Hymn Hypocrisy

Do you ever feel like a total hypocrite when you realize what is coming out of your mouth at church?

I don’t mean the words of worship and praise for God—those always sound right. And I don’t mean the words of confession of sin or the words of prayer. I am referring to the words of hymns that describe our lives as Christians.

Take, for instance, Frances Havergal’s famous hymn of personal dedication, “Take My Life and Let It Be.” The fourth stanza always makes me feel kind of sheepish (we’d blush if that were possible in this age of no shame): “Take my silver and my gold; Not a mite would I withhold.” I think of my decades of selfishness. Can you sing that stanza with a straight face and mean it?

Martin Schalling wrote a beautiful poem called “Lord, You I Love With All My Heart.” I love singing it, but honestly, it’s not the truth when it comes out of my mouth. I could not look Jesus in the eye and mean it. My love for Jesus is in a daily contest for supremacy with my great love for myself. The best I could honestly claim in court would be, “Lord, you I love with part of my heart,” occasionally surging to “pretty much of my heart.”

Actually, these confident and heroic statements draw their flavor from the psalms. King David writes in Psalm 26:1, “Vindicate me, O LORD, for I have led a blameless life; I have trusted in the LORD without wavering.” How could a man with David’s moral collapses on his record talk like that?

I think the best way to understand Havergal, Schalling, and David is to realize that their confident statements are not intended as evaluations of their personal lives, but rather what they aspired to. Stating our loyalty to an ideal actually helps sweep us along toward that ideal. As long as you and I are on this earth, our lives are stained with sin and only partial obedience to God’s pure will.

My confidence of being his child comes from the promises of the gospel, not my performance. My gratitude at being rescued is such that I wish, I really do, to serve the Lord with all my heart and surrender my entire life, money too, to his agenda. God’s grace not only washes away my sins; it polishes my deeds to look better than they are. Singing lofty hymns, while not actually describing my life perfectly, lifts my spirit to greater heights. I hope those lyrics lift yours too.

http://www.timeofgraceblog.org/2013/03/04/hymn-hypocrisy/