Practicing Piano

One of my good memories of my father is he was a Jazz Pianist, and a very talented one. I took piano lessons for 3 years but never got beyond scales and a few small pieces.  That’s because I didn’t practice. My father practiced every day for 2 or 3 hours and was perfectionist when it came to playing any music.  I am fully aware the price my father paid to be that good.

Now….on that note! It’s a good thing that God doesn’t give up on us because of any of our…dis-chords.  We have a tendency, as humans, of failing to follow through.  God repeats things over and over until we get it right.

God can and sometimes does perform instant miracles but where is the benefit if every time we are in trouble God waves a magic wand and poof!  We have to travel the road he has laid out for us ourselves. We can't delegate it, and we can't just read guidebooks. We have to do it. Now, mind, God provides everything we could possibly need for the journey: food, clothing, maps, shelter. We are guided, accompanied, empowered and rewarded by His love. But walk it we must.

There were times for months on end that my father for one reason or another never touched the piano.  When he returned to it, it was difficult for him to get back into playing well. See, what’s inside your head isn’t enough.

You have to practice. Your body - your reflexes - your habits of behavior and response - have to be trained. And love is like that, too. Being told about the love of God doesn't make you able to experience it. You have to practice love in order to have it. How do you practice the love of God?

Read Ephesians 3:14-21 – Paul lays it all out.

You have to claim the grace, goodness and power of God! We are members of God's family. We are his adopted children, co-heirs with Christ. Because we are His children, it is proper for us to look to God to supply our needs. It is the delight of a father to supply his family with evidence of His wealth. God has plans for us, for our good and his glory, we may confidently ask for what we need to fulfill those plans.

All too often, the work we do in ministry we think as gifts we make to God, whereas in reality it's the other way around. The work we do in ministry is God's gift to us. The right approach isn't to say, "Look what I've done for you, now can I have a blessing?" It's "Please give me the blessing of having something worthwhile to do with my life. Give me something important to do!

The most important thing we can do is to serve Jesus Christ. So let's not be timid about asking to be empowered to do just that. There's nothing in the fine print on God’s offer that says “offer good while supplies last."

You also need to invite Jesus into your life. Through faith, it is because we trust Jesus that we invite him in. Through heart, we are to invite Jesus into the very center of our lives, the control room. Through dwelling, Jesus is to live in us, not just get parked in the living room to be entertained, or to be taken out for show when we have company over.

Jesus doesn’t go where he isn’t invited, which may seem odd to us. Sometimes we act as if we think Jesus doesn't know what we have so carefully hidden from the world - sometimes even from ourselves.

Like Interning doctors, our job is to make the rounds with Jesus. He does all the dirty work. He does the heavy lifting. But we have to go with him. Jesus said, "What comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles. For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person..." Matthew 15:18- 19

Jesus also said, "out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks." Matthew 12:34

Only Jesus, through his Spirit, can clean out our hearts so that what flows naturally from our hearts and out of our mouths can be a credit to him. And it doesn't work just to ask him in at our conversion and then forget about it. The same process goes on throughout all of our lives.

I know I haven’t even mentioned practicing love as of yet.  One thing I learned from playing the piano is you can’t practice playing until the piano is tuned and the music sheets are ready.  So, now that we have accomplished this with the previous words…let’s start practicing. Let’s display the Love of Christ.

Christ's love is spiritual, but it's not just in our heads. It is far beyond words. It isn't a concept or a metaphor, it's an active verb, and it takes two people to make it come to life. Jesus loves us. We know that by what he has given us, what he has done for us. But how do we do our part? How on earth can we love Jesus back?

Jesus tells us that it is in loving others that we act on our love for Jesus; this love is specific; not abstract; not vague or even general. It is personal and intimate. The journey of faith is like a spiral stair, the whole held up by the love of God, but the sequence of steps always the same. Commit yourself to the grace of God. Surrender more of yourself to Christ. And love the people he puts in your path as if he himself were before you - he is.

We can't even guess much less see where that staircase will lead, for as Paul says, "by the power that is at work within us, he is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we ask or imagine." As we commit ourselves to following the path God opens up before us, we will begin to catch glimpses. It is in loving one another that we who are the followers of Jesus Christ will bring him the glory that will demonstrate God's wisdom in "the heavenly places."

As we practice his love, like the piano, we will be in tune; our worship sounds become more harmonic and we become true musicians of God’s love towards all.