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- Written by: Don Goulding
But be filled by the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing and making music in your hearts to the Lord … (Ephesians 5:19, 20)
I had to choose. Pakistani Christians jumped and waved to the rhythm of a pump organ and tiny brass cymbals. I could watch the persecuted believers as an outsider, or join as a fellow heir of Christ. I overcame my inhibitions, slipped into the revelry, and whirled before the Lord with my brothers and sisters.
High on the Amazon headwaters, Christian leaders guided their canoes to a sleepy village for a pastors’ conference. The joy of coming together erupted in Spanish worship of Jesús, as bright guitar notes blended with the airy tones of a zampoña flute.
While serving in the Sichuan province, God gave unmusical me the lyrics to a song. I collaborated with a Chinese musician to create a hymn that spread through the underground churches. The Mandarin words for, “God, your love is all around me. God, you are all I’ll ever need,” rose on long high notes, then resolved on a heart confirming crescendo.
There’s a mysterious connection between music and the Spirit of God. Both engage parts of our being we can’t understand, and both unify our hearts in joy. Combine music with the Spirit and we abandon ourselves in worship with heart, mind, soul, and strength.
When I self-consciously analyze other singers, I get out of sync. I have to close out the world, let my body find the beat, then move in unity to the music around me.
The same is true with the Holy Spirit. Only when I ignore human agendas, including my own, and follow his rhythm, do I find the harmonious life God intended.
I can sit on the sidelines and count out the steps of religion, or I can jump in and move with the Spirit of grace. Watch or join—I have to choose.
Prayer: Holy Paraclete (Advocate/Helper), let me dance with you today.
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- Written by: Don Goulding
Such trials show the proven character of your faith, which is much more valuable than gold - gold that is tested by fire, even though it is passing away - and will bring praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. (1 Peter 1:7)
A hunched man sat outside his house, gazing into the stunted pines and granite crags of China’s Yellow Mountains.
“I was a porter for fifty years,” he explained through my interpreter. “Every day, I carried goods up sixty thousand steps to the top.”
The man before me was a knot of muscles developed from five decades of hauling loaded buckets, balanced from a pole across his shoulders. Most locals I met played mahjong tiles every day, but this gentle soul had done something extraordinary with his life. He’d carried bricks and parcels up more than one billion stairs.
Faith is a muscle that atrophies without exercise. When there’s no resistance from trials in life, my faith in God gets weak and flabby. Hardship makes me pray and trust God until my faith increases. Trials build up faith, and faith stores up glory.
Faith is my most valuable strength. I may be a deeply religious person, and have an impeccable service record, but those don’t move the heart of God like faith in his Son. My heavenly Father wants to see a well developed, highly sculpted faith in my life.
Back in the Yellow Mountains I gave my new friend the gospel message, which he eagerly received. But he gave me something in return. He demonstrated that living a significant life requires overcoming significant hardship. If he’d loitered among the mahjong players, instead of fighting the gravity of those stairs every day, we would never have been touched by his incredible story, or spurred on to glorious faith.
Prayer: Master Trainer, use trials to build up my most holy faith.
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- Written by: Don Goulding
Did you not dry up the sea,
the waters of the great deep?
Did you not make a path through the depths of the sea,
so those delivered from bondage could cross over? (Isaiah 51:10)
Dani and I lay in our backyard gazing into the stars, praying, and discussing her first ministry trip to Africa.
“Why are there so many stars? A red line is connecting them to make a knight on a stallion,” Dani said.
It was a vision from the Lord, sent as reassurance for her upcoming leap of faith. Jesus would be her protector knight. God spoke, and we were both jazzed for days.
Another time, I waited out a tropical downpour while worshiping inside a mosquito net in West Africa. The Holy Spirit came within the draped gauze and lifted my spirit into the air. I wore that joy like the glow on Moses’ face for weeks.
I also recall that we had some money to donate, and I contacted a radio ministry that broadcast the gospel into the Middle East. The amount needed was precisely what we had prepared to give. Confirmation that we were in God’s will washed over my heart, and kept me floating for a month.
Why do I try to live on the highs of God’s interventions when the biggest miracle of history surrounds me every day in the form of salvation? My adoption into heaven ought to be enough to make Monday through Sunday all days of wild jubilation.
Imagine the thrill the Israelites felt after they walked between walls of water in the Red Sea. God singled them out and, with an awesome phenomenon, he redeemed them from their enemies. Has he done any less for me?
A vast body of sin separated me from the promises of God on the opposite shore. Demonic enemies closed in, ready to drag me down to hell. Then God pulled off the big one. The waters of my own treachery parted. Eternal death foamed about me, but God’s mighty hand held it back. I walked on the dry road of forgiveness, and crossed over to reconciliation.
Every day that the waters of sin pile up and don’t sweep me away, is another day of God’s dazzling intervention.
Prayer: Mighty Savior, my heart is giddy because of your forgiveness.