Sarah Mac

I know that I talk a lot about running but i can’t help it…there is so much in the physical aspects of running that correlate with the spiritual life. So. Let’s talk about conditioning. I’ll admit, I have a body that was made for long distance running. I have legs that go along with my 5′ 10″ height comprised of long lean muscles. I think that if I took 6 months off of running I could still head out my door and run 4 or 5 miles without having any training. Now I’m not saying it wouldn’t be hard to do but I think I would be able to do it because I have conditioned my body to this type of physical activity. My husband who was an avid surfer from the time he was very young till he moved to Nashville in his early 20′s has also conditioned his body to the rigorous task that surfing is. Give me a street and some tennis shoes any day but please don’t ask me to do any surfing. The paddling out is enough to make me want to hyperventilate, but, for my husband it is easy. I know there was a time he went years without surfing and then I watched him grab his board and head out and smoothly catch wave after wave. After hours and hours spent in the water over the course of his life he has conditioned himself to do something without even having to think very hard about it.

So, where am I going with this? What is the church conditioning people to believe that worship is? How is it helping/hurting them in making worship a real part of their lives?

For 1. I think that many people think of worship music as something that is sung at church on Sundays only. Come Monday morning they are back to the “real” music. You know, a little Beyonce, One Republic, Taylor Swift, Black Eyed Peas, etc. Unfortunately, most of that music does have better beats, recording, production, etc. to hook a listener than most Christian music period. Because of this the worship team should strive for excellence. Musicians, be great at your instrument. Singers, develop the best voice you can. Songwriters, craft your songs without praise phrase and trite-ness. A. W. Tozer says,”We can only worship that which fascinates us.” The worship team should lead with hearts that are fascinated by the Father.

2. Churches need to be careful where they place the worship music portion of the service. If the worship music portion of the service starts before the service and when people are walking in the entire time or at the end of the service after the congregation has been dismissed then the people are being conditioned to think of worship music as walk in and walk out music. Obviously walk in and walk out music is not going to be the music that changes peoples lives.

3. I am an avid believer that the church should remove as many distractions as possible during the church service. For instance, dimming the lights during the music portion of the service, is like turning down the radio when you are driving somewhere following directions. Without the distraction of watching people walk in late to the service, women rummaging through their purses, people deciding to stand or sit, or wondering if you are being watched, the main congregation would be able to worship focused and uninhibited.

With a church service that puts a strong emphasis on the importance of worship (in all the forms, music, offering, studying) the people will inevitably begin to be conditioned in a worshipping lifestyle. Perhaps even when the storms blow and bend the congregation they will be able to continue in their worship without having to think about it because they have conditioned their lives to be lives of worship.

I have fond memories of being a child and running around outside with my siblings. I can remember hunting down huge toad frogs and making houses out of sticks to keep them in with my older brother, playing G.I Joes/Barbies in the mud puddles around our house after it rained, letting the neighbors calves lick my hand with their sandpaper like tongues, and quietly watching our outdoor mama cat having kittens. I remember especially loving the time we lived by a dairy farm. I was 4 years old and remember someone taking me to feed the chickens and cows. Each memory seems filled with sunny days and time spent on breezy porches. One day I clearly remember my mom calling me on the back porch and seeing her holding a baby deer, otherwise known as a fawn. My mother had it laying on her lap and had gotten a bottle with milk. She let me hold the bottle while the little fawn gulped down the milk and we just talked. What a fantastic moment. A little while back I was telling my husband about this memory and he just laughed at me and implied I was crazy. He said there is no way you feed a baby deer with a bottle. I quickly dialed up my mom and was ready for her to jump to my defense when I listened in shock as she told me we hadn’t feed a baby deer, ever. We had fed a baby kitten once when I was young, she said, and that was probably the memory I had but it was just a bit jumbled. I couldn’t believe it! What in the world? Why did I so clearly remember the little fawn and it’s white spots? Weird, weird, weird.

I have since come to the conclusion that my memory is faulty. I had changed my memory into something I wanted it to be instead of what was actual and real. No matter how convinced I might be that I have all of the facts I am always reminding myself of that baby deer/kitten. I grew up in the church and have heard sermons almost every sunday since I was born, I have read the bible cover to cover multiple times, I have taken various biblical college courses, and spent hours in my own private bible studying but I need to remember that my memory is faulty. Every day I need to be spending time in the word even once again pouring over those scriptures I have memorized. This way I know I won’t have as much of a chance of letting my memory of the word be faulty or shifted into saying what I want them to say but I will constantly be refreshing my memory with the truth that is life.

Joshua 1:8
8 This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.

Psalm 119:10-11
10 I have tried hard to find you—
don’t let me wander from your commands.
11 I have hidden your word in my heart,
that I might not sin against you.

This last Christmas, 2009, I was asked to speak and sing at Horizon Christian Fellowship’s Women’s Tea. I have lead worship and done special music for many women’s teas but I have never been the speaker before. This was something I was extremely nervous about. I spent months preparing and deciding what I felt like I was supposed to speak on and finally decided that I should tell my testimony. Now I know what you may be thinking…her testimony? That sounds pretty normal and shouldn’t be too hard. Well, I’m not talking about my “I got saved when I was 9 years old,” testimony or my “I backslid in high school and came back to the Lord during my senior year,” testimony. I’m talking about the “here is what God has done in my life recently. Here is my current testimony.” Imagine if King David had gotten stuck on his battle with Goliath. Obviously that was a huge moment in his life and an amazing testimony to what God had done but it wasn’t going to stop there. He would grow, rise, fall and see God work and do huge things throughout his life so his testimony would also grow and change and show an active current God. This is what I wanted to do. I wanted to show an active, current, present God in my life. Since my life is often told in song I decided to share the stories of the past few years up till the present that lead to the writing of a few of my songs. I told of the trials and the joys, the pain and the smiles and I sang the songs that I wrote to reflect that. As I prepared for this event I knew that I needed one more song. Not because I was worried about filling up a certain time slot but because I knew there was something more I needed to say. I thought, who am I trying to reach out to? what woman will be coming that night and what are the words she will need to hear me sing? What words will she need to sing? These are the women I wrote my song for:

1. The woman who has trials going on in her life that are huge and overwhelming. They are things that she can’t wrap her brain around to see how to function with something like it going on. They are the things that make everything else look dull and minimal in comparison. These may be things that she shares with the people around her or these may be things that are kept as secrets and she feels she is unable to share with anyone.

2. The woman who fears that her life/her problems don’t matter to the Lord. She thinks she is unimportant to Him therefore she needs to take care of herself and her problems on her own. I read a quote one time that talks about how oftentimes we believe that God inhabited the past and He inhabits the future but we currently live in a sort of temporary atheism where we are alone. This woman is living in a world where she is alone.

3. The woman who has never trusted anything to the Lord including her own life. She who is holding on to her life as if she can possibly change the inevitable outcome of death that every person will face. She is the woman who refuses to think about the fact that one day her body will be finished and she will ignore it because she is afraid of what a life of belief in God might be.

My message that night spoke on the fact that a life entrusted wholly to the Lord is a life of the same trials, the same heartache, the same stresses, the same storms that everyone experiences BUT the difference will be that your life will inhabit a God who heals, who comforts, who brings peace and hope and fulfillment through Him among many other things. We have a refuge and a hope in Jesus. We can come and crumple at his feet laying every burden down before Him and He is faithful to carry those burdens for us. He is a God that we can hide in when the storms are blowing out of control and we don’t have to go looking for Him for help. He is right here, right now.

It is with all of this in mind that I wrote my song “Hiding Place.” I am attaching a video of me singing it at Horizon in San Diego a couple of days ago and the lyrics are below. For more thoughts like these you can also read my blog called “He Makes All Things Right” at http://wp.me/pNs7T-1y.

Hiding Place

Verse 1:
There in the dark you see me
Hidden from all
You say my name
You know and You see
How I have cried and crumpled
There at Your feet
To soak You in
Where You surround me

Pre-Chorus:
I’ll, I’ll close my eyes to things they are pulling, pulling on me
and then, then I’ll find breath the breath and I’ll say

Chorus:
You are my hiding place

Verse 2:
Close with Your arms around me
Though it is dark
I know You’re near
Your thoughts are of me
Words from my heart have found their way to Your mouth
I know you sing
You’re prayers are for me

Verse 3:
There in the dark you see me
Hidden from all
You say my name
You know and You see

A couple of days ago my husband Jonny and I were driving near our house and saw a man mowing his yard. The scene was so crazy I almost drove off the road watching him. Now let me describe the scene.

Small older man with small older looking push lawnmower.
Yard that was about the size of a tennis court.
Grass that was about 2 feet tall.

Since the man’s lawn mower was not a tractor or even riding lawn mower he was just ramming the lawn mower into the grass over and over in an attempt to make the grass lay over enough so that the blades of the mower would have a chance to do their chopping. In the 15 seconds it took us to drive by I don’t think the man made an inch of progress but you could clearly see that he had already made three lanes of cutting around the outskirts of the yard. I began to wonder how long he had been mowing. Surely he had been out there for hours. What a daunting task! I’m not sure that I would have stuck with it. I think I would have found a way to live jungle style or even a moved on to a new house with the grass already cut. About 2 and a half hours later it was dark and Jonny and I drove back by the house and saw the yard was half done. The man had diligently labored for hours, probably till the sun went down and all that was finished was half. I imagined the soreness that he would be feeling the next day and the dread of knowing there would be many more hours in the sun working on the second half of the yard but by the third day he would be able to wake and see it was done.

Well, as usual, my head started swimming with the spiritual. How many times have I known people who have thought their lives were too messed up for the Lord to save them or for them to turn it around. I know people who have made huge lying messes and thought the only way out was even more lying. I know that when I go to the doctor with a sickness that the antibiotics don’t fix all the symptoms and sickness right away but I take them anyway knowing that eventually I will be well. So I am thinking of this man and his way too tall grass and reminding myself that it is never too late to repent. It is never too late to be saved. It is never too late to turn our faces once again to our Savior and let Him take the time to reshape our lives into something that glorifies Him. It will take time but we can know that eventually we will be well and we can wake and see that His work is done.

Ever have one of those days where you aren’t feeling very smart? I’m one of those people who loves to spend time studying, researching, investigating and learning. I love to gather up information and horde it away like a pack rat in hopes that someday in the future I might need it. I’ll admit I tend to be one of those obnoxious people that always has some tidbit of random information on just about any subject and I really do try to keep all those tidbits to myself but they are just sitting there in my brain waiting to be useful. I read and read and gather and gather but lately I feel like I have been hitting an input wall. I am taking things in but nothing is lighting that spark that sets my mind on fire with revelation so that it can come back out making any sense. So I am on the hunt for inspiration. I’m on the prowl for my brain to sift through all those pages of info it has digested and send to the surface something that will set me to thinking and even possibly bring about a song….come on brain!

Now if you have something fantastic that you want to blow my mind with please comment it. I’ll be waiting…

Are there any classical music lovers out there? I have loved classical music for a very long time and I have been reflecting on it a lot as of late in comparison with worship music. I recently read in Worship Leader Magazine that Johann Sebastian Bach wrote 7 new worship songs each week for his church’s services. He also used biblical study and a passion for theological grounding for the foundation of these songs. Now although Bach wrote many choral pieces some of his most popular pieces were written for instruments only and no vocals. This obviously means no lyrics. Just a little listen to his “Partita for Solo Violin No. 3 in E Major” is enough to make me giddy. It moves me to worship. Apparently famous composer Charles Gounod (well known for his operas “Faust” and “Romeo et Juliette”) was led to worship as well by Bach’s music. Gounod listened to Bach’s “Prelude 1 from The Well-Tempered Clavier Book 1″ and ended up writing the melody and lyrics to what would become Ave Maria. The lyrics at one of the biggest moments of the song are:

“Maria mother of Jesus,
Infant Redeemer
Born to save us from our sins and all our heavy woes
Amen!”

Gounod felt the very same sense of awe and worship from just Bach’s piano piece.

So how does this connect with today? How should christian songwriters incorporate this into their songwriting today? Don’t stop at just the lyrics. Make the music worshipful. Could I take the lyrics out of some of todays biggest worship songs and still have the same response from just the band playing the music on stage? If Hillsong United showed up at church on sunday morning and played “Tear Down the Walls” from their “Across the Earth” cd without singing a single lyric, I believe that the church would worship. The music is shouting along with the lyrics. The drummer, guitarist, bassist are all worshipping with their instruments and playing the parts that are saying

“Your name is Glorious! Glorious!
Your love is changing us, calling us
To worship in spirit and in truth,
As all creation returns to You!”

Ahhhhh. Thank you musicians. Thank you songwriters and producers who see the whole package. Thank you for acknowledging Psalm 150:

Psalm 150

1 Praise the LORD.
Praise God in his sanctuary;
praise him in his mighty heavens.

2 Praise him for his acts of power;
praise him for his surpassing greatness.

3 Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet,
praise him with the harp and lyre,

4 praise him with tambourine and dancing,
praise him with the strings and flute,

5 praise him with the clash of cymbals,
praise him with resounding cymbals.

6 Let everything that has breath praise the LORD.
Praise the LORD.

I’ve been thinking about the moon lately and have decided that I want to be like it. The moon’s sole identity revolves around its reflection of the sun and how much of the sun it is reflecting. The moon is small in comparison with the earth and sun, it is non descript in and of itself, and no one would have thoughts of it or about it if it didn’t reflect the sun. I want to be like that. I want to be a person who remembers daily that my life will be most appreciated, remembered, beneficial, joyous, worth while, and productive if I make sure that I am in a place where I can fully reflect the glory of the Lord.

Yesterday my husband and I made a last minute trip up to the mountains. There is a southern California ski resort and nearby towns about an hour and 45 minutes from where we live and we decided lets do it! San Diego has rain by way of a season and I was excited by the thought of seeing snow, pine trees, feeling brisk cool dry mountain air, and the quiet that comes with being surround by more trees than people and cars. On the way my husband and I thought, out loud, about worship and music and songs. We compared the music we love to classical music from the past and noticed how much they resemble in energy and passion but one is written with lyrics and the other wasn’t. We discussed our desire to see more and more people become worshippers. Not just in song, or instrument but in their lives. We want to see growth and maturity in our own lives as God adorers/worshippers and would hope that we could see it in those who have been glassy-eyed, complacent, cookie cutter, and robotic in their relationship with our living, active, real, hands-on, involved God.

While at breakfast this morning, I was staring out the window and thinking about all of the trees that had been killed in this mountain town by a beetle. These beetles are a normal part of the mountains ecosystem but due to climate changes in the area the beetles grew in population and overcame many of the trees. As I looked out the window I saw what looked like one tree growing out from the inside of another tree or i thought it looked like one tree putting on the coat/bark of another tree. I remember from a trip to the sequoia trees up north that trees will grow this “overcoat” of bark on top of its old wounded bark that was burnt by fire. This is one of the reasons that the sequoias get so huge. I would imagine that this tree was doing something similar but because of the damage from the beetles instead of fire. So what kind of trees escaped the wrath of the overpopulated beetle, I pondered with my husband this morning? The trees who survived are the trees that also managed to escape the drought in the area. The trees who had too few and too shallow of a root system couldn’t withstand the onslaught of the bug. They are now being chopped down to make room for new trees to grow, to start fresh. The trees whose roots go deep and are vast maintained the water needed to outlast the beetle and are still standing. They are now growing a new coat of protection against any future beetle, fire or storm. This is my prayer. Lord, let my roots grow deeply in your word, let them stretch out over a vast expanse in search of more of You. Let me learn from the unexpected trials in life and let them cause me to grow stronger and stronger. I want to be like the blessed man in Psalm 1:

1 Blessed is the man
Who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly,
Nor stands in the path of sinners,
Nor sits in the seat of the scornful;
2 But his delight is in the law of the LORD,
And in His law he meditates day and night.
3 He shall be like a tree
Planted by the rivers of water,
That brings forth its fruit in its season,
Whose leaf also shall not wither;
And whatever he does shall prosper.

4 The ungodly are not so,
But are like the chaff which the wind drives away.
5 Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment,
Nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.

6 For the LORD knows the way of the righteous,
But the way of the ungodly shall perish.