Tag: creativity

The Father Turns His Face Away

by Andrew Micah, posted in reflection, theology, worship

One of my favorite worship songs is “How Deep the Father’s Love for Us” by Stuart Townend. Over the course of the few years that I’ve been leading worship, I’ve heard some objections to this song, particularly to one line of lyrics. At the end of the first verse, we sing,

“How great the pain of searing loss

The Father turns His face away

As wounds which mar the Chosen One

Bring many sons to glory.”

The line “the Father turns His face away” as a description of what happened on the cross is the line that’s drawn objections, typically from people who are very, very confident that this line implies something that theologically false about the atoning work of Jesus. Today I would like to show why that isn’t true.

First, let’s consider the way that Scripture speaks about God’s face. God prescribed a very specific blessing that was to be spoken over the covenant people of Israel by the priests. In Numbers 6:22-27, we read:

“The LORD spoke to Moses, saying, ‘Speak to Aaron and his sons, saying, Thus shall you bless the people of Israel: you shall say to them,

The LORD bless you and keep you;

the LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you;

the LORD lift up the light of His countenance upon you and give you peace.

‘So shall they put my name upon the people of Israel, and I will bless them.'”

It makes sense to consider the way God speaks to Israel when we’re considering Jesus because Jesus is ultimately the servant of God “born under the law” (Galatians 4:4). Jesus is the one who fulfills God’s covenant law given to Israel perfectly, and as such, receives all the covenant blessings that the rest of Abraham’s children are unable to merit by their works. He has willed these blessings to all who call on Him by faith, Jew and Gentile, and that will took effect when He died on the cross (Hebrews 9:15-22), becoming a curse for us (Galatians 3:13-14) so that we could inherit a blessing. What we need to see here is that the core metaphor for God’s blessing and favor that was repeated to His people over and over again was this idea of the light of God’s face. He “makes His face to shine” and “lifts up the light of His countenance” on those whom He is blessing. This idea continues throughout Scripture. In Psalm 105, David exhorts God’s people, “Seek the LORD and His strength; seek His presence continually!” (Psalm 105:4) The word translated “presence” in the ESV is the Hebrew word that literally means “face.” David is not calling God’s people to pursue judgment, but blessing! The light of God’s face is praised and appealed to all throughout the book of Psalms as an expression for God’s blessing (Psalm 4:6, 31:16, 67:1, 80:19, 119:135). When God “hides His face,” it means that He has withdrawn His blessing from His people (Psalm 13:1, 27:9, 44:24, 69:17, 88:14, 102:2, 143:7). This is such a core idea in the way that God expresses Himself to His people. The light of God’s face is His blessing; the hiding of His face is judgment.

There are two objections that I’ve heard to the line “the Father turns His face away” as a description of what happened at the cross. The first is that God never really turned His face away from Jesus, but that it only seemed that way. This objection is rooted in a failure to really grasp either the holiness of God, or the substitutionary work of Jesus. In 2 Corinthians 5:21, Paul simply couldn’t make the matter any clearer: “For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.” On the cross, Jesus took on the identity of “sinner” for us so that we could receive from him the identity of “righteous man” that he earned by His flawless human life. He became sin. What does God do with sin?

Psalm 5 reads: “For You are not a God who delights in wickedness; evil may not dwell with You. The boastful shall not stand before Your eyes; You hate all evildoers. You destroy those who speak lies; the LORD abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man.” (v. 4-6) When Jesus went to the cross for us, He didn’t go there to appease God for our failures to be nice. He went there to represent us as hateful, deceitful, proud, selfish, wicked people, and to be crushed for us by God’s uncompromising justice so that we wouldn’t have to be. That’s why we have access to God by faith in Jesus. Either Jesus made full atonement, or He didn’t, and if He didn’t, we are still debtors and slaves to the law. In order for the man Christ Jesus to make full atonement, He had to endure God’s righteous judgment of sin. The Father had to really and truly hide His face, because sin cannot stand before His eyes. Jesus had to be crushed without sympathy, without apology, without hesitation, without reservation, in the exact same way that we deserve to be for our sin. He was. It says, “The LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all,” (Isaiah 52:6), and “it was the will of the LORD to crush Him.” (52:10) It is “out of the anguish of His soul” that Jesus has received the prize for which He pursued the cross: “by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my Servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities.” (v. 11)

The language,

“How great the pain of searing loss

The Father turns His face away

As wounds which mar the Chosen One

Bring many sons to glory

captures these truths beautifully and with biblical integrity.

There is another criticism from another angle. Some have argued that God’s judgment is not the absence of His presence but the presence of His justice. We can debate those technicalities of systematic theology (and I think there is an element of truth in that objection) but the reality is that Scripture repeatedly speaks of God’s judgment as a withdrawal of His presence and a hiding of His face. If God speaks this way about Himself, surely it is not incorrect to speak this way about Him. God, as we long to know Him, is the God whose face shines upon us, the God who fellowships with us. When sin has broken that fellowship, we feel alienation, forsakenness, and rejection. That is what Jesus endured for us. It was real, as real as the life we have in Him.

-Andy

What’s happening in my life, and to this blog.

by Andrew Micah, posted in Uncategorized, what's up

I haven’t written on this blog for over two years. When I started it, I knew this might happen. I’ve had the desire to write, but the need to be more fully invested in other things has taken precedence. I’ve continued to share thoughts regularly on my Facebook page, but I’m feeling like it’s time to begin blogging again in earnest. There’s so much happening in my life and in my world that I want to share about and process, and this blog is going to be the primary place where I do that going forward.

The direction of my life has shifted in some pretty big ways since I launched this site in 2017. My focus as a musician has turned towards leading worship and writing original worship music. (This is a story in and of itself, and one which I’ll share here in detail at some point in the not-too-distant future.) In the past year and a half, all of the songs that I’ve written have been worship songs. I still have the desire to write and perform folky singer-songwriter stuff, but it really feels at this point like the wind of God’s Spirit is blowing in my sails the most when I’m leading worship and writing worship music. That’s where the doors are opening and the momentum is building right now. I have more than an album’s worth of what I feel are really solid worship songs written, and there are plans forming to go to studio this winter to record and then release a few of those songs.

Meanwhile, I’ve been involving myself quite a bit in local ministries. I’ve been on staff part-time at Feed My Starving Children in Aurora, IL now since the very beginning of 2018. I’ve also been volunteering at World Relief DuPage/Aurora for a couple of years now, and last fall my role increased to where I’m helping out in their warehouse for approximately ten hours every week. These callings have been incredibly rewarding and, far from drawing energy away from my songwriting, have instead brought new freshness and energy to my creative life. They’ve also done wonderful things for my emotional and spiritual health. In addition, I had the opportunity to serve as a worship leader at a local church here in the Aurora area called New Life Montgomery from the beginning of 2018 up until this last Sunday. Although my commitments there are have come to an end and I’m now seeking membership at another local church, I’m grateful for my time at New Life and for the ways I’ve been challenged and enabled to grow through my role there. I’ve continued to serve at Crossroads Christian Youth Center as their worship leader, and after many months of serving alone, God’s beginning to raise up new leaders from among the students and young adult leaders to come alongside me. I’m excited for the opportunity to pour into these gifted people and grow with them in leading our students in the praise and pursuit of God through Jesus Christ.

All that to say, a lot of very formative stuff has been happening in my life over the past two years, and that’s why I’ve been inactive here. However, at this point I really feel like the Lord is releasing me to “go public,” and the timing is right if I’m going to pursue a life’s work in music and writing. I’m going to be building this blog, along with my new YouTube channel, as a public platform for ministry and engaging with the world around me. There’s going to be all sorts of new weekly content, mostly focused on the topics of worship and Christian living, with a large helping of lifestyle content on the side covering anything that’s personally interesting to me. I’m into a lot of different things (from survival to swing dancing). I’m also in the process of establishing some better habits and rhythms in my life in the area of health and fitness, and just generally growing into adult life. I want to share a little bit about what’s working for me.

Thanks for following along and being a part of the journey! I love real talk so I hope you’ll feel free to jump in and engage here in the comment section, whether we’re friends in person yet or not. Take care!

~Andrew

Springsteen again, and Chesterton; on breaking out

by Andrew Micah, posted in calling, culture, music, Uncategorized

“You can’t conform to the formula of always giving the audience what it wants, or you’re killing yourself and you’re killing the audience. Because they don’t really want it either. Just because they respond to something doesn’t mean they want it. I think it has come to the point where they respond automatically to the things they think they should respond to. You’ve got to give them more than that. Someone has to take the initiative and say, “Let’s step out of the mold. Let’s try this.” -Bruce Springsteen, quoted in Two Hearts by Dave Marsh

As I read the above this morning, I was reminded of a quote from G.K. Chesterton: “Madness does not come by breaking out, but by giving in; by settling down in some dirty, little, self-repeating circle of ideas; by being tamed.” It’s the refusal to be vulnerable and break out into new ways of thinking and seeing and expressing that leads to the death of insight, creativity, and ultimately sanity. Part of the job of an artist is to help people experience the world with fresh perspective. You’re not there to give people what they think they want per se. You’re there to surprise them, to help them break out, to lead them into reality where they’ve been drawing back. The safe approach of meeting pre-existing taste is not only self-serving (the only reason you’d do it consciously and deliberately is to satisfy your own  for attention), but taken to its extreme, leads to insanity and ultimately kills the things that art exists to preserve and give life to.

The unreflecting filament

by Andrew Micah, posted in imagination, Uncategorized

Learning, really learning, about the lives of people who have accomplished truly great things can be like inspecting an incandescent light and realizing that there is a burning filament at the heart of it all; something in and of itself very small through which power is surging, slowly consuming it, but filling the space around it with a glow. Like that filament, the people who accomplish great things–not just historically noteworthy things in an amoral sense, but noble and meaningful things–give themselves up to being possessed by the efforts they care too much about to set aside or take long rest from. They are too busy burning with desire and conviction and the yearning to reveal some uncreated glory to really take a lot of time to reflect on themselves and enjoy what they have done and become. The burning filament, even if it was a person, couldn’t step outside the light bulb and enjoy the light that it gives off without turning off the light. It is too preoccupied with the pain and passion that makes it shine to enjoy itself in the way that a spectator might. Its joy is in the burning and the light that is coming through it. There is a sense in which true greatness is self-unconscious. The moment that we become comfortably self-aware and self-satisfied is the moment that we stop accomplishing things. This is how artists flame out.