Click here to see a video of Chris Tomlin and Matt Redman telling the story behind this song.
When Heaven Came Down (Logan Walter)
I finally put the chords and lyrics to this song on YouTube. Click here to learn how to play it!
In Christ Alone (Keith Getty and Stuart Townend)
Click Here to read an interview with Keith Getty, in which he discusses the hard work of avoiding clichés in worship songwriting and explains how his melodies are influenced by Irish folk music
Holy Holy Holy (Words: Reginald Heber, Music: John B. Dykes)
Two centuries ago, most churches sang psalms straight from scripture with no two people in the room singing the same melody. According to most reports, congregational worship music across the world was uninspired and chaotic. Reginald Heber wrote this beautiful song to help his congregation sing passionately to their maker. Click here to read the entire hymn story
Share (Logan Walter)
We have four core values at The Heights: Worship, Grow, Serve, Share. In 2008-2009, we put a special emphasis on Serve, and I wrote "Call to Action" for our push to "not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth" (1 John 3:18). In 2010-2011, we are focussing on Share, and the church has been charged with the call to engage in spiritual conversations with strangers at least once per week. This may sound simple, but how often do we engage strangers in any kind of conversation whatsoever? The first week, I shared with my TV repairman, Julio. The second week, a pipe conveniently broke in our house, giving me the opportunity to share my faith with the plumber, Jesus. Ironically, he was not a church goer. The third week, I found myself in a predicament. We were in Houston, playing for a week long event at an all-Christian, conservative private school. Everyone was a Christian. No one was a stranger. It was hopeless. But on the last night of the event, the band decided to take a trip to Barnes & Noble, where I always hang out in the Christian Literature section. Come to think of it, the bible section probably wasn't the best place to look for a lost soul, but God made it happen.
The following is a summary of an hour long conversation I had with an Iranian man, named Hamed, who spotted me reading a Bible in B&N:
Hamed: "Are you Christian?"
Me: "Yes, are you?"
Hamed: "No."
Me (silent prayer): Thank You, Jesus (the carpenter)
Hamed: "My wife is a Christian. My kids go to Christian church. But I am Baha'i. Are you familiar with Baha'i?"
Me: "No, are you?"
Hamed: "Yes. I am Baha'i."
Me: "Ah yes."
Hamed: "I believe there are many paths to God. The Baha'i embrace all major world religions as Truth." (this was actually a twenty minute explanation. I just listened and learned and waited to ask the only question on my mind.)
Me: "Who do you say Jesus is?"
Hamed: "Oh, I love Jesus. Jesus is my prophet, Jesus is my lord."
Me: "What do you mean when you say that Jesus is your lord?"
Hamed: "Jesus is my lord, Budah is my lord, Mohammed is my lord. I have many lords."
Me: "But Christians believe that Jesus is God."
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Up to this point, Hamed had been talking 100 miles per hour with 100% conviction and an air of certainty about everything he was saying. But nobody had ever told him that Jesus is God. His wife claims to be a "Christian." His kids attend church on Sunday mornings. He, himself, attends every Christmas and Easter service with his family, yet the Divinity of Christ was a completely foreign concept to him.
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Hamed: (confused) "What do you mean 'Jesus is God'?"
Me: "I mean that Jesus was both fully man and fully God. If I had a Bible with me, I could show you several passages that point straight to Christ's divinity."
Hamed: "There's like a hundred Bibles right behind you."
Me: "Ah yes."
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I then pointed Hamed to John 1:1-14, which is the passage Neil McClendon will be preaching from in his sermon this Sunday at The Heights.
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Me: "See here it says 'in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God,' and then in verse 14 it says 'the Word became flesh," that's talking about Jesus. Jesus was the Word, and the Word was God. Then if you flip over a few pages to chapter 8, Jesus says in verse 58, 'before Abraham was, I AM.' And everybody in the crowd would've known that 'I AM' was the name God gave to Himself in the Old Testament. When Jesus says "I AM," He is claiming to be God.
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Hamed and I talked for another twenty minutes, then I went to his house and met his Christian wife, who was verbally abusive to their children (Hamed was clearly the more Christ-like parent). Hamed gave me several Baha'i books and wrote down my recommendations, before I said goodbye. And though he didn't convert to Christianity that night, a seed of truth was planted. That's what happens when we share our faith with others. We become seed planters. And, eventually, many of these seeds will grow and bear fruit. So "let us not grow weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up." We all have "seen His glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of Grace and Truth" (John 1:14). So let us be witnesses to what we have seen. Let us be witnesses to the light (John 1:8).
Logan,
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing the inspiration behind this song! I can't wait to hear it at church this morning. You are truly an inspiration and God is using your stories to encourage me, and hundreds of others, I know. I've never felt comfortable initiating those conversations. I'll talk for hours if someone asks, but starting the conversation is very hard for me. I love that you even went to their house - totally something that Jesus would have done...and did do! But something that most of us would avoid out of fear of the unknown or even safety. God is using you! Not only to plant seeds in the unbelievers, but to plant courage in those of us that believe, but let our flesh get in the way of sharing.
Blessings!
Stacy Baugh
Praise God
ReplyDeleteHello Logan,
ReplyDeleteif you are interested to learn about the views of the Baha'i Faith towards the station of prophets in relation to God, please take a look at this.
Put concisely, using the analogy of a mirror and the sun, prophets are said to be perfect reflections of the essence of God. Some may point to the image, light, and heat of the sun being reflected by a mirror and say, "that is the sun" and others may point to the sun itself and say "that is the sun".
They are both right in their own way. This analogy provides a resolution of the seeming paradox of prophets: being both mere men and divine. Baha'is therefore normally refer to these divine teachers as 'manifestations of God'.
Some Christians believe as you do that Christ was God incarnate. This ideology has its origin in the 4th century at the first Council of Nicea. This creed was formulated as a response towards 'heretical' views held by other Christians at the time (views which would perhaps be surprising to a 'modern' Christian - that there were many Gods, that the true God was not the creator and that Jesus was not God's son, etc.).
The Nicene creed attempts to circumvent both adoptionist and docetist ideology by accepting both to be true.
Forgive me the digression. I find the history of the Bible; how it was written, who wrote it, revised it, edited it, altered it, excised it, etc. simply fascinating.
There are many references to Christ within Baha'i writings, here is one:
"Know thou that when the Son of Man yielded up His breath to God, the whole creation wept with a great weeping. By sacrificing Himself, however, a fresh capacity was infused into all created things. Its evidences, as witnessed in all the peoples of the earth, are now manifest before thee. The deepest wisdom which the sages have uttered, the profoundest learning which any mind hath unfolded, the arts which the ablest hands have produced, the influence exerted by the most potent of rulers, are but manifestations of the quickening power released by His transcendent, His all-pervasive and resplendent Spirit.
We testify that when He came into the world, He shed the splendor of His glory upon all created things. Through Him the leper recovered from the leprosy of perversity and ignorance. Through Him the unchaste and wayward were healed. Through His power, born of Almighty God, the eyes of the blind were opened and the soul of the sinner sanctified.
Leprosy may be interpreted as any veil that interveneth between man and the recognition of the Lord, his God. Whoso alloweth himself to be shut out from Him is indeed a leper, who shall not be remembered in the Kingdom of God, the Mighty, the All-Praised. We bear witness that through the power of the Word of God every leper was cleansed, every sickness was healed, every human infirmity was banished. He it is Who purified the world. Blessed is the man who, with a face beaming with light, hath turned towards Him."
- Baha'u'llah