Blessed Be Your Name

"People were bringing little children to Jesus to have him touch them, but the disciples rebuked them. ¹⁴When Jesus saw this, he was indignant. He said to them, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. ¹⁵I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it."¹⁶And he took the children in his arms, put his hands on them and blessed them."

                                              - Mark 10:13-15 

I’ve been sitting playing my guitar this morning, learning Matt Redman’s “Blessed Be Your Name.”  Not the straight-ahead, rock version you’ve heard on Christian radio or sang in church, but a revised acoustic version (iTunes – Matt Redman, Blessed Be Your Name (acoustic) (Bonus track).  Same words, but a completely revised arrangement with a different, beautiful and haunting chord structure beneath the original melody.  It wasn’t long before worship happened and I heard God and tears flowed.  Wow.

What I heard was this:  “You are my child.”  

Not “You are my man,” or “You’re my servant,” or even “You are my son.”  It was the realization that, though I committed my life to him almost 20 years ago and I am much older, I am still a child in his eyes.  I fight this daily because the world is constantly trying to grind me into being what it calls “a man.”  Whether that is through worldly success or sensual pleasure or physical strength or beauty or through a host of other avenues.  It is in direct conflict with who God wants me to be and I feel that struggle and tension with every waking breath.

Blessed be the name of the Lord, blessed be your name.

Blessed be the name of the Lord, blessed be your glorious name

You give and take away.  You give and take away. 

My heart will choose to say, Lord blessed be your name.

Those are Job’s words, from Job 1:21 after he learned of the destruction of his herds, servants and his family by raiders.  When I sang those words of the song this morning, “You give and take away…” I felt God’s presence deeply and his voice to me saying.  “I love you and you are my child.”  To me, he was saying, Tony, “Just like you discipline and love your children, I discipline and love you.  Just because I discipline you and it hurts, does not mean I stop loving you for one second or love you one bit less.  I am committed to you.  You are my family.  I am your Father and you are my child.”

It reminded me of the passage I quoted at the beginning in Mark where Jesus says to his disciples, “¹⁵I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it."  I think that is something I’ve had a hard time understanding all my life as a believer, especially in the face of what the world says it means to be “a man” today.  A child?  Give me a break.  How can I become a child when I’ve been working so hard to become “a man”?  

But God revealed it to me this morning.  He is SO big and SO powerful that no matter how old I get, how much I learn, what experiences I have on this earth, how successful I am, how strong I am…I am still nothing compared to Him.  Everything I have comes from his hand.  The very breath that I breathe, the beating of my heart, the thoughts of my mind – they are all gifts from a loving God.  At the VERY best…I am just a child.  When I look at it that way, I say to myself, “I get to be a child of the Living God?  I’ll take that!”

It also reminds me of the conversation that Jesus had with Nicodemus when he told him,

“I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.”  - John 3:3

Nicodemus was an extremely learned person, a Pharisee, one of the religious elite of his day and he had an EXTREMELY hard time with this concept.  He even asked Jesus, “How can a man be born when he is old?”  He didn’t get it either (maybe I shouldn’t feel so bad?).  Once again Jesus makes this reference to what has to happen in order to see the kingdom of God…we must be “born again.”  That means we must start over…become “a child.”

So I am just beginning to understand that being born again simply means that, once I have been redeemed by faith in what Christ did for me, I accept the fact that as I enter into God’s kingdom, I really know nothing when it comes to spiritual things and to what happens after I die.  I only know what he reveals to me.  When it comes to these kinds of spiritual things, I am helpless, needy, dependent...like a child.  Which, for right now, is exactly what he wants me to be.  Amen.