“Moses came with Joshua son of Nun and spoke all the words of this song in the hearing of the people. When Moses finished reciting all these words to all Israel, he said to them, “Take to heart all the words I have solemnly declared to you [in song] this day… They are not just idle words for you—they are your life. By them you will live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to possess.” ~Deuteronomy 32.44-47 NIV
These are some of my life songs, the ones so dripping with piercing truth that time and again, they are my life, the spiritual blood pulsing through these mortal veins.
I will Praise Him, words and music by Margaret J. Harris 1898
Great is Thy Faithfulness, Thomas O. Chisholm, 1923
There is a Fountain Filled with Blood, by William Cowper, written after his first major bout with depression
His Name is Wonderful, Audrey May Meier, in the 1950s (she also wrote “Sweet, Sweet Spirit” which I love and sang many times growing up)
When I Look into Your Holiness, lyrics by Wayne Perrin, 1980s
He’s All I Need, traditional
They are not just idle words or antiquated melodies for me. They are my life.
So hot. Like 105 and 106-degrees hot. My friend, Kaye, posted this report this morning:
YES! We did see a little bit of rain last night! It was wonderful! But we still need to pray for rain because it was [not] even close to being enough. Currently in Colorado there are 12 wildfires burning, temps are over 100º, and there is little or no humidity. In Estes Park Saturday 22 homes + 2 outbuildings burned. In the High Park fire near us, there have now been 248 homes confirmed destroyed and about 50 out buildings. the fire has grown to 83,205 acres and is down to only 45 % containment. I heard on the news that an estimated 13,000 people are displaced from their homes statewide. So let’s keep praying for rain! Let it rain, let it rain, let it rain!!!!!
Kaye was referencing, in part, our Heaven Fest Leadership Meeting last night (as well as all the prayer at churches across the state, I know), where we spent some time crying out to God for rain, for containment, for relief from the fires. Just across the hall from us at The Ranch in Loveland (in the 1st National Bank building), a press conference and report was happening for the displaced, the evacuees. There was heavy stuff happening.
One hour later, while on a flat-bed tour outside so the team could see where everything would be at Heaven Fest this year, a cloud cover came and there was some drop in the temp. Then thunder and lightening and sprinkling, then raining. And our weather patterns, usually always swooping down and away from the northeast – we actually saw heading west – toward the High Park fire. Some of our leadership rode home in torrents of rain. It was cool.
But the fire rages. Many have been added.
On Saturday our neice Lori and her daughters almost had to evacuate their Estes Park home where a cabin caught on fire less than a mile away. We were all on stand-by and it was dealt with. The next morning, a bear was in the ri neightbor’s yard, surely driven closer in by the ruckus.
Lori took this photo from her deck Saturday.
The heat is taking a toll. The grass is burning up. The dog can’t be out. Neighborhoods are losing power. There is a 100% ban on any fireworks in Colorado this year. As it should be.
A song we actually sang in church in the 70s – it was fairly lightweight, but song leaders loved it because they could add all sort of weird verses to it. The main pattern was this
The joy of the Lo-o-ord is my strength!
The joy of the Lo-o-ord is my strength!
The joy of the Lo-o-ord is my strength!
O, the joy of the Lord is my strength!
Can you imagine the fun you can have with that syntax?
Verse 2, everybody now:
If you want joy you can jump for it [make the whole congregation jump here]
If you want joy you can jump for it!
If you want joy you can jump for it!
O, the joy of the Lord is my strength!
Then they came up with these clever, congregation-engaging verses: “If you want joy you can spin for it,” whereupon people with vertigo went down for the count.
My personal favorite was the verse, “If you want joy you can laugh for it,” followed by a verse where, to the tune of the song, we all, young and old alike. were heard singing:
Ha, haha, haha, haha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!
There must have been 10-12 embarrassing verses. You can imagine the glory.
Not sure why that popped into my brain? Maybe because the JOY of the LORD is my strength! So I have to pretty much live on a joy-quest. And I do love me some Habakkuk who painted that picture of what life and joy-robbing circumstances really are like sometimes (3:17-18 NKJV):
Though the fig tree may not blossom,
Nor fruit be on the vines;
Though the labor of the olive may fail,
And the fields yield no food;
Though the flock may be cut off from the fold,
And there be no herd in the stalls—
Yet I will rejoice in the Lord,
I will *joy in the God of my salvation.
And that word *JOY is gil, #1523 in the Strong’s, and it means to joy, rejoice, be glad, be joyful and contains, according to my study Bible’s notes (Jack Hayford’s Spirit-Filled Life Bible) the suggestion of “dancing for joy” or “leaping for joy,” since the verb originally meant “to spin around with intense emotion.”
Kind of dispels the notion that “inner joy” is just this calm, serene, ever-present half smile of knowing, doesn’t it? Joy seems a bit more raucous, active, participatory. It is us, in the face of the toughest circumstances dancing and leaping and praising God and making joy happen.
No blossoms on the tree which is supposed to provide sustenance for us? I will joy…
No fruit? After all my hard work? I will joy!
My intense labor over the olives is a great, big fail? I will joy!
My entire field has no food and dang, I am hungry…yet, I will rejoice…I will joy in the God of my salvation.
So it turns out that silly song wasn’t that far off the mark. If you want joy – you can jump for it! Or leap or spin around with intense emotion. A song of my life.
Dave and Tara introduced me to this song the summer of 2006. I had just left a busy (crazy, heart-pounding, wreck-of-a) church position and I was in rough shape. They were about to embark on this new thing called Worship and the Word Movement, where they could travel and sing and lead worship and infuse local churches and ministries with much-needed resources for worship – all for just the invitation, no $$ required. Missionaries.
It was a summer night. In a barn east of Brighton and the Holy Spirit was pre~sent! O my. And they started singing it and every person in the place had their faces turned heavenward with their arms raised singing, “Yes, yes – yes, yes!”
And I was standing there begging God to show me what was next, to give me my next assignment – something to prove He wasn’t actually finished with my life in light of the loss and the pain of the months just passed.
And you know when you hear from heaven and know it is really God because you know you would never have heard those words from your own heart and mind – you know that kind of hearing? I heard like that and He told me, in spite of the fact that the words of this song are amazing, sweet, and about simple surrender (and have a decidedly early 70s R & B flavor, which is so me),
“Do not sing this song. There is nothing for you to say ‘yes’ to.”
And I am serious. Because He was serious. He absolutely would not allow me the honor of singing this song. I looked around that barn and just like the wounded heart I was, spewed out, with hot, stinging tears, “Why do they all get to say ‘yes?!'” He reiterated:
“There is NOTHING for you to say yes to.”
Settled. KILLED. Just broke my heart. I had thought He meant forever. I couldn’t comprehend He was looking out for me, making sure I was safe before we ventured further…
Many times since, I have asked Dave and Tara why they don’t do that song more because I love it and God lets me sing it now. **happy face** :)
Flash forward: A Sunday morning (today).
I try to slink unnoticed in to the church. I am immediately greeted by 2 of the HF familia who will not let me slink by. Oh no. I just want to come in, sit in the Whitewater dark and sing a little (along with my son, Rocky, who is leading), hear the sermon and leave like I came: over-worked, over-wrought, over-tired, all my own fault.
Rocky and Jovan are about to step out as missionaries themselves. 6 years later, we are here again…He has a dream to build a worship team that goes out into the highways and byways, even into bars. He wants to actually worship the Lord in the dark places. He and Jovan want to write and produce music that will bring healing where the wounded live. And today, omygoodness – it reminded me of that little white barn with Dave and Tara 6 years ago.
And he dusted off the too-little-used song, “Yes.” And I am tired. And I am a bit beaten down by working without resting, by fearing man rather than God, by all the things I should know better than to allow…But sitting there (in the Whitewater dark) I realized, the thing is, I can say yes now. God is asking me.
“Do you want to do this?” I hear Him ask…
Yes, yes. Yes, Lord, yes.
And I hear Rocky lead out with strong resolve:
From my heart I say Yes
From my soul I say yes
All my life I say yes, yes…..
So that is my song of the day. Maybe the month or the next 60 days, I don’t know. It just really washed over me.
GOTTA get a camera that can handle the sound and low-lights. The vid is low-quality. But I am sharing it anyway, because if you’re trying to decide something right now, see if these words and this melody will fit. And if it helps you say what you know you already want to say anyway…
“Yes,” led by Rocky Rhoades (my beloved son in whom I am so pleased.) Words and music by Dave Powers (c) 2006 (my other beloved son in whom I am also very much pleased).
I started loving the BeeGees in the early 70s, though they’d been around. I had put a Bee Gee documentary in my Netflix Instant queu a couple months back and finally watched it after Robin died and it made me remember why I love so many songs they sang and wrote. And why they impacted music like they did.
I think that a lot of people who didn’t “grow up with the Bee Gees” think of the 70s disco-craze and believe that is all they had, but that just is not true (though they did it bigger and better than anyone, truly). I am not going to defend them or try to prove their great worth to musical history in the century just past, though I would be remiss not to mention that they are among the top grossing performers of all time. I will just say that they were really brothers (in case you didn’t know), and that three-part harmony in hit after hit through 4 decades will remain, ever, one of the most beautiful sounds on my stereo and in my heart.
Here are my top-ten favorite Bee Gee songs, in a slightly organized order but only because today this seems right.
Other days – something else. But today, in this order:
1. How Deep is Your Love.
2. Words (1968)
3. Run to Me (1972)
4. How Can You Mend a Broken Heart (early 1970s). Did they better with age? 1971 vs. the late 90s
5. Love You Inside Out
6. More Than a Woman…OK the suits on this video are a little ungodly. Boys, please. Don’t cause a sister to sin.
7. Love So Right
8. Fanny Be Tender, just before their disco days exploded, I loved this one.
9. Too Much Heaven
10. To Love Somebody (late 1960s). Written for Otis Redding, but covered by a gazillion artists over the years, I still enjoy this 1960s rendition from one of their early albums (which I own, of course).
My favorites that they wrote for others:
Emotion (which they wrote for Samantha Sang)
Come on Over (for Olivia Newton-John)
Rest Your Love on Me (Olivia Newton-John and Andy Gibb)
Heartbreaker (Dionne Warwick). Dionne is Whitney Houston’s aunt.
Islands in the Stream (Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers)
If I Can’t Have You (which they actually wrote for Yvonne Elliman, 1977)
Immortality (for Celine Dion, late 90s). I don’t know if it’s the song or the beautiful video? Lovely words (“We don’t say good-bye…”). Classic little melodies within the melody. Just intoxicating. And they are all three there, the BeeGees, Barry, Maurice and Robin. Immortality in song.
www.rez.org Live-streaming each weekend (Saturday evenings and Sunday mornings)
Here is a sliver of the 8:30 am service this morning. Dave and Tara leading, with Rocky. Dave Beegle was there, too! Love the Dave! (www.davebeegle.com)
O man, I love that the people I love the most love Jesus more than anything. Their voices – the voices I have long-loved, just resonate and reverberate right into the core of me in a way that no other singers can. Just like your childrens’ voices do for you! There is a familiarity, a deep familial recognition – from the inside out. It is good.
