here I was reading a book:
One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp – a Canadian farmer’s wife living in the Menonite countryside near Ontario.
It is a beautiful book, beautifully written.
In a life that has known pain and sorrow she began recognising the importance of thanksgiving, back to our theme of God is our song. Many of us know well the verse from Philippians 4:6
“Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God”.
So, thanking God is one way of making Him our song. And I’m talking to myself here too – but do we do this? Do we thank and praise God all the time?
So Ann, began writing down in notebooks dotted around her house, in her bag things to thank God for ...small things, big things….one thousand things.
1. morning shadows across the old floors
2. jam piled high on toast
243. clean sheets smelling like wind
362. suds...all colors in the sun
664. nylons without runs (!)
783. forgiveness of a sister
971. kettle whistling for tea on a cold afternoon
And when she got to a thousand she started again.
And so I started doing the same.
The premise is that we can shift our mindset to one of gratitude, of thanking God, of the Lord being our song. Slowly, slowly, step by step, one thank you at a time. We begin praising our awesome God for the many small ways around us that He shows He loves us. And we may not sing and dance down the street as David did but we can thank God with our heart, with our lives.
Now some of us are more wired to being glass half full and for some it doesn’t come as naturally. And please, please don’t think I say all this flippantly because I absolutely recognise that many of us have very real pain in our lives – wearing, draining, exhausting physical pain; the aching heart-breaking sorrow of loss; the empty hollow of loneliness, relationship breakdown, mental health issues to struggle with.
Why is it we’re called to thank God in our sorrows and trials?
James says “ Count it joy...when you meet trials of various kinds (and then does qualify this) for you know that the testing of your faith produces streadfastness” (1 v2)
God will let us wallow and cry and rant. He knows the real us.
It is said that you can take the Israelites out of Egypt but you can’t take Egypt out of the Israelites. They kept looking back – it would have been better if we’d have stayed there and died there, at least we had food there etc etc. But when we have nothing left – we have God. At times like this we can ask WHY? But what we need to say is WHO and that who is our faithful, loving God who never leaves us. The desert for the Israelites was a time for learning about their relationship with Yahweh.
I’m not going to dwell on this for long – but 4 years ago I was diagnosed with ME/CFS. Mark was just starting his curacy, having in the last month lost his Dad suddenly to cancer (though on what I’m sure was a ‘God-timed’ trip he’d gone out to help him with his chemo and ended up being by his bedside as he died, being at his funeral and scattering his ashes). All this whilst finishing his dissertation, moving towns, starting a new job….Hope, our daughter then 3 ½ had meningitis and then I got ill.
I just didn’t get it – I thought I needed to be fit for ministry and I can’t say I was singing a song to God everyday but it’s actually been in the tough times that I have actively been thinking about and seeking JOY. When things were going well there can be the tendency to take it all for granted and I have learned to appreciate the good days and have learned to appreciate small miracles and larger ones (partial healing for certain symptoms). And I have learned that whatever our external circumstances we have a God who is unchanging, who is love, who will be waiting for us when life is done. And in the meantime, we all need more joy!
We can often thank God as we look back (and I do – He has sustained me, He has brought lovely people around me, He has brought us here!) but our challenge is to show that fruit of the spirit JOY, to thank Him, to sing a new song in the midst of the rubbish too. For 40 years in the desert! God’s promises are watertight.
None of us knows what this year holds. There will no doubt be times ahead when it will be easy to celebrate with you and times when you may have to remind me of what I’ve been saying this morning.
Another great book I really recommend is 7 Women and the secret of their greatness by Eric Metaxes. What I love about this book – apart from loving other women’s stories – is that they were, as the Queen was saying in her Christmas speech, ordinary people doing extra-ordinary things….in God’s strength.
Can I read a passage to you where Corrie ten Boom was really struggling with thanking God while she was in Ravensbruck concentration camp.
(Read passage re Corrie struggling to thank God for the fleas - which she eventually discovered were what kept the guards away from them).
SO – can we today add to our list of thank you’s, can you get to a 1000 and can we make 2017 the year where the Lord really becomes our song?
In the words of Ann Voskamp:
“Make everyday a cathedral, giving glory to God”