Learn It And Share It - A Life Blog

07/25/2026

Galatians 5 is where the passage comes from which so many people talk about the fruits of the spirit. What many people don’t realize is that the fruit of the spirit is contrasted with the deeds of the flesh, so those fruit of the spirit are not in isolation as if there were no opposite.

Another interesting thing is that the deeds of the flash are exactly that: deeds. The fruit of the spirit, on the other hand, are primarily concerned with character. Wanted to argue that a few of them are closely associated with deeds, but the vast majority of them are about formation and not the specific things you do.

Some might ask whether the word “spirit” refers to the human spirit (soul) or the spirit of God. It could also be both. I do think there’s a best reading from among the bunch, but that’s not the purpose of this post today.

My main point is that spiritual formation ought to focus on character first, not merely on your activity. Your activity is certainly important, and there are plenty of specific things we can find in the Bible to avoid as obvious sin.

But if we make the mistake of focusing first on what we do, and neglecting spiritual formation, we are at great risk of falling into the sin of loving the lifestyle and the blessings rather than the one who gave those to us.

One may also note that the spirit yields character where, as the flesh yields deeds. Character also yields deeds, but as James tells us, works come from faith. You cannot have one without the other. But from a sinful position, you can have works without faith.

If you want to take a closer look at this passage, I would strongly recommend reading the entirety of Galatians five quickly and then more closely reading Galatians 5:17-25, as I discussed in my last post about reading deep and wide.

06/25/2026

STUDY DEEP AND WIDE

Lots of people don’t know how to study the Bible well, and I’ve posted a few times about good study in the past (for example, see here: https://www.facebook.com/share/1GhsiUFq2i/?mibextid=wwXIfr and here: https://www.facebook.com/share/1DDp3JNp1c/?mibextid=wwXIfr).

There are all sorts of tools that help you go deeper, and I highly recommend you make use of all the resources out there. My go-to is Blue Letter Bible, which has a solid app and website. There are certainly other good ones, but that’s my one-stop-shop for most things unless I’m wanting a very specific function or content.

But one thing about biblical literacy is that depth is not the whole picture.

If you’ve ever learned to play an instrument, you know there’s a process to it. You don’t simply sit down one day and start the second movement of the Moonlight Sonata. You certainly do need to study that one piece in detail, and you need to run your fingers over the notes with some repetition in order to tell the musical story the way it was intended.

But before you ever get there, you need the vocabulary of your instrument. To piggyback off the piano sample, you need to know the sets of white and black keys, the octave designations, how to read sheet music generally, what it means when you see 8va or ledger lines, the use of triplets, and a lot more.

If you don’t have the broader picture of the piano and reading music, you cannot properly sit down and execute the piece as intended. Sure, you may learn a section without the extraneous notations and difficult passages, but you’ll leave without a complete picture of what the composition was intended to convey through the pianist, let alone be able to explain it to anyone else. And even that shorter snippet may not come out with the right feel.

The Bible is similar, in that you must have a growing library of understanding at the bird’s-eye level before being able to see the full realization of the worm’s-eye level.

So how do you go about doing that?

I’ve been listening a lot lately to a biblical discussion podcast and catching up on their study in Zechariah, and in the final episode, one of the hosts made a comment that I think encapsulates the approach to a fuller biblical understanding than many could otherwise give: Read big portions quickly and study small passages deeply.

This doesn’t mean to read wildly or mindlessly but that when you’re building your broader picture of Scripture, you need to look at the bigger picture and not let yourself get distracted by the minute details.

If you’re reading bigly (so to speak), note the interesting things you see and plan to come back to study them later. Maybe use a highlighter in your app or on the paper so you can easily find it again later, or keep a small steno pad on hand to list those bits.

But by all means, keep going so you make the connection between the advisors telling the king to build a golden statue and murder those who don’t bow and worship to the result where the three young men have a mysterious figure walking with them in the flames, proof that even the sneakiest men “thinking themselves wise” find themselves actually proven “to be fools” (New Testament connection). Or that the same thing happened in the story of Esther, with a method of intended ex*****on over grudges against God’s people was turned on the divisors of their wicked schemes. Or that there are very different methods Jesus used to heal blind men, or very different fathers whose children were healed by Jesus at a distance.

It’s harder to make those connections if you get bogged down with details and you don’t have the bigger picture of the arc of Scripture.

I’m by no means discouraging you rom studying deeply, so please don’t get that idea.

What I am saying is that you don’t have to do a word study in order to read the Bible. A mile deep but an inch wide is still no representation of an ocean.

Slide back and forth between those two approaches to Scripture. Read the bigger story to get the whole view, then go back and hit the parts that you think might be most interesting. That’ll often give you a better trip through the stories and theology than taking every bunny trail you see. Pick your best ones to get the most out of it—and you’ll also get the connections between stories more than you ever would have before.

If you’re still not convinced, consider this:

If you’ve ever read something like a Cliff Notes summary in order to understand something in a pinch, notice that this sort of teaching agent uses story summaries, chapter summaries, bullet points, highlighted quotes, etc. in order to give you the best understanding possible.

So how is a story summary given? Does it dive into why this man is talking to a skull in his room? Maybe in passing, but it won’t give you the full backstory of the skull.

The value of understanding here is that you get the big picture with the most important details. You can go through and dive deeper into the story at the most confusing or exhilarating points later, but you won’t know where those are unless you’ve first done the work of seeing the bigger picture.

And let me tell you something else:

When someone puts together a commentary on any book of the Bible, they make cross-references and summaries just like someone might do with Shakespeare. And the first step in laying that out is to read big portions quickly.

Finding those chunks and how they’re related is far easier when you can divide up the plate into meat, potatoes, veggies, and cake. Figuring out the fat content in the cake icing doesn’t help you figure out whether the plate represents a balanced meal.

So read big portions quickly and small passages deeply. Increase your biblical vocabulary so that you can use that vocabulary to rightly divide the word of truth.

And the more you do that, the more natural it will feel to pull in OT references or NT references. Seeing that bigger picture and the cross-references all over will greatly increase your appreciation for God’s gift to us in His Word.

LOST IN TRANSLATION

***WARNING: This one's a bit longer than normal, but it's certainly worth a read.***

Many people have a favorite translation of the Bible they use, whether for preaching, in-depth study, or simple reading. My tendency is to reach for the NASB (New American Standard Bible) and grab a few others along the way.

Part of this is to see how others may be reading a given passage and part of it is to get a broader look at how the text has been rendered as it's been translated from the original languages into my own (English). Some things translate easily, and other things very much do not.

But beyond that, every translation of the Bible has a purpose behind it, and it has a team of people who are interpreting God's Word in a particular way. As such, when you read any copy of Scripture that is not the original language, you are, in a way, reading someone's theology on paper.

To draw that to an important conclusion, you ought to be mindful of what has been interpreted into the words you read or what may be missing.

There is one simple way to get a fuller picture of the original text without having to learn multiple languages (Greek, Aramaic, and Hebrews—but specifically the cultural use of those languages back in the days the words were actually written).

What is that way, you ask?

Simply grab multiple translations and read them side-by-side.

This is commonly called a parallel Bible. You can buy some in physical print, and they'll typically have narrow columns on a page so you can switch between translations as you go. This obviously costs money and can be inconvenient as they quickly multiply the weight and size of the book in your hand—but you can also achieve the same result easily and for free if you use an app or a Bible website with multiple translations. Here's one example from Bible Gateway:

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john+1%3A1&version=NASB;CSB;ESV

You may notice those three translations identically. Given they're three fairly well-trusted translations, it's generally safe to say they didn't miss or accidentally twist anything. Let's look at another example:

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=psalm+24%3A5&version=NASB;CSB;ESV;NIV

I added in NIV as a comparison, and you may notice that one word is translated rather differently than the original three: "Righteousness" has been rendered "Vindication" in the NIV.

Is that incorrect or bad in some way? Well, it depends on the context. The word translated is the Hebrew צְדָקָה (Strong's H6666). Here's a link for further study as you may have interest.

https://www.blueletterbible.org/lexicon/h6666/kjv/wlc/0-1/

This word is typically translated as "righteousness." Here, its likely meaning is that you have been made righteous by God (God "gave you righteousness;" i.e. salvation).

So can "vindication" fit that meaning? Certainly.

Is that typically how we use the word in our modern English? Not really.

When I hear the word "vindication," my mind goes to the thought of someone having been right all along and being finally proven so, not someone having been wrong but finally MADE right by the person who holds them in debt (as we are to God for our sin).

So if you read strictly NIV, you might come away from this verse with an understanding of that Psalm as pointing to God saving you from false accusations from the unrighteous. This isn't the intended meaning of this verse, and that mistake can be avoided by reading the whole chapter and considering the larger meaning rather than merely that one microscopic snippet of the story.

But it could also be avoided by reading several translations together and comparing the alternate words used.

This process enriches study and clarifies a lot that can easily be misunderstood as you read ancient texts like the Bible. I've found in many cases that it stirs my curiosity and encourages me to read more, not less. It pushes me to dive into word studies and read commentaries on the broader picture of that passage to better understand it.

I highly encourage you to get in the habit of reading parallel translations when you are able. So how do you do this?

Like I said, there are several ways to do it for free. If you want to use an app, I highly recommend the Blue Letter Bible app. It has loads of resources and will let you pull up two simultaneous translations of your choosing from their archives. You can even pull up various Greek and Hebrew translations alongside an English translation if you're bravely venturing into original languages, but for most people, having two English translations will be best. And best of all, the app and all those resources are free!

If you're using a computer, I recommend using Bible Gateway because it declutters the reading experience and is simple to use. To get a parallel, simply go to biblegateway.com and search for a chapter or a verse—anything you'd like to read. Then either consider what translation you like whose abbreviation you also know, or pull up a list of translations and their abbreviations and choose a few (e.g. NASB = New American Standard Bible, ESV = English Standard Version, etc.).

Once you have the scripture pulled up and your translations selected, go to the address bar at the top of your browser and add the following to the very end of what's already there: a semicolon (;) and the abbreviation you want. Hit Enter (or Return on Mac), and the page will reload with both translations! You can even replace one or both if you want a different set of translations now.

But what about the samples I shared above? They had three and four translations, not just two. How do you do that? Simply repeat the process. The address will require one semicolon between every translation you'd like to add (but no semicolon at the end), and you can add whatever you'd like!

I will say that it gets to be a bit much if you go past four at a time, but that should already be plenty for you to get a better idea of a good interpretation of the verse in question.

It takes a bit of practice and intentionality, but I promise this will make your study time more rich and engaging. The extra benefit is also that it makes it easier for you to quickly follow along and understand when someone uses a different translation than your favorite, as you may recognize key words that can appear differently from when you memorized John 3:16 or such. You can also start to get a feel for how different translations feel in how they use words. NASB tends to be more stiff and not exactly conversational. NIV tends to be more conversational but has other issues (let's just say it's not what I recommend if you have a choice, though it's certainly good enough to start reading).

More than ever, technology allows us to better access what was once available only to scholars, so there's little reason to leave that on the table. Use one of these simple tools today to make more of your time spent with God through His word. And if you ever run into something you need help with, seek a spiritual mentor or pastor to help you. I'm happy to help if you want to send me a PM as well.

06/02/2026

THE WEIRD WOE

“Woe to you when all the people speak well of you; for their fathers used to treat the false prophets the same way.”
-Luke 6:26

You may read that and say, “Of course that’s a bad thing.” Or you may be thinking to yourself, “What in the actual heck? Why would it be bad for people to speak well of me?”

There are examples all through the Bible that can be troubling to hear or read, such as Psalm 137 or Luke 22:36. When you hit a point of confusion or trouble when reading the Bible, as when in a church, your instinct ought to be to lean in, not to run or ignore. Remember that “all scripture is God-breathed,” not only your favorite parts.

This particular passage closes Luke’s rendition of the Beatitudes (“blessed are those who…”), a famous passage from Jesus’ lips in His famous Sermon on the Mount (though Luke’s rendition is often called the “Sermon on the Plains” due to v17, probably referring to a repeat of His sermon on a different day). Jesus switches here from promises of blessing to promises of woes, or troubles and warnings.

We have other examples from Scripture that direct us to engage well with the world, including examples such as Romans 12:18 (“be at peace with all people”) and 1 Corinthians 9:19-22 (“I have become all things to all people”). These show that our conduct before men does matter, and that we ought to consider our reputations among the people.

But remember that all this is done with a purpose, and that is not living this way for its own sake. The purpose is for the spread of the Gospel, that the world may know and conform to the image of Christ. That necessarily has standards, both for you who does the living and those to whom you hope to shine God’s light so they may come to do the same.

“Be at peace with all people” is prefaced with “If possible,” and “I have become all things to all people” is followed by “so that I may by all means save some.”

On this passage in Luke 6, Welsh Presbyterian minister Matthew Henry writes,

“The false prophets indeed, that flattered your father in their wicked ways, that prophesied smooth things to them, were caressed and spoken well of; and, if you be in like manner cried up, you will be justly suspected to deal deceitfully as they did. We should desire to have the approbation of those that are wise and good, and not be indifferent to what people say of us; but, as we should despise the reproaches, so we should also despise the praises, of the fools in Israel.”

This explicitly puts our negotiable methods of living below the priority of non-negotiable obedience to God. As Peter and the apostles said to the Sanhedrin when arrested for preaching the risen Christ, “We must obey God rather than men” (c.f. Acts 5:17-32).

The apostles could have gone to every length to live at peace with the Sanhedrin, becoming even as the Sanhedrin, and that would have kept them out of their prison and off their hit list. But this would have required self-censoring the preaching of Jesus.

This is an absolute non-starter for every believer.

Let me say that again.

This is an absolute non-starter for every believer.

The scriptures which direct us to live at peace and such always fall short of allowing us to compromise the Gospel for peace. We are not to become like the world in its rejection of God’s lordship and message. The moment this becomes the decision, you have exhausted all biblical requirements for peace, for peace has been removed by the world and not by your hand.

If the world berates you and belittles you for faithfulness to God, this is in fact the fulfillment of Jesus’ words just shortly before this weird woe when He says, “Blessed are you when the people hate you, and when they exclude you, and insult you, and scorn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man” (Luke 6:22).

Our lives are promised to be filled with trouble, yet Jesus promises that we are blessed—and we are not at the top of the world’s hit list, for as we read in John 15:18, “If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you.”

This is further clarified in verse 19: “If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you.”

So looking back to Luke 6:26, we can understand that for all men to speak well of us, we could draw no conclusion besides a compromise of faith.

Faithfulness to God necessarily puts you at odds with the world. We are called to attempt to bridge the gap in love and peace, yes, but we are not called to do so at all costs. Our preferences may (better yet, should) be sacrificed in the altar of peace, but offering faithfulness to God on that altar is only done by those who are friend to the world and enemy to God.

This can be a hard line to walk, and I have failed to walk it well from time to time. My preference for accurate language and clarity sometimes gets in the way of meeting people where they are and lifting them later. I recognize that and pray that the Spirit shows me a better way in those critical moments with people.

Let me close with this.

Everyone who opposes God will speak ill of those who walk in the Spirit, at least on some level and at some point. Sadly, even those who love God will sometimes wrongly criticize others who love God and are walking faithfully.

But “Woe to you when all the people speak well of you; for their fathers used to treat the false prophets the same way.” If all the people speak well of false prophets, and all the people speak well of you, the rules of grammar (and God’s Word) indict you, and repentance is your only course.

May we as individuals, and may our churches repent when they seek first to please men and thus uphold their reputation over their faithfulness to God. The world needs fewer false prophets and more persecuted ones.

02/15/2026

Found at local park.

12/06/2025

GOD'S BLESSING, OUR ROPE

I know lots of people look at Numbers as a boring book of the Bible, but there is some real gold there, and it’s worth going through and not skipping over.

Take, for example, the man named Korah from Numbers 16.

If you’ve never heard the name Korah, you may be surprised to learn just how deeply that name permeates Israel’s history. His descendants wrote a portion of the Psalms (King David wrote the majority, but a few others also left their mark there, like these fellows), they accompanied and prophesied for Israel’s kings through the ages, and one in particular even anointed the first two kings of Israel: Samuel the prophet.

But Numbers 16 is where granddaddy Korah makes a name for himself. And how does he do that?

He simply leads a rebellion against Moses, Aaron, and the decisions of God for worship then marches multiple families into the mouth of the earth (basically eaten and buried alive) and 250 men to be burned to death for their troubles.

That's not exactly what you’d expect from the patriarch of Samuel and the granddaddy of the psalmists.

And those 250 men? They carried incense burners (called censers) and offered them to God in the process of their sinful demise. God ordered those censers collected from the men’s ashes and hammered out into sheets to cover the altar as a reminder to Israel that holiness matters and God’s word stands. When they were offered to God by even those sinful men, they were still made holy.

Be careful not to 1) go against God’s will because you think for some reason that your way is better, nor to b) judge what is and is not holy to God because of your earthly perception of worthy and unworthy origins.

I’m not saying you should expect to be swallowed by the earth or burned up by supernatural fires when you sin like it’s a normal thing, because even back in the days of parted seas and water gushing from struck rocks, that was already wildly abnormal—and it would be all the more abnormal today.

I am saying that holiness matters. Honor for God matters. God likely won’t use the ground to eat you alive or use surprise fire to burn you to death, but that doesn’t mean you’ll escape God’s judgement for opposing His ways. In a manner of speaking, His great blessing right now in letting you live a long life is also Him allowing you to tie your own hangman’s noose, knot by knot.

But every moment you work on that noose, remember that this same moment is another opportunity to turn and repent. Let the past be the past, merely an instruction in why Man's ways are lower than the Lord's.

Turn and repent of your sins, and heaven will rejoice!

“If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
-1 John 1:8-9 (ESV)

Go and read Numbers 16. I promise that it’s a fascinating and valuable read.

12/06/2025

"MIGHTY NAME OF JESUS"—IS IT WORTHY? (PART 1)

There’s a new song called Mighty Name of Jesus that’s come under fire from some people, including one content creator who said that it can’t be sung by Job and is thus not fit for congregational use.

I’m here to tell you that he’s right. And he’s also wrong.

I’ve liked certain songs by the Belonging Co, but someone who writes a good song won’t always only write good songs. The same goes for the opposite. Someone who generally writes songs that fail for one reason or another can write a good song that does not. As the old saying goes, “A broken clock is right twice a day.”

And even people who operate under bad theology can write a song that has good theology. Whether you want to support that person or church is a different question, and I’m not going to open that can of worms in this particular post. I’ll just say for now that if we only used artful content from those without major flaws, no one would be quoting Psalm 23.

So back to “Mighty Name of Jesus.”

To require a song to be singable by every believer throughout history and in every moment isn’t right. Everyone will have moments when they don’t want to or can’t bring themselves to sing certain songs. I had that experience just after my grandmother’s years ago to a silly chain of medical events that began with lifting a bag of bird seed. The song was Our God by Chris Tomlin. I sang most of the song from the seats that Sunday, but when the chorus came, my voice broke and I couldn’t sing the third line: “Our God is healer, awesome in power.”

It’s not that I didn’t believe it. I did. But I’d just gone through a moment when God chose not to heal someone I loved in the way we normally think of “healing,” and His awesome power was not displayed in the way that His healing power is made evident to our tiny brains.

So in that moment, I just couldn’t sing those words.

Was it bad of the worship leader to select that song, to put those words into people’s mouths? No. Not even when some people would have a hard time with those words? No. Did he even know what had happened to me that week? No. Most people in that room didn’t. Does a worship leader need to adjust plans for one person’s story that week? No. There’s only so much you can ask of a worship leader.

The song still teaches truth, and whether you sing its words or not, you’re still absorbing what it says, and it still makes its home in your heart in some fashion—be it in the form of ascent, denial, or otherwise. That song touches you somehow, even just listening.

And that’s the value of worship songs. They touch you. They burrow their way into you. They can inject truth into your heart without you even realizing what’s happening. That’s why it’s so critical to choose good worship songs.

But so can they do the opposite. That’s why it’s so critical to choose good worship songs.

So back to “Mighty Name of Jesus.”

Most people just think songs are songs, and as long as they don’t obviously offend, they’re good enough for church use. That’s sort of true and not true.

“Good enough for church use” is a bit misleading, as you can use songs congregationally or as a presentation (sometimes called “special music”). If people are expected to sing along, the song should be congregationally written. If people are not, there’s more wiggle room in the song’s form and content (side note: not all good songs on Christian radio are congregational songs).

And if you’re going to put those words into the mouths of your sheep, then you’d danged well better have a good reason to choose that song when you have only a few songs per Sunday and only 52 weeks per year.

How many songs are there in the Christian catalog? What if you narrow it down to only “church songs”? What if you narrow it down to only songs written in the past ten years? This year?

There are way too many songs out there to settle for a “meh” song when you’re injecting the words into people’s hearts. You have a narrow field of opportunity with your music, so you shouldn’t settle. Settling is the realm of a hired hand, not a true son. The Bible has an awful lot to say on those subjects.

So back to “Mighty Name of Jesus.”

Requiring a song to be singable by Job is a silly metric. No, not silly—ridiculous.

Job’s story is already written. In Job’s time, Jesus’ story was not yet written (on earth). For Job to sing a song about Jesus is a silly idea. But also, for Job to sing a song about how “I draw a permanent boundary line, the enemy has no rights / To come near my family” is silly, because it already happened, and drawing any such line would be too late.

For those of you who don’t know, Job’s children were killed in a house collapse as part of the Accuser’s attempts to prove he wasn’t fully devoted to God. Even his wife joined in and told him to “curse God and die” because of the grief piled on by that point. Lovely spousal support.

Go read Job’s story. It’s long but has a wonderful ending with wonderful lessons on multiple fronts.

Praying or singing as if something that has happened will not (or cannot) happen denies reality. It denies the things God has allowed to happen or even caused to happen, depending on the context. That’s not showing faith in God, because that makes it all about you and what you think should have happened.

Our job is not to make sure the “right” things happen, whether out of mere preference or even some misguided notion of what we “deserve.”

To be clear, we all deserve to be executed and to remain separated from God for all eternity. This is the consequence of sin. God is the victim in the story of sinful rebellion, and we are the perpetrators. Justice as we know it would have Him freed from our tyranny, not the other way around. The calls are coming from inside our house.

So we don’t “deserve” anything good. That must be understood.

What else must be understood is that our sense of justice is not God’s, because He chose another path for us: the redeeming blood of Jesus. By God’s grace (giving what IS NOT deserved) and mercy (NOT giving what IS deserved), we are freed in Christ from the ultimate (not momentary) consequence of sin.

Job saw pain, loss, pride, humility, and restoration. It’s a common story to us as believers, though I’ll say he handled it a bit better than many of us—and that’s why his story is so helpful, because it points us to the right attitude in the worst moments of our lives.

So it’s silly to require that the song must have been singable by Job in order to be a legit song. That content creator was wrong.

But hold on—that doesn’t mean the song is a good congregational song. That just means he used a ridiculous metric in assessing the song. So don’t do what he did when looking at a song for church use.

A far better metric is the universal believer, not a specific person whose story is written. You can easily disqualify many songs by requiring a historical person be able to sing it because of your knowledge of their story.

But we’ve been through that already.
___

This post has been split into two parts for easier reading. To finish reading this commentary in part 2, go to the post from August 1st, 2025 or follow this link:

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/16YnTSSTzJ/

"MIGHTY NAME OF JESUS"—IS IT WORTHY? (PART 2)

So for the universal believer, separate from a story which has already been written, is this a good congregational song?

Well, what does it teach?

It teaches some good things, to be sure. It teaches that Jesus is the key to every victory. It teaches that God’s Spirit is present and that He (not “It”) has all authority. It teaches that God’s plan cannot be thwarted by human designs. It teaches that “In the mighty name of Jesus…all the power of fear and darkness must go.”

It teaches a lot of good things.

But the adds some things that are unhelpful to the believer—nay, harmful to the believer—to absorb into their hearts. This is especially so when that believer is new(er) and unable to suss out biblical truth from fiction and spiritual health from sickness.

The song is a statement that bad things will not happen to the singer or their family, specifically because God’s got their proverbial back.

It’s not a bad thing to say that God has your back, because that’s true. But it’s a fallacy to take that a step further and say that no bad things will happen to you or to your family because you have Jesus in your life.

That's not confidence in God but confidence in your idea of God and what He “should do” because you somehow know His purposes are to your earthly benefit.

As an (unbelieving) artist once wrote, “Who do you love? Me or the thought of me?”

We must be on our guard against loving the thought of God rather than God Himself. The world already tries to trick us into that mistake (too often successfully) and judges us from that very same position. That’s not the way we are called to love God, and it’s definitely not a responsible idea for church leaders to inject into the hearts of their sheep.

So what’s the alternative? How do we sing of our confidence in God without straying into dangerous territory?

I’m glad you asked.

We ought not sing of the things that God will protect us from in this life but of the ways God is faithful, and rejoice WHEN He protects us from various things in this life.

“Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me.”

These famous words are a good pattern to follow.

They acknowledge the reality of the evil that has, does, and will press in on us from all sides. It doesn’t say that God will keep us and our family out of danger.

They speak of the attitudes of the heart when things are hard. It doesn’t say the heart need not worry for it won’t be tested.

They point to the value of God’s presence amidst suffering. It doesn’t say that God prevents suffering.

The Psalmist flips to rejoicing at God’s provision as well:

“You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; You have anointed my head with oil; My cup overflows.”

Now there’s some rejoicing at God’s provision and covering in this life (once written into the story).

This is the pattern to follow. Our confidence in God isn’t that He will keep us and our loved ones from bad things because that’s the way it is. That leaves no space for faith in a God who allows bad things to happen to us. And that leaves no space for the heart of Romans 8:28.

If your expectation is that becoming a Christian will make your life easy or shelter you from the worst slings and arrows of outrageous fortune in this world, you’ve been lied to. And I’m sorry someone put you on that path. They did you a spiritual disservice.

“These things I have spoken to you so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world.”
John 16:33 (NASB)

Does that sound like God’s priority is to prevent troubles from entering our earthly doors, or does it sound like God’s priority is presence and confidence in the long arc of His provision rather than our comfort in the now?

I urge you to not use “Mighty Name of Jesus“ in your churches. It’s not biblically consistent as a congregational song. It injects biblical truth, yes, but disease also. It turns you away from the story of Job, where his confidence was in God despite the pain he went through. It trains you to skip spiritual growth in confidence of God’s faithfulness IN THE FACE of difficulty.

We cannot teach people to expect God’s provision yet fail to teach them true confidence in God through every season. The result of that is a people who lose courage or even faith because God didn’t do what we told them He would. Spiritual immune systems are weakened by this sort of negligence and abuse. That already happens too much in the modern Church, and we cannot perpetuate the sins of past leaders and further deform the Bride of Christ.

There are diseases that inhabit the Bride as it is. This is one of them, and self-inflicted, no less. It’s seen in forms such as the Health and Wealth Gospel and Name It and Claim It preachers. But those churches and those leaders do God a disservice, and they lead people astray. If your pastor is known for his hopeful smile and yet closes the doors to hope for victims of catastrophic flooding, run. You need to find a new pastor because this one preaches such false gospel.

Jesus decried the scribes and Pharisees for preventing the people from entering Heaven by their teachings, making the listener “twice as much a son of hell as [they were themselves]” (Matthew 23). They did so by twisting the heart of God in their teachings so the people would lose focus on why He was worthy of their worship and focus instead on created things. Twisting the listener’s understanding of God’s heart with bad songs in this way equally roadblocks and discourages those you ought to be helping see God more clearly.

Cursed is the pastor who does such a thing and drives people to be ill-prepared for the storms of life and even drives some to faithlessness for his carelessness and trend-following.

When pastors care more for their own ideals than for the people under their supposed care, lives are ruined. God is still faithful, but such “pastors” will be judged for their conduct one day.

I urge you to not count yourself among them.

Instead, turn to songs like Another In the Fire, Praise You In This Storm, or It Is Well With My Soul.

These songs faithfully point people to hope and trust in God without denying painful reality. They speak of attitudes of the heart which honor God. They urge us to know God’s presence and love even in the worst of times (see the backstory to It Is Well). These songs very well support a concept called “theology of suffering.” That’s something worth looking up and integrating into your life, if you’ve never heard of or studied it before.

The Belonging Co has written some wonderful songs, and those songs have been a great benefit to the Church. But when it comes to the song “Mighty Name of Jesus,” we can do better.

Let’s do better.