Friends Are Friends Forever... (ARGH!!!)

Okay, so that's a little strange for the title to a post... but perhaps it got your attention. If so, it accomplished one of its purposes. Perhaps you'll read on and it will accomplish another. And if you read to the end and find it descriptive of what the whole post is about it accomplishes its other purpose as well. Let's see.

Last week a kind friend shared his good fortune with Julie and I and one other couple and the six of us went to the annual Michael W. Smith Christmas concert in downtown Nashville. Other than a night of awesome company and good music, I had one of those thought provoking experiences which finds its way to here.

Other than a couple of songs from his new Stand release (Denver had that title first Michael!) the rest of the music has been around on Michael's Christmas works from previous years. Don't get me wrong... great music... just old and tired. And speaking of old and tired after the obligatory extended applause at the end of the concert Michael and band "returned" for an obligatory encore song. I have to tell you I was NOT expecting what happened next. Michael appeared to jokingly begin playing his Friends Are Friends Forever song and even tweaked the lyrics to indicate something like he might never have written it if he knew he was going to have to sing it at every concert from that point on. I was hoping this was the joke and we were going to get some other Christmas piece or maybe even something else new from the Stand release. Nope... after the humorous beginning to Friends, he tightened up and played it with all the vim and vigor possible for a song he's played 8,543,729,621 times. It was old and tired and you could kind of tell he was tired of doing that one.

But, the "fans" seem to always cry out for it at concerts. For some reason there is this little throng of concert goers that cry out for and listen to over and over those songs that prompt some emotional response over and over and over. Maybe they first heard the song at that youth retreat where everyone was feeling warm and fuzzy and spiritual and they just go back to that feeling everytime they hear those touchy feely songs. You know the ones... El Shadai, Awesome God, Thank You, even back as far as it only taking a spark.

The odd thing was I started trying to think of a counterpart for those songs in the "secular" music world. I could not think of any of those touchy feely songs that emote so many lighters (or cell phones in this case) and swaying while people cling to feelings of past spiritual, or emotional in the secular world sense, highs. I could not think of any. Row, row, row your boat and Hang down your head Tom Dooley, even the ever popular Ninety nine bottles of milk (or beer) on the wall don't hold the same experience.

So, what is it that keeps taking us back emotionally to all those tired songs that should be simply considered classics and put away rather than the musicians needing to pull them out during every live performance? Then it hit me — so much of our spiritual experience is based on feeling. We want to reproduce those feelings of being close to God that we had at some concert or spiritual event and those songs take us back there emotionally.

I don't need to feel like I'm in a right relationship to my God, I simply know it. Those feelings will go away, but what we know will stay because we know it no matter how we feel.

One of the classic passages describing the permanence of our relationship with our Father is 1 John 5:11-13:

And this is the testimony: that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. 12He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life. 13These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life, and that you may continue to believe in the name of the Son of God.

I've bolded some of the words on purpose. Notice that no where in these passages does it talk about feeling a certain way. It's only what you know and believe. And what you know and believe should then define the feelings we experience. Another great verse is Romans 12:1-2:

So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life-your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life-and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. 2Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you. [The Message]

What is it that you cling to... a relationship or a feeling. Feelings come and go. Relationships are forever. Oh wow... so maybe Friends Are Friends Forever... (ARGH!!!) I'm back there again. (But I don't need to ever hear THAT song again. Please Michael... retire that one!)