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born again, Christian life, Christianity, death and rebirth, die to self, dying to self, forsaking, freedom, liberation, new creation, transformation, voice lesson
Death and rebirth – a precarious period
Amen, Amen I say unto you, He that hears my word, and faithes on Him that sent me, has everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation;
but is passed from death unto life.
My one and only voice teacher, Dr. Fred Schreiner, performed a work in me that I will always be thankful for. Certainly for what he taught me about singing, but that is not what I’ll always remember him for. He showed me a principle, without even trying, that I have seen repeated in Scripture, church history, and in my own experience that is of great value.
He took what was a very “turned out” singing mechanism and took it in the completely opposite direction. I mean the pendulum swung so far away from where I was until you could not even hear the old vestiges of where I was any more. Then, after he was certain the “old way” was dead, he began to move me back the other way. Until one day, I told him that we were almost back where we started. He said “Yes, but we had to make this journey to get you here. I couldn’t just move you a little bit in the other direction. I had to break down the old way of singing first, then bring you to where I wanted you to be in the first place. Which was quite close to where you were, but far away at the same time.”
He had to take me 180 degrees from where I was to move me 8 or 10 degrees. He knew the mind and ear and muscle memory have a very strong gravity that will resist small changes by pulling me back to what is comfortable. So in order to break free from that force that pulls me back (down) there has to be a much stronger force that provides the push out into new horizons.
When God places His finger on something and says ‘this must go’, then our hold on it must be released and we must die to it and forsake it. No turning back.
Now, we enter a very precarious period. We must take care with how we speak to others about this ‘thing’ at this point and for a long time thereafter. Because God may have an end in mind that we don’t understand yet. He may want to bring it back to life in a new way with new attitudes and new dimensions and proper perspective. Whereas before there was corruption and misunderstanding and wrong direction, He brings it back facing the right direction with attention on Him and not on the thing itself. It is a reborn thing not anything like it was before.
But if I have made that old thing (which may have been a good thing) the object of my polemic teaching, maybe even railing against it with vigor, it is going to be very hard for God to get me to agree to this rebirth. Maybe even impossible. And that would be tragic. For it could be that God’s whole plan was to make something right that was wrong, not to set it aside eternally.
Now I am cautious to even speak (much less write down) an idea such as this because it can make room for the twisted idea that the death and the forsaking of the thing is somehow a quasi-death or a pseudo-death. I see this in today’s gospel a lot: I’ll do a little dyin’ and a little forsakin’ over here so that I can get over there. This is completely wrong.
The forsaking must be to the uttermost with NO HOPE OF EVER RETURNING (or even a wish to: ahh, those leeks and onions we had in Egypt). It is a leaving (one-way ticket to who-knows-where) and a cleaving only to him. And if you have forsaken utterly, God will know it. And if it is His plan to bring it back, He will let you know. But you should not go around looking for it. Because that means you haven’t really forsaken anything.
Something has to die for us to be made right with God. And God dictates the terms and conditions. Thank God He sent His Son and His Son gave His life so that, once and for all, that price was paid. For the born-again experience to be known in our lives, something (someone) else has to die, too. No man can serve two masters. First, bind the strong man. Then you can spoil his goods. Sorry for the mixed metaphor.
Oh, that I might know Him in His death AND in His resurrection. Lord, deliver us from a religion that does not have as its aim to take a man and see him pass from death unto life. Save us from a Christianity without metanoia, a Christianity without a complete change of mind and heart. Revive in us a religion that raises the dead, that injects and infects a man with God’s new life, that sparks a fire that spreads to all who come near, that rejects selfishness because it is replaced with an expusive, explosive, incendiary affection towards God.
Gospelier 