Voices In My Head Podcast Episode #240 with Lisa Michaels

Hey, all of you out there listening to Voices in My Head. As always, I am your host, Rick Lee James, and I wanted to take a moment before we started to give a quick preface to this podcast. This is actually an episode that is kind of a crossover because I was a guest on the great podcast Flip-Flops, Glitter, and Theology hosted by my friend Lisa Michaels. Lisa has been on this show in the past, and she invited me to be her guest on her show in October of 2017. I asked her if I could use that episode to play on my show down the road a little bit after hers had released, because I really feel like it is one of the best conversations I have ever recorded on the topic of worship. And I, I think you're going to enjoy what we talked about that day. It was really something special, and it was just great to sit down and talk with Lisa. And I appreciate her allowing me to use the audio from her podcast on my show. Again, if you want to check out her podcast, it's flipflopsglitterandtheology.podbean.com. So I encourage you to check it out and check out some of the other wonderful episodes that she has. She has a great heart for worship, and I think you're gonna really enjoy the conversation that we had today. It's coming at it maybe from a different angle than you're used to when you're hearing about worship, and maybe not, maybe it's something that you're used to, but I think you're really gonna enjoy our interaction. And thank you for listening to Voices in My Head, and now we will proceed into the podcast. God bless you guys, and thank you for listening. Have you ever thought to yourself, man, I'd like to host my own podcast? Well, guess what? You can go to podbean.com/voices and get everything you need to create, manage, and promote your podcast. I use Podbean every week for Voices in My Head. There's easy uploading and publishing tools, stunning templates, custom domains, social and promotional tools, an embeddable podcast player, monetization tools, and more. It is your all-in-one podcasting solution. With Podbean, you can create professional podcasts in minutes without any programming knowledge. Best of all, everything is mobile-ready right from the start. So go to podbean.com/voices, and when you sign up, use the code "voices" and you'll get a sizable discount. Podbean, for your home podcasting. Thank you for listening to Voices in My Head. Welcome to Voices in My Head, the official podcast of me, Rick Lee James. I'm a recording artist, a singer-songwriter, an author, a worship leader, and an ordained minister in the Church of the Nazarene. The Voices in My Head podcast is your source for discussions on music, literature, movies, pop culture, theology, and more. Now sit back, relax, and listen to the latest episode of the Voices in My Head podcast. And don't forget to let the voices voices in your head be heard by following me on Twitter @RickLeeJames and sharing your thoughts about today's show.

Hi friends, I'm Elle Michaels, your host of Flip-Flops, Glitter, and Theology, the podcast. Today I am joined by Rick Lee James. Rick is a worship leader, singer, and songwriter, Speaker, author, and podcast host with over 2 decades of experience in ministry. Over the years, Rick has used music to share the gospel in numerous venues, from the National Worship Leader Conference to the world-famous Ryman Auditorium. As host of the podcast Voices in My Head, Rick has worked with some of the best and brightest authors, pastors, musicians, and people of interest in pop culture to Today. In 2013, Rick released his first live album of original songs called Basement Psalms Live. The following year, Rick authored and released the book Out of the Depths: A Songwriter's Journey Through the Psalms. The book has since been used as a textbook by National Praise and Worship Institute's Psalm Survey Course at Trebekah Nazarene University. Rick has written for Worship Leader Magazine, Holiness Today, The Table, WorshipLife.com, and was a contributing writer for the book Renovating Holiness: An Exploration of Holiness Through the Eyes of Xer and Millennial Leaders in the Church of the Nazarene. Rick's album Hymns, Prayers, and Invitations, published through Lifeway Worship, has garnered critical praise and features in CCMmagazine.com, CCLI.com, Worship Leader Magazine, and more, receiving national radio play from syndicated shows including Under the Radar and Things Not Seen. Rick, welcome to Flip-Flop Slitter and Theology.

Thank you so much. Wow, that's an impressive bio. I'd like to meet that guy.

That's really—

that's— you did a wonderful job.

Well, I kind of took it like right off the internet, so that's— there's no credit to me for that.

Well, cool. No, I appreciate you having me on here. I've been looking forward to having what will hopefully be a meaningful conversation today.

Absolutely. Well, I really appreciate that you took time out of your life and schedule to do this. So I want to be upfront, as I was going through my upcoming topics for the FGT Podcast, I was actually not going to ask you to be the guest for this particular show. Because I'm pretty sure as a musician you get a lot of requests like this. And when people ask you to talk about worship, what they really mean is, will you talk about music? I think your music is great, but that's not where I'm going with this. So let's start with an easy one. Is there something you might like to say to people regarding how we could best define worship in a broader sense than just the songs we choose to sing on any given Sunday morning?

Yes, definitely. And you know what, I'm grateful that you asked me because you're right, I do get asked a lot about music, and I do believe that worship is so much broader than that. We've kind of defined worship as sort of a genre of music rather than looking at what it is over the bigger picture of things. So for me, and this is going to be kind of my definition, I've been doing some writing that's for the site The Discipleship Place through the Nazarene Church, and as I've been working on that One thing I've specifically been doing is writing about the history of worship and Christian worship specifically. So I want to be as specific as I can when I talk about worship. I first want to say Christian worship, which probably that's just assumed by everybody, but by that we mean it's focused on God the Father as revealed to us in Jesus the Son by the power of the Holy Spirit. And I'm also speaking when I talk of worship, and as I'm going to be speaking of it today, I'm talking about corporate worship too. And that means— and I'm sure everybody knows, so I'm sorry if this feels like I'm dumbing it down, but I'm trying to just be as specific as I can be— that while Christian worship is intensely personal, it is by no means a private affair. And so when we participate in corporate worship, meaning worship that's shared by members of a group or members of a community, we're doing it together with the entire body of Christ. And so Christian worship really is a corporate activity. So to just define worship, I'm not going to try to define it myself, but because the Book of Common Prayer actually has a pretty good definition of it, so I'm going to go for it. So, so in talking about this Christian corporate worship, this is what the Book of Common Prayer says about it. It says, in corporate worship, we unite ourselves with others to acknowledge the holiness of God, to hear God's word, to offer prayer, and to celebrate the sacraments. And so I think that's a pretty great definition. If I had anything to add to it, it might just be from the work that I've done with the Psalms and just reminding people, as I said in my book, that worship is remembering together. So maybe all of that kind of together creates at least a context for us to talk about worship today.

Yeah, I really love that definition, and I think It just incorporates so many things that we sometimes leave out that are really important. So thank you for sharing that, and thank you also for speaking accessibly. I didn't feel like you were dumbing it down at all. I think it's really important for us to speak accessibly because people are listening who don't necessarily have a theological education or background, so we want to make sure that everyone understands what we're talking about. So thank you for that.

Oh, my pleasure. I hope I wasn't— I always am concerned because I never know exactly who's listening, so I try to be as basic as I can when I talk.

Absolutely. I think that's really important. So there's something that I found really impressive at the Wesley Conference, and that's where we actually met last spring. Um, you're this well-known artist. People know your name to the extent that they use your full name when they're referring to you. In fact, when I see you, I think, should I say hello, Rick Lee James? Like, I don't know. So, and you had this workshop spot at the Wesley Conference, which I'm assuming you could have used for just about any topic, and you chose prayer, which honestly I thought was either a bold or really strange move. It was enough to pique my interest, and I think this is going to segue with some discussion about the Psalms, because what are they if they're not both prayer and song directed toward God? But I'm still curious some 8 months later, because prayer is often a discipline that people treat flippantly, what caused you to choose prayer and how is prayer essential to our worship experience?

Well, first I should say that should be actually my business card: Rick Lee James, bold and strange. That would probably be the best thing. That would probably be the best definition. Mission to be. And the reason people use the Lee is just because I think they don't want to confuse me with the other Rick James that had dreadlocks and died several years ago and played Super Freak and all that. But yeah, you can call me Rick or whatever, you know, it's fine. But Bold and Strange, I love that. That's going to be the new business card. But the reason that I chose prayer, it was kind of a couple of reasons. I did another workshop on songwriting, but I feel like one area that is really neglected, even though I think we talk about it a lot, is prayer. And to me, every aspect of a worship service, in as much as we can make it prayer, I really believe should be prayer. And what I mean by that is something that is probably gonna be beyond most people's definition of what prayer is. I think usually we think of prayer as, you know, I'm going to go into my prayer closet or it's pastoral prayer time in the service. Let's stand together and listen to the pastor pray for 5 minutes, you know, something like that. And prayer is not really that. And by the way, I'm not making fun of that actually, because I really do love it when pastors pray. But that's what happens a lot, right? I mean, we have one person that leads in prayer and the congregation doesn't necessarily know where that prayer is leading or how to pray along. So it can oftentimes lead to minds wandering and us trying to kind of have our own personal prayer conversation while the pastor has his, or whoever would be leading that day. And as we, we look at things like the Psalms, we can start to understand prayer a little bit better, and I think a little bit more broadly, maybe a lot more broadly than what we have been understanding prayer as, because The Book of Psalms, it was not only a hymn book, and it certainly was the hymn book of the people of Israel, and really it was the hymn book for Christianity for many, many years. And many churches, you know, especially in the Calvinist tradition, until fairly recently in the scope of history, they would only sing the Psalms, and it was very controversial when these new things called hymns came along because they were so modern and so out of the comfort zone of the church. But the Book of Psalms was not only this hymn book. As you read through the Psalms, it really is the prayer book of the people as well. So there was different movements that would happen in the Psalms, and there are different types of psalms that were prayed and sung in the Book of Psalms. And so the songs and the prayers of the people, they were one and the same. And so that's to say when they were singing, they were also praying. And I think that's a really amazing thing when we think about it, because I believe the way that they were structured and designed for the use in corporate worship together, it was designed so that the songs would be prayer and the prayers would be lyrical. And they were thought out. And I don't think we put as much time as we should into making our prayers lyrical, something beautiful, something thought out, something that we actually put time into. And, you know, we encourage songwriters to constantly write and rewrite and rewrite and go back and, you know, make sure that that line works perfectly because we want to sing that song and we want to sing it again and again. So my thought about prayer, just sort of like that with music, shouldn't we increase our repertoire of prayer as much as we would want to increase our repertoire of music and singing? Shouldn't our prayers be something that if it's worth praying, it's worth praying again? And if it's worth praying once, maybe we should come back to it again next week and the following week. And maybe I should take this into my daily prayer time and pray these good prayers again. And there's this, this wonderful Latin phrase Lex Orandi, Lex Credandi, which loosely translated, it means the law of praying is the law of believing. And a simpler way to say it might be that our worship forms our theology. So this principle that guided the ancient church of Lex Orandi, Lex Credandi, our worship forms our theology, I mean, it led the church to develop creeds. It led the church to develop the canon of scripture. We don't think about that a lot of times, but by prayer the church was led to bring together scripture. I mean, prayer happened first. And then other doctrinal matters based upon prayers, the liturgies of the church throughout the ages. So before the church even had the Bible, it had its worship liturgy. And before we had the New Testament, we had the prayers of the people filling our worship And so this close communion that the church had in its praying and in its liturgy, it's a huge part of what guided us down the path that we're at now, you know, in church, for better or for worse, prayer led us here. So I'm probably going on too long and I apologize if I am, but when we think about what prayer really is, and again, if I reference the Book of Common Prayer, prayer is, responding to God. And so in a sense, when we're coming into worship, God is speaking to us and we are responding to God. And so we hear, and it's this dynamic in worship of a conversation with God. God is the audience, we are not. You know, we are there as sort of— if I think of worship, I want to talk about worship almost like it's choir practice for heaven in a lot of ways. You know, we come together in this multitude to together and we are having this ongoing conversation with God. And we have the different movements in church, and I feel like if we really tried— I'm not saying that we get this right at my church, it's always something we have to work at— but if we tried, I feel like we could come closer to making every single thing that we do in our worship services an act of prayer, that being an act of response to God or listening to God or responding back to God from what we've heard. So I probably talked too much and over-talked about what that was, but is that making sense?

It absolutely makes sense, and you did not talk too much. I am scribbling notes at like breakneck speed because I'm like, wait, I want to go back to this and this and this, and I will probably not be able to come back to every single point you just made, but there were so many good things that you just said. Something that I absolutely love is the idea that everything we do in worship could be prayer. And I kind of would like to extend that and say maybe everything we do in life could be prayer. I like to think of prayer as kind of this, I don't know, breathing in and breathing out of communication with God. But something that you said that I think maybe people could even find a little controversial is you said prayer is responding to God. And that is beautiful. I don't think people think of that though. I think usually when people think of prayer, they think of prayer as we're kind of telling God what we want God to do. But the response part, the listening that happens in prayer, and then the responding can be hard to grasp. Sometimes. Prayer is, um, prayer is not individual, just like worship is not individual. Prayer is a multi-way conversation.

Sure.

So thank you especially for bringing up the thoughts about responding to God.

Oh yeah, my pleasure. I do think that we are— we're too narrow in our thoughts about prayer because we've— I think like so many things we have done in making everything in culture and even in our life of worship individual about just something I do, we've made prayer that too, almost like, okay, God's gonna sit and listen to me for a while. And really, if I'm gonna keep referencing the Book of Common Prayer because it's a close companion of mine, I use it a lot. And, you know, one thing you find out in there in prayer is it not only defines it as responding to God by thought and and deeds, with or without words. That's literally the definition from the Book of Common Prayer. But it also lays out for us what the principal kinds of prayer are, and I'll just tell them to you real fast, because even that, I don't even know that a lot of us know there are many different ways to pray. It defines it as adoration, praise, thanksgiving, penitence, oblation, intercession, and petition. And I don't know that we hit all of those, you know, on a given Sunday, let alone throughout our week. But what you said about making life prayer and what I said about it sort of being, you know, choir rehearsal for heaven, I think what we do in worship on Sunday, I don't know that we come to it like to get a feeling or to get something out of it like emotional or something that's going to change our life that day for that hour when we come together. But I think what we're doing is actually rehearsing for life. You know, we're coming to hear that story, we're coming to respond to God, and then what we do in that hour, if we're really focused in on it, and if we've made it a prayer conversation with God from start to finish, from our gathering to our sending, I think that when we are out in the world, I think you're exactly right, I think it helps us to make our life a prayer to God, and it helps us to maybe live as the people of God in the way that we've rehearsed in our church on Sunday morning.

I love that phrase, rehearsing for life. That's, um, I'm gonna use that somewhere on a business card maybe. But that's great. I think when you talk about the different kinds of prayer, I think at best we usually do petition and intercession. I'm not sure most of us ever branch out beyond that. It's usually a matter of, you know, what can we get out of this for ourselves, or maybe at the very best for others. And that's really sad because those other forms of prayer are so important. I love the Book of Common Prayer, and I love that there are prayers, as you mentioned a little earlier, that are worth being repeated over and over and over again, not just by us individually, but by the church community and by the whole of the people of God. That's something I actually love about the lectionary scriptures. Some people think, well, why would we follow this calendar or this pattern? But I love that the people of God all over the world are studying the same scriptures, praying the same prayers, and that just kind of brings us all together in huge corporate worship.

Well, and it, it requires work. And I don't think we want to think of prayer as requiring work. I think of one of my favorite quotes by James Hudson Taylor. He says, "I've seen many men work without praying, though I've never seen any good come out of it, but I have never seen a man pray without working." And I think of that, and when we think of structuring our worship services in such a way that we would, whether we're using the lectionary, which As you talked about, I love that. I love when churches can do that because it helps everybody to have a map together. But it does require work. You can't just kind of on your whim of the week and what you think the Spirit might be speaking, which by the way, I have no problem with that because the early church was very driven by the Holy Spirit and what it did.

Sure.

But the early church was also very Jewish in its worship and it was very structured. So I think if we were able to work at it, I just think what a beautiful thing it would be if we could put time and effort into our praying and into making our worship services like that. And even asking questions like, are there specific parts of our services that are not prayer? Like that we know specifically these are not things that are designed to help us communicate with with God. I wonder if that should be an indicator to us, like, should we chop that part of our service out, you know? Like, absolutely, yeah. And I don't think we like to do that because it requires work and it requires a lot of thought and a lot of effort. Um, but I think that we see that the great revivals of history have happened when the people of God have really worked at seeking after the Lord and helping people respond to him in that way.

Absolutely. Yeah, that's, that's good. And a lot of the things that we would say, this isn't helping us to communicate with God, I think they're kind of fillers for worship. And we, we should work harder than that. You're right, we should, we should put enough time and thought and energy and work into our worship that we don't feel sad that we have to eliminate some things that are just filling space.

Well, and you know what, I'm sorry to interrupt you again, I just, I had thought, and feel free to cut me off if you need to. I know we have limited time today, but as I was thinking about this and thinking of the late Ed Robinson, who we just lost recently, who I got to spend some time with at that conference where we met at NNU, he did a wonderful workshop and reminded us in one of his workshops that our people are not really coming to church like they once did. They're not there every time the doors are open. They're not necessarily there for Sunday school or midweek or other times when we traditionally have done a lot of discipleship work.

Right.

So for all purposes, we have this 1 hour a week that we are expecting— wrongly, actually, we're expecting too much of it— but we've got basically 1 hour a week where all our people are coming together, if that. And in that time, He was reminding us we have to be so careful about what we are doing in that time. So we don't have time to waste on not doing discipleship-oriented type things in our services.

Right.

He said, we've got 1 hour a week where families are coming together, where our people are coming in, we're all going to be there together. And it's not right and it shouldn't be the only time we have, but it's what we have right now. It seems to be the only commitment that a lot of our people are there for. So when you think about that, we should take even more seriously the task of preparing and planning our worship services because that's all we have.

Yeah.

With our people, like, that's way too much weight to put on 1 hour a week, but that is in essence our discipleship time. So everything we're doing in that time period, whether it's an hour, even 2 hours in some churches, that really needs to be thought out and it really needs to be focused in on what makes us the church? What makes what we're doing here in this hour different than what they're doing at the VFW or whatever on Saturday night? And sometimes I'm not sure there's a huge difference in those two things.

I think you're absolutely right, and I think sometimes people ask us to be a social club or something less than the church. I think it's important for us to kind of push back against that and say, you know, no, we're going to be the church and I guess whatever happens happens.

Sure, right.

Yeah. So you have this book about the Psalms, and I'm just going to be honest with you, I haven't read the whole thing yet. Um, I have kind of started, and, um, I think I need to read it because I have a love-hate relationship with the Psalms, and particularly with David, who, you know, of course he's not the only psalmist, but he provides us with many of these words. And I just want to read the psalm from the lectionary for today. It's Psalm 96, and this is what it says: Sing to the Lord a new song, sing to the Lord, all the earth. Sing to the Lord, praise his name, proclaim his salvation day after day. Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous deeds among all peoples. For great is the Lord and most worthy of praise. 2 He is to be feared above all gods, for all the gods of the nations are idols. 3 But the Lord made the heavens; splendor and majesty are before him; strength and glory are in his sanctuary. 4 Ascribe to the Lord, all you families of nations, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength; ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name. 5 Bring an offering and come into his courts, Worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness; tremble before him, all the earth. 2 Say among the nations, "The Lord reigns!" The world is firmly established; it cannot be moved. 3 He will judge the peoples with equity. 4 Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad; let the sea resound, and all that is in it. 5 Let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them; Let all the trees of the forest sing for joy. Let all creation rejoice before the Lord, for he comes, he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples in his faithfulness. The word of the Lord. Now, Psalm like this, it's beautiful and it's happy, and I think we need to talk about praise and glory and rejoicing. You talked about adoration and praise when you talked about the different types of prayer, and I definitely think that we miss those sometimes. But these are not by far the only themes that run through the Psalms. The title of your book includes the words "out of the depths," and there are an awful lot of verses in the Psalter that might lead us to believe our communication with God should also include gut-wrenching honesty, suffering, and and lament? That's not popular, but what kinds of stories should we be telling in worship that help us to deal with all of the real-life tragedy that exists?

That's really an excellent question, and the Psalms are— they make me uncomfortable in a lot of ways, and you'll see if you get any any deeper into my book, and you certainly don't have to. I've grown a lot and learned a lot since I wrote that, so I don't— I'm definitely not like the definitive expert on the Psalms. They're just some of my experiences. I wish I could rewrite a few places in it, to be honest, because I've thought more about it, and I hopefully am going to keep doing that the rest of my life. That's the bad thing about when you write a book, you can't just, you know, change it all of a sudden like you can a Facebook post, you know, let me edit that.

Right.

But one thing that I really struggled with in there is something that I'm coming to appreciate more. And I wrote asking the question in that book, Out of the Depths, you know, are there some prayers, are there some Psalms that Jesus would not pray and would not have us to pray and would not want to have any part of whatsoever? And I take that question very seriously because I know that the Psalms were so deeply a part of the life of Israel, and they have been so much a part of the life of the church throughout the ages. And so one thing that I think we're missing and the Psalms have, I could name a few things. The first thing that comes to my mind is penitence or repentance. You know, how often at least in the Church of the Nazarene, do we begin our services by a time of, you know, of repentance, allowing the people to have a chance to stop and confess their sins. Traditionally in our worship throughout the centuries, that's been one of the first things that we've done. You know, if you look at service orders of churches, they haven't waited until the end to the altar call for repentance to happen. They actually do that up front. Up front, because how can a heart really be free to worship God until they've confessed? So churches will offer prayers like, Most merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, by what we have left undone. We have not loved you with our whole heart. We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. For this we are truly sorry, and we humbly repent. For the sake of your Son Jesus, have mercy on us. And forgive us that we may delight in your will and walk in your way to the glory of your name. And things like that. Can you imagine the difference in tone that maybe could happen in our churches if we had something like that as a call to worship on Sunday morning? And then, you know, we took a moment and we said, let's take a moment in silence. You know, we want to talk about like, let's really rock it out as we come in today. Let's get a big, boisterous serious feeling. And sometimes I wonder if that's the right spirit to enter into our worship with. Should we say to our people, as the Psalms do time and time again, I mean, you look at Psalm 51 with David's repentance, and he just, he thinks of every sin he can think of, even ones he probably didn't commit, and just lays them out.

Right.

You know, because it's so important for him to have a heart that's free to God, and it's not until the end of the Psalm where he says, "Once you forgive my sins, then I will enter the house and I will teach others about your word and I will be free to worship you again." And it's really in essence what he's saying at the end of that Psalm. And yet I wonder, you know, how many of our people are hindered in their worship because they haven't been given a chance to confess. And I've had pastors say to me, you know, "That was nice this week. I don't want to do that every week." You know, that type of thing. Let's not make that a regular habit type thing. That just wouldn't be right. It's interesting. I don't know how we got that because in our tradition in the Church of the Nazarene, Wesley, he was like, "Every time we get together, we need to confess." I don't understand how we got so far away from that. That's one thing that I think the Psalms can help us with. I think we are desperately in need of that in our churches. You know, it would bring us to a place of humility, even just to give people a quiet moment, give them a minute and a half at the beginning of your service. What sins have you committed this week? What do we need to confess? How have you sinned against your neighbor? Even if it wasn't, you know, if it was against your neighbor, it was against God. If it was against your family member, it was against God. How are we confessing? But the other thing, and the thing that makes me uncomfortable, and I really do, I'm I'd be open to you or anyone listening what you had to think about this. I've talked it over with my friend Walter Brueggemann a few times and we even did a podcast about it, but the idea of the imprecatory Psalms and these Psalms that are about the wrath of God. Some of them are just about, you know, "Woe is me," and crying out from a deep place of desperation, but at least a good third, you know, some of the most most of the Psalms we have are these Psalms that are crying out of the depths. And some of them get really gritty and really like, you know, "Break their teeth in their mouth, Lord." Can you imagine when we heard a prayer like that prayed in church on Sunday morning? Or, "In the name of Jesus, we pray that we could dash their babies against rocks," you know, things like that. Because that's what they're praying. And so in the book, this will bring us back around hopefully, to where I started. In the book, when I talked about— I said, are there, are there just some prayers Jesus wouldn't pray? And if memory serves, in the book I think I came to the conclusion, yes, that's the case, because the living word, uh, is, is more authoritative. The living word of Jesus is more authoritative than the written word of scripture, right? Even though the written word of scripture is authoritative for us. But as I've thought through that more That may be the case, and it may be the case that there are some prayers that we shouldn't pray. I certainly think that's— that could be true. But what I've also come to understand, especially since the election happened and in January this new president came in and we've seen the country erupt in some new ways that I'm not used to seeing, and I'm not saying that the country hasn't been that way, but we've just seen seen sort of this powder keg erupting again and again and again. Yeah, weeks ago we saw another mass shooting in Las Vegas, and then this week there was another shooting. And then we've had people overseas killed, and there's been hurricanes and tsunamis. And, you know, in some ways it feels like somebody out there is playing a game of Jumanji, because, you know, I don't know if you ever saw that movie Jumanji, but these kids are playing and like there's wild animals that come out. And like, even a few weeks ago in Atlanta, there was a tiger loose on the interstate, you know.

Yeah, right.

It's just, I mean, I'm hearing all these crazy stories this year, like I've never— and, you know, it's just funny because for whatever reason, it's like the election just became that point where everything just started going bonkers in a whole new way, you know. I don't know that we can point it to that, but it seems like that's when we're at least hearing more things, whatever reason. So this year, I think, so far has taught me to appreciate those imprecatory Psalms in some ways, because there have been times that I have come— I've been so frustrated by things I've seen or things that I've heard by Christians who are supporting completely unchristian things and character behaviors and things like that. And it showed me that so often our church has been more influenced by partisan politics than they have by the kingdom of God. And I just get at times so angry, and I don't know what to do with that anger. And there have been times that I have gone to those imprecatory songs, and I mean the real bad ones too, like, you know, let their children be fatherless, and let them, you know, let his name be erased, don't forgive their sins. I mean, the really bad ones, the ones that we probably don't feel like we should to pray, but I have come to those at times praying my heart out because in my heart I was kind of feeling those things.

Sure.

And yet the way I think we're supposed to pray those things is we have to remember, like Dr. Ruggeman told me, he said, back in the time when these Psalms were written, it's not like they had therapy sessions people could go to where they could just get these things out.

Right, right.

So in some ways the church became a place for people to have a safe place to come where they could cry out their anger even to God and say, "Lord, I am just so mad about this thing," or, "I am just so hurt about this thing," or, "These people are trampling over us again and again and we have no recourse. God, do something, help us," you know? Or sometimes it's even yelling at God and just, you know, some of the Psalms do that too. And, you know, we know, I know you're there, but where are you?

Type thing. Right.

And so I've come to those uncomfortable Psalms in a new way, remembering that it's better for me to pray those things out and let my heart be emptied of the poison and give those things over to God, but then be reminded that the God we believe is God is the one revealed in Jesus. And so Jesus is going to hear those prayers and is going to take those prayers and listen to them, and he'll probably say right back to us, I hear you, and the answer is no to everything you just prayed. No, we're not going to do that. We're going to love enemies. We're going to pray for those who persecute us. We're going to be as gracious and loving as we could be in the kingdom of We're gonna stand up for justice and truth and peace and be the people of God in the world. And all those things we see in Scripture, I think those are the answer to us. But in many ways, it is freeing for our hearts if we can at least pray those things knowing that God is the one who does the answering. And maybe it will move us away from even having to pray those things, you know, in some ways. Maybe in time we can start moving away from it a little bit and saying, okay, Lord, my response, maybe instead of going to wrath, maybe my response is going to go more quickly to grace in the future as you continue to form me and make me. But I think that's a very important distinction. I don't think we should be praying those prayers with the intent of God's gonna answer these things and it's gonna happen. I think we should be praying those things in the light that Jesus is the one listening and that Jesus gets to be the answer and that Jesus is the answer that we see. So does that make sense?

It does. Yeah, that's excellent. I want to go back to a couple of things you said, and you had basically two sections here just now that were— they're probably worthy of a whole show themselves. But starting with confession, just to everything you said about confession, I just want to say yes, yes, and yes. As holiness people, I think confession makes us uncomfortable because we're afraid to admit that we have sinned. And I think it shouldn't be that way. As you said, you know, Wesley would say, you know, we should always be confessing. But somewhere along the line in our history, we started to kind of have these conversations where people would say, you know, I was saved and I was sanctified and it's been 483 years and I haven't sinned since. And I feel like we lost our humility, you know, when sanctification became, you know, the distinguishing theological point for us. We lost our humility and our ability to be able to say, I have sinned and we have sinned. And I think that when we talk about confession, it's really important not just to talk about our own personal sin, but corporate sin and systemic sin. There are things that we might not be directly culpable for, but as the people of God, and especially as Wesleyan holiness people, we need to take responsibility for the suffering of our brothers and sisters even if we haven't directly contributed to it.

Sure.

And so to begin to have a call of worship that is confession, I think that would be an excellent way for us to make space for this in our corporate worship together. And maybe it is uncomfortable, but I think it is essential.

Yeah, I'm there with you. I agree.

And then also your thoughts just about these prayers, the wrath of God. What you kind of finally brought that around to, and just what I would like to underscore, is, you know, God can take it when we are raging against God. And it's important. You're absolutely right. There weren't therapy sessions. And sometimes I think for me, when I blog, it's therapy. So I mean, there's just emotions and feelings just vomited all over the place. And sometimes when I'm blogging about the Psalms, I will cut it off when it gets to these horrible things that we shouldn't be praying against other people because it is uncomfortable. But I think that those Psalms show our humanity. And, you know, it's okay. God can take it if we're feeling this way. But no, God is probably not going to strike down our enemies.

Right.

Um, let's hope that God does not answer some of those prayers with a yes. But yet it is important for us to be able to express those things. And even in this last week or so, something that of course has come to light in our culture is this whole #MeToo movement. And I was really angry the other day because I saw someone posting in support of it, and then the first comment was, you know, well, it would be a whole lot braver of these people if they would just forgive. And so I felt a little sick about that, and I felt like I needed to post a blog so that I didn't argue with strangers on the internet. And forgiveness even— and it's interesting how this ties in with confession— it's not about saying, hey, all these horrible things happened and it's okay, because it's not okay. We're allowed, even in forgiveness, to feel the pain and the suffering and the core of things that take place. And so I think being able to express that in prayer to God and even corporately and even just being able to say there are things in the world that are not right and they're upsetting and we're angry about them, that's okay.

Mm-hmm.

Um, so I think the Psalms do kind of open up a way for us to pray those things, even if they're the horrible things that we might not actually want this kind of wrath to come down on people or on the world, but God can handle hearing our suffering.

Right. Yeah.

Yeah.

And you know, I think when we pray that way, I mean, we have to be very careful with it, especially in a communal way. Yeah. But it's all because we also want to be careful to, if we do teach our people to pray that, we also need to teach them that God would be the God that we see in Jesus who would be responding, "Have you met me?" Like, do you really think I'm gonna do that after everything I just said about, you know, loving people and all that? You know, so it would be very beneficial for us to like show both sides of that conversation, but you're exactly right. We do need at times, I think, a place to put that frustration and a safe place to put it. But speaking just quickly about like the Me Too movement, I mean, it's just broken my heart. I didn't I didn't realize the level of how deep this is. You know, I'm not a woman. And when you think about it, someone like me, I am just the peak of like white privilege and male privilege and every privilege that I have. I'm straight, I'm white, I'm male, you know, like—

Sure.

So I don't even half the time or more even think in those kind of contexts. And so when people bring things to my attention, whether it be my people, my friends who are not white, that'll bring things to my attention about, "Don't you realize what this means, like, in culture to us when this happens?" Or when I hear, you know, females say, "Oh yeah, this is my story and this has happened again and again." And what really upsets me is when I hear this happens in the church again and again to women, you know, or to people of color, or just any, you know, insert minority here type thing. I think you're, you're right. It's, it's important to have a place. Forgiveness is so important. And what that person said on that post, I think they are about half correct in that it is very courageous to forgive. But forgiveness is not just saying it didn't matter and walk away from it, right?

Right.

Forgiveness is actually like— forgiveness is a very costly thing. If we want to think of how much it costs Jesus to forgive, I mean, it cost him a cross. I mean, literally going to a cross with forgiveness in his heart. That's an amazingly costly thing. And I think it would help us if we could come to forgiveness with an attitude that says, this mattered deeply, what you did to me. And this hurt that you did, this, this is significant. It's profoundly painful in my life. And I want you to know how costly it is to me. And it's only by the grace of God that I can even do this in the first place. But because this is so costly and because I realize the God we serve is a God of such grace and has taken such amazing lengths to forgive me, it is only in that light, because this was so significant, that I can say to you, I forgive you. And I, I think if we don't have that step before we get there, it's all— it's almost like, oh, just sweep it under the rug and forget it. And that shouldn't be the way it is, because those hurts are significant, and those hurts are, um, the cuts are deep, and they need to be addressed. I think, and I think sometimes before you— maybe if we think of it as an actual physical wound, before you put the Band-Aid on, sometimes you got to put on some painful medication. Yeah. To get to it. Sometimes the things that are going to help actually sting a little bit, you know, when you put that in the wound and then cover it up with a bandage or however it works, and the healing is going to start coming eventually. But, but yeah, we have to make sure that we don't just sweep it under the rug and say, oh, it didn't matter, because in essence that's what you're doing when you just say, well, just forgive and forget it. You're saying, well, just sweep it under the rug and don't deal with it and don't make the other person deal with it. So, so I'm— I, I, I don't even know what to say. I— because I feel like I have such a position of privilege on so many things like this, and your words mean a lot more than mine in this case. But ironically, I'm speaking way more than you are, so I apologize for that. But, but I'm sorry for that. The whole #MeToo hashtag, it's heartbreaking to look and see how deep it is, but I'm glad it's coming out, and I'm glad people are able to begin having these conversations, because otherwise it doesn't ever change and it doesn't get healed.

Absolutely. And I think that actually that does also speak back to the whole idea of when this is happening in the church, it's a confession problem because we tend to look at victims and tell them, "You have to forgive now," but then we don't really deal with the other side of the issue, which is, what about the perpetrators? What do they have to do? And the other thing I think that I just want to highlight is that forgiveness does not mean saying, "Now please do this to me over and over again." Right. It's not, "Hey, it's okay that you did this. Keep doing it." And that's what I fear that we sometimes kind of put alongside that with the whole, as you said, sweep it under the rug, forgive and forget. Forgiveness should not perpetuate cycles of abuse.

Exactly.

So it's important to have responsibility, certainly from, from the side of the perpetrator. Yeah. Well, we have talked for a long time. I have so appreciated that you have been willing to come on and be a part of this show today, and I just want to thank you again, Rick Lee James, for being a part of Flip-Flops, Glitter, and Theology. And as always, to my listeners, thanks for tuning in.

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