So I'll stand with arms high
and heart abandoned
In awe of the One
who gave it all
And I'll stand
My soul, Lord, to You surrendered
All I am is Yours
Song lyrics always make me think. It doesn't matter what the song is; if there's something even remotely profound in it, I'll think about it. Sometimes for days.
The song above is called "The Stand". I first heard this song during a worship night at a local church when I was in the 9th grade. It was one of those nights when everyone seemed really into it. I had never heard this song before, and as soon as the bridge (the above lyrics) came, almost all the hands in the auditorium went out or up in a worshipful stance. I was confused. Were people raising their hands because the song said to? I had grown up in a fairly conservative Mennonite church in Steinbach, so I hadn't really seen this before.
Every time I hear this song now, I think about it. I used to think about why people would raise their hands during worship, but I don't anymore because I've been exposed to some less conservative and more charismatic Christians. But I think about what the words actually mean when I sing them.
And let me tell you... I believe we're singing something pretty powerful.
I think the words that have always stuck out the most to me are the words heart abandoned. What does it mean to abandon our hearts? Our hearts hold pretty much everything about us: our emotions, our fears, our loves, our hates, our pride, and I think our hearts even hold our opinions. And let's not forget that our hearts physically hold our whole life. If our hearts don't work, we don't work.
So what does it mean to abandon our hearts? I think it can be summed up in this verse: Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ. (Philippians 3:8) I've talked about this verse so much before. I think the reason I keep coming back to it is because it's so very important and I fail at this the most.
I think that abandoning our hearts means is that we need to "count everything as loss". We need to give stuff up. People don't like hearing that. Heck, I don't like hearing that, but it's true. This doesn't mean that we should go and sell everything we own and live on the streets. It doesn't. It means we need to let go of our emotions, our fears, our loves, our hates, our pride, our opinions, and our very life. Letting go doesn't mean getting rid of, it means holding all these things very loosely. You never know when God is going to ask you to let go of one of those things completely. Maybe you're thinking: God wouldn't ever ask me to let go of my very life, would He? I get the Voice of the Martyrs updates every month in the mail, and after reading those, I beg to differ. It's amazing how many people around the world have completely let go of their own life and put it completely in God's hands, for the sake of spreading the gospel.
Ultimately, I think that abandoning our hearts means that we should never choose our own heart's desires above His heart's desires. I have to admit that I struggle with this all the time. I've especially been struggling with this lately because of everything that's been going on in my hometown. I confess that often one of my heart's desires is to shove Jesus down people's throats. The desire to share Jesus with other people comes from a good place, but my heart's motive behind it: not good. What I've been learning lately is to step back in these situations and ask myself: when I'm sharing Jesus with this person, is it coming out of judgment or is it coming out of love? Judging other people and their lifestyles should not even be an option on our list of ways to intereact with them. When you're in a situation where you need to choose to either judge them or love them, you should always choose love. Seems rather obvious, huh? Seems rather easy, huh? Not always.
I remember something that I learned the very first day I was at Capernwray. Amazing how things come back to you. I learned about plumb lines. A plumb line is a string with a weight fastened to its end. When the string is placed beside a wall and the weight is allowed to hang freely, it will show whether or not the wall is perfectly vertical. It's the standard by which the wall is judged. Now according to God, the standard by which we are judged is Christ. Jesus Christ is our plumb line.When we judge other people... is the plumb line by which we judge them ourselves? Or is it Christ? I think a lot of the time it's ourselves. We think "oh, at least we're not as bad as them", right? But when Christ is the plumb line we hold up to everyone, we realize that everyone falls short of the standard. (Even the people we view as "super spiritual" people.) So who are we to judge anyway?
Thank God that Jesus is our advocate in heaven, eh? He paid the penalty of all our sins and shortcomings, then He gave us His life. Christ is still the standard by which we are judged, but the difference is, when judgment day comes and God looks at us, the brilliance of Christ in us will shine brighter than our sins. It's called imputation. Christ in you, the hope of glory.
Those are my musings for the day. More like week actually.
