Category: What I’m Learning Page 1 of 3

“One of the house church leaders actually asked me, ‘Do you know what prison is for us? It is how we get our theological education. Prison in China is for us like seminary is for training church leaders in your country.’” (From The Insanity of God by Nik Ripken)

Sometimes I wonder how persecuted Christians would feel about some of the stuff we non-persecuted folks say and sing and do.

This song came on the radio:

So I throw up my hands
And praise You again and again
‘Cause all that I have is a hallelujah
And I know it’s not much
But I’ve nothing else fit for a King
Except for a heart singing hallelujah
I’ve got one response
I’ve got just one move
With my arms stretched wide
I will worship You

I wondered what my brothers and sisters around the world would think about this song when they’ve lost jobs and gone to prison and faced threats and harassment and sometimes even death because they’ve chosen to follow Jesus. I don’t know if they would agree that all we can give to our King is our outstretched arms and singing voices.

I want to be careful in sharing my thoughts on this song. There is indeed nothing we can offer God to repay Him for our salvation. It’s a gift that cost Him everything and us nothing, and our response should be a profound and reverent sense of gratitude and awe. We are unworthy. And in moments when we grasp the depth and width of that gift, worship should be spontaneous. Which is, I assume, what this song reflects and why it resonates with so many people.

But my concern is with the narrow definition of worship that’s implied. And it’s not just this song: guys who lead the singing in our churches are called “worship” pastors, and the woman on Christian radio demands “WORSHIP NOW” and then plays a song. I wonder when it happened in our Christian culture that we began to equate worship with music.

We can worship through music, of course – it’s one of my favorite things to do. But when I hear a song on repeat that tells me that the best I can offer the king of the universe is a hallelujah and outstretched hands and singing loudly (after all, you’ve got a lion inside of those lungs!), I ask myself if we’re missing something. Is this all that worship is?

Jesus told his followers that they would be hated because of him and that obeying him may mean that they leave their families and homes. He said they would be ostracized and insulted and that anyone who wants to follow him must deny himself, pick up his cross, and follow him.

Following Jesus means our lives mirror his. And that means willingly embracing – even walking into – unselfishness, humiliation, sacrifice, and pain. Yes, resurrection is coming – that’s our daily hope – but may we never fail to remember that the cost of following Jesus is so much more than singing and lifting our hands.

When we tell ourselves that worship looks only like singing, then it’s easy to ignore that God made it clear that worship looks like:

Choosing integrity over a job promotion
Fighting for sexual purity
Being generous until it hurts
Showing kindness to a nasty person
Finally forgiving
Sacrificing free time to volunteer
Caring for someone who will never reciprocate
Texting a neighbor
Doing a job to the best of our ability
Creating beautiful things: books, gardens, spreadsheets, cakes…and songs, of course
Starting a Bible study
Opening a home to visitors
Putting down the phone or changing the channel
Learning a language in order to make a friend
Risking humiliation to have a spiritual conversation
Intentionally embracing the messiness of community
Uprooting for a workplace, neighborhood, or country that needs the gospel
Praying for someone right on the spot

Every day, every decision, every action, gives us a chance to worship God. Music is a powerful tool for reminding us who we are living for, why we chose Him, and why He’s worth it. But our response to the King who gave us everything should never just be a song; it should be a willingness to lay down our lives. Just ask the Christians in China.

~Image by StockSnap from Pixabay

Maybe Christmas Isn’t Supposed To Be About Joy

By Amy Medina

On December 10, 2024

In Eternity, What I'm Learning

I don’t know about you, but the older I get, the more I feel like I’m walking in darkness. People say the world is getting darker, but when I contemplate all the horrors of the past that I have not experienced (World Wars, the Great Depression, a pre-antibiotic or anesthesia world), I will venture to guess that an intensifying darkness is only my perception. The world has always been dark. And since I had an abuse-free childhood, it makes sense that with age and wisdom comes a deepening understanding of the depth of the evil that has always shadowed the earth. Shadows my own heart.

Of course, I love more people more intensely than I used to, and thus, the more burdens I carry. I keep thinking that once my children are healthy, thriving, and successfully launched into the world, some burdens will be relieved. Until that is, I hear folks in the season above me praying for their grandchildren. Even Paul, who experienced shipwrecks and floggings, starvation and prison, lists his concern for those he loved and invested in as perhaps the heaviest burden of all (II Cor. 11:27-28).

It’s too bad that so often, the emphasis at Christmas is on all those warm fuzzy feelings that go along with family and parties and merry-making. We imagine that our lives in December should look like one big Norman Rockwell painting or Hallmark movie; when it doesn’t, those images mock us. How dare they look so happy when the world is so heavy? Maybe I’m just not in the Christmas spirit this year, we think.

How Quickly We Forget

By Amy Medina

On April 18, 2024

In What I'm Learning

For the past few years, my health hasn’t been great. I’ve had a lot of pain and not a lot of energy, a lot of the time. Sometimes it felt like my legs had 50-pound weights on them, walking up the stairs. I often had to consciously push myself to do what I needed to do.

Then, in December, I received surgery that made all this go away. I’ve felt back to my old self again. I’ve felt years younger.

But what astonishes me is how quickly I have forgotten this. There are days when not one memory of how I used to feel crosses my mind. I forget to be grateful that my health issues had a solution, unlike so many who don’t. I forget to be grateful that I have health at all, unlike some who have never had it.

This is not the only thing I have forgotten.

The World Was Not Worthy of Them

By Amy Medina

On January 20, 2024

In Living Like a Missionary, What I'm Learning

When I published my article yesterday (Luxury Cars and Walking Dusty Roads), I shared it with my friend Emmanuel, on whom that post was based (and the others on his ministry team).

This was his response (with minor grammatical edits):

Thank you for sharing this with me, sister. It’s really encouraging to hear this. When I was thinking about what you wrote, I realized that it’s easy to forget the purpose of the Gospel when we’re trying to live an amazing life in the fallen world (which it seems impossible to live an amazing life in this broken world).

One of my favorite Bible verses is Philippians 4:12. The Apostle Paul says, “I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.”

Too much stuff and all kinds of luxuries in life oftentimes leads to more discontent rather than contentment and when this happens is when we forget the purpose of the Gospel.”

I read this and sat speechless for several moments, tears in my eyes. How do I, as a privileged American, comprehend such humble faith, such focused vision? Gil may have been his teacher at the Bible school for a few years, but now, Emmanuel is truly our teacher.

I was so moved by his response that I asked Emmanuel’s permission to share both his name and what he wrote, and he agreed.

Join me in praying for Emmanuel’s ministry (called Stawi Ministries), and if you would like to make a financial gift towards his team’s ministry to Tanzanian public schools and prisons, please write to me at contactamy@amy-medina.com, and I’ll let you know donor options. The team could use funds for transportation, but also the gospel literature that they distribute.

“All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them….the world was not worthy of them.” (Hebrews 11)

photos from Reach Tanzania Bible School, circa 2018

Way More Than a Blip

By Amy Medina

On October 30, 2023

In What I'm Learning

Last week, I noticed a verse I underlined 25 years ago – Psalm 139:10. Next to it, I had written “FCC membership 9/97.”

I paused for a few minutes and sat in that memory.

It was my senior year at college, my second year away from home, and Faith Community Church (FCC) quickly became my community. The Sunday night college group at Lance and Suzanne’s became my second home, and I spent my Wednesday nights as an Awana leader for 5th grade girls.

It was Awana that led to my “crisis.” About a year after I started attending FCC, the elders decided that anyone who volunteered in the children’s ministry needed to be a member of the church. This made sense, of course – goodness knows, children’s workers need to be kept accountable, and FCC was ahead of its time.

I couldn’t imagine my life without children’s ministry, especially Awana, as I had been a leader since 8th grade. But in my 20-year-old mind, becoming a member of FCC was out of the question. I felt an unswerving loyalty to the church I had grown up in in San Jose, and I planned to move back there as soon as I had my teaching credential the following year. Attending FCC was just a blip in the history of my life, so how could I take the weighty step of becoming a member?

This felt like a huge dilemma, so much so that I resonated with a Scripture passage about God’s presence in making my bed in the depths. So much of a quandary that I did the very scary and intimidating thing of scheduling a meeting with the children’s pastor. Pastor Jeff was the complete opposite of scary and intimidating, but still – doing a grown-up thing is terrifying when you are 20.

Category: What I’m Learning Page 1 of 3

WORSHIP NOW and other thoughts on whether God cares how loud I sing

Maybe Christmas Isn’t Supposed To Be About Joy

How Quickly We Forget

The World Was Not Worthy of Them

Way More Than a Blip