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"Survival or Revival?"
This is one of my favorite subjects because I’m sort of a negative person. I’ve always wondered even as a young mother, whether my children would fall into the washing machine and drown. I was that sort of mind-set, bringing my children up.

And so I’ve always been interested as a Christian to know “how come I’m still so negative when God is so positive?” I don’t believe that God has one negative thought in his head. So, it seems rather strange to me that some of his followers, me included, have such a struggle with being positive, with not only surviving the things that happened in the stresses and strains of normal family living and daily living, but actually finding joy in them.

And it’s been interesting to me tonight to hear the beautiful Chorale singing about songs in the night, and then to hear the songs that the Judson Choir sang for us. In their song, they mentioned a song in the night. How do you sing a song in the night? That’s what I want to know.

I mean — after all songs in the day are things that all of us can manage, but a song in the night? I want to know how to do that.

The scripture that was read to us (Psalm 137) was concerning some people who had forgotten how to sing some songs. They were sitting by the waters of Babylon and they had hung up their harps on a weeping willow tree.

And I observe that many Christians and many Christian churches have done just that. They don’t have a song to sing. Some of them don’t even have a song to sing in the day, never mind a song in the night. And I suppose that’s one thing the devil wants more than anything else — to make all the Christians he can feel as miserable as he can make them feel — so that people looking at them say, “Well, if that’s Christianity, I want nothing of it. I’m miserable enough without being a Christian, thank you very much.”

I often think of the picture in the scriptures of the shepherd and the sheep. If you see a whole lot of sheep running after a shepherd and they are scraggly and they are ill fed — one of them has an ear half hanging off, and they look dirty and unkempt, what are you going to say?

Well, I expect you would say, “I wonder which shepherd is looking after those sheep? I’m glad I don’t belong to that flock.” A shepherd is judged by the behavior, by the look, by the condition of the sheep. So the old evil one (the devil) wants to make those believers in Jesus Christ as miserable as he can so that people looking at the sheep will say, “I wonder which shepherd they belong to? I’m glad I don’t belong to that flock.”

It’s very, very important that we know what it is to be a joyful Christian, to be the sort of believer that knows how to get their faith, their hope in action — to make it work in their living room, in their kitchen, in their marriage, in their friendships, in their relationships. Otherwise, what’s the point in being a Christian at all?

How do you sing a song in the day or in the night? Well, these people in the Bible tell us how. I believe they give us some clues, and I want to take you through this Psalm 137 and into one or two other passages of scripture tonight as we think about this. I want to talk about “Survival or Revival” because I bet, like myself, some of you are just thinking “survival”. You say, “Don’t come to me with any upbeat story from the Bible. I am hanging on by my fingernails. My husband just walked out on me. My child just fell ill with some fatal disease. Or — my child is perfectly well and normal but he just hasn’t spoken to me for a long time. We don’t get along.”

You’re not thinking “revival”. You’re not thinking, “How can I love Jesus and serve him?” You’re thinking, “How can I survive motherhood at this point in time?”

Well, these people were thinking the same thing. They had been taken away by a cruel nation. They had been captured. A war had happened within the boundaries of their land. They had been dragged away from all that was familiar and set down in a strange culture and country, more or less as slaves. And their captors as you will remember from scriptures were requiring from them a song. They said, “Come on, sing us one of the songs of Zion. You are believers. Believers are supposed to be merry and bright.”

But they were hapless harpists, or hopeless harpists, or heartless harpists — whatever you like to call them. They had hung up their harps on a weeping willow tree. That’s exactly what it says. “By the waters of Babylon, they had hung up their harps.” They had nothing to sing about.

For just a few moments tonight I want to talk about some of the trees that we hang our harps up on as Christians.

Let’s think first of all about the grief tree. Have you ever hung up your harp on a grief tree? It’s very hard when you are suffering grief, or a grieving process, to sing a song at all. People watch you, of course. The Babylonians watched. Whom did the Babylonians represent? Unbelievers. People who don’t know God, are not familiar with Jesus Christ as their Savior or their Friend, or don’t even go to church. They represent the Babylonians, or the Babylonians represent them.

And the strange thing is, as soon as something goes wrong in a Christian’s life, the unbelievers gather around and they say, “Come on and sing one of those songs. Let’s see how a Christian reacts to this difficult situation, to this grief.” It’s very hard to sing a song when you are grieving. And yet, if a Christian doesn’t have a song to sing, who has? You see, the Christian is supposed to know the Music Maker, the one who said, “Come unto me and I will give you rest.” I will give you rest; I will give you serenity; I will give you peace of mind; I will give you that inner semblance of order in your life; I will hold you together; I will knit you together so you will not become unraveled like a ball of wool that gets all tangled up.

Have you ever been in grief and gone to God and said, '”Oh, Music Master, give me a song to sing?” If you have and you’ve waited on him to renew your strength, he will give you a song to sing. Oh, yes.

I remember some friends of ours who had a very tragic thing happen in their life. They needed a child. They wanted a child. And they couldn’t have a child. He worked in a place that was antagonistic to his beliefs as a Christian. Then one day his wife got pregnant. He was so excited. He went back to work (this happened in England), and he said to everybody, “We’re going to have a child.”

Well, they didn’t care. And then the child was born. And oh, horrors of horrors, what grief, for the child was a Mongoloid child. What then could the believer say? He knew that if he went back to work, “the Babylonians” — his workmates — would gather around and say, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion. Go on.”

“They that wasted us required of us a song,” the scriptures say.

And he was right because the people gathered round at the workplace and they said, “That’s strange. We don’t believe in God and our children are healthy. You believe in God and he gave you a Mongoloid child. Go on. Sing us a song.”

My friend, in telling me this story, said that he stood there aghast, dismayed, but within him he turned to his Lord and his Savior, Jesus Christ, and he said, '”Oh, Music Master, give me a song to sing.”

And his little harp that he had hung on the grief tree was taken down in that moment of time, and God, by the Holy Spirit, brought to remembrance some truths of scripture that encouraged him and looking at their hard, hostile faces, my friend said, “I’m so glad that God gave her to us and not to you.” Now, that’s a song. Oh yes, that’s a song. “I’m so glad God gave this child to us and not to you.”

The Christian has a resource the unbeliever does not have. But not only a resource of strength to cope, not only to survive, but to revive, to find the life of God, the help of God, the comfort of God in these situations — the ability to find even a song to sing in the darkest, darkest night. Oh, he will give you a song in the night.

Have you hung up your harp on the grief tree? Why not take it down and ask the Music Master for a song?

Perhaps it isn’t the grief tree that you have lost your joy in. Perhaps you have hung your harp in the guilt tree. A funny thing about guilt or being guilty, funny thing about looking back in your past with vain regrets. Vain regrets just waste your energy, incidentally. You will have nothing to give for today if you waste your time worrying about yesterday. And yet a lot of us do it. I do it. Because I am a negative type of person, I spend a lot of time hanging up my harp on the guilt tree.

I feel guilty perhaps of not being the mother that I should have been. That sort of hits me every time a child goes off to school or to college. Oh, the things I didn’t do. The walks I didn’t go on. The drinks of water I didn’t take him when he was in bed. The things we didn’t do to make friends with each other. I go to bed and I lie awake and I think, “Oh, what a terrible mother I have been.”

Of course, my child is having a ball at college and he is perfectly happy, and he isn’t losing a wink of sleep, and I learn that soon enough as I get with experienced moms with kids at colleges.

But it doesn’t help my mothering. It doesn’t help me cease feeling guilty because you never do it right as a mother. I don’t care what sort of mother you are. I know that I certainly have never done it all right.

But God has helped me see that I have not done it all wrong either, and he has helped me to stop feeling guilty about things that I cannot do a thing about and wasting all my energies looking back on my life with vain regrets. And I’ve been enabled to take the little harp down from the weeping willow tree and say, “God, forgive me for the mothering things that I did not do right. Make it up to that child. Don’t let them suffer because I was not the mother that you wanted me to be. Give me a song to sing.”

God has forgiven my mother guilt. He has forgiven me for being a bad mother. He has encouraged me to see that I have been not too bad a mother here and there. And he will do the rest. He will answer the prayers I have prayed for my children. He will follow them down the road of life. And even if they end up in a pigsty — Jesus told a story once about a child ending up in a pigsty and he told the story to encourage those of us that perhaps have a child sitting in a pigsty of life. Do you know what he said? He said that he met the child where he was in the pigsty and he dealt with him. And the child came to himself and he said, “I will arise and go to my father,” which he did. That was a wonderful story for Jesus to tell.

It was a wonderful story for Jesus to tell because it encourages a lot of us today. Perhaps we don’t have a child in the pigsty, but perhaps if we do — and incidentally, this was a Jewish boy, and you can’t get further away from your roots and your background than a pigsty if you’re a Jewish boy — and those of you who know what I’m talking about know that Jews don’t like eating pork — and here was a Jewish boy sitting in a pigsty, so that’s a long, long way from home, a long, long way from Mom and Dad, a long, long way from where he was brought up.

Some of our children will do that. They’ll go to school — they'll kick up their heels. They’ll throw the whole thing overboard. But do you know something? You can follow them into that pigsty with prayers. You can stand on the rooftops like the man in the story in Luke’s gospel and watch for them to come home, and you can pray. And one day you will see them coming home because God will meet the child in the pigsty.

Sometimes he meets the child in the pigsty and deals with him better than he meets the child who has stayed at home in the pew. The story had one of those too. He was the young man who would never have dreamed of — maybe he was too chicken to do what he wanted to do in his heart — but he stayed in church and he was not only bored, he got angry, and he got mad, but he never kicked up his heels and he never ended up in the pigsty. And yet the father had to go out to him too and ask him to come back in — into his home, into the feast.

Maybe we’re feeling guilty and we’ve hung up our little harp on the guilt tree tonight. Don’t do that. Take it down. Say to God, “Whatever sort of a parent I have been, I’m sorry. Forgive me.” And he will. And he will deal with the guilt and the sin, and he will enable you to be the mother that you ought to be NOW and tomorrow, and into the future.

Yes, he will. I know because he has done it to me. He has given me many a song in the night. You know — guilt is holding a grudge against yourself. We know that we shouldn’t hold grudges against other people. But why do we hold guilty grudges against ourselves? Holding a grudge against yourself is so stupid. You are saying, “I don’t forgive me for what God has already forgiven.” Let me put that another way. What God has forgiven me, I have no right to remember.

There are many things that I cannot help but remember because I am human. God can forget because he can will to forget. He says, “Your sins I will remember no more.” I can’t do that because I am human, but one day when I get to heaven, I am going to say, “Oh, God, do you remember that?”

And he’s going to say to me, “No, what — what, Jill?” because he has forgiven what I asked him to forgive. So what God has forgiven me for, I have no right not to forgive myself. Guilt is holding a grudge against yourself. Take your harp off the guilt tree. It’s not worth it.

Now there are many, many trees that we can hang our harps up on. There’s the grief tree. There’s the guilt tree. And we haven’t time tonight to go into all the others. There’s the gripe tree: “When I complain, my spirit is overwhelmed,” says scriptures. And whenever we get gripy about something, then we get overwhelmed. We’ll go down under it.

I remember in the days when Stuart (that’s my husband) and I were missionaries with young people and we didn’t have too much money and we were trying to work among street kids — gangs of young people in the streets. And I needed a piano. We didn’t have any money to buy one so I put an ad for it in the paper. Quite a rich, wealthy lady that I knew in the city who wasn’t a believer, but she was a friendly lady, saw my ad and called me and said, “I just got a new piano. You can have my old one.” And you know, I got suddenly quite upset and I said, “I don’t want your old one. I want your new one.” Now that was a terrible thing to say and I would like to tell you that for my rudeness, I didn’t get either piano — the new or the old one.

Why was I so upset? I’ll tell you. As a missionary I got fed up with God getting the old piano, that’s why. Why does God always get the old piano? Can you tell me that? But he does. And suddenly, because I love God with all my heart, and because Jesus Christ came into my life when I was eighteen years of age and turned me inside out and upside down, and because he has given me life and joy and peace and songs to sing in the night, I just got tired of somebody saying, “I got a new piano, and God can have the old one.”

And I began to complain in my spirit and I lost my joy. And as a young missionary, I hung up my harp on the gripe tree and God said, “Come to me. Wait on me. And I will give you a song to sing.” And he helped me take my harp down and say, “It really doesn’t matter if I get a piano or not. What really matters is that I love these kids. I’ve still got me. If we don’t get a piano, we can sing without it. What does it matter?”

That’s what matters. I had Jesus to give even if I had a piano or not. And God gave me a song to sing.

But, one more tree. What about the geriatric tree? Have you ever hung up your harp on the geriatric tree? You say, “No.” Well, I have. You might think that’s rather strange. I am going to be 50 and I don’t know how many times I’ve been on the Sunday Evening Club, but I get older each time I come.

And I don’t know whether I like that feeling. But this year I’m going to have a very tough birthday. It’s called 5-0, and I’ve been hanging up my little harp on this geriatric tree, and I’ve lost my joy. I want to tell you why. Because I love God and because Jesus is my Savior, there is so much I want to do for him. There are so many books I want to write, so many places I want to go. I’d love to be a missionary in a hardship post where there is a tribe of people that has not yet heard the name of Jesus. I’d like to give 15 years of my life to learn how to put their language down and bring the scriptures to them so that they might know Jesus too. I’ll never do it. I’m going to be 50. They won't take people who are 50 as first-time missionaries and put them in a tribe that has never heard of Jesus.

So I know now that I am looking back on more than I am looking forward to, and sometimes that gets to me, and I lose my joy. But you know, when I wait on the Music Master, he gives me a song to sing about that, and he tells me that the old eagle mounts up with wings. The old eagle never dies of old age. It grows a big nose, a beak, and it dies of starvation because its beak never stops growing, so they say. Whether it be myth or fact nobody is really sure, but anyway they never find an eagle dying of a disease. They usually find them starving to death because they can’t eat any more.

And do you know why the writer Isaiah himself used that picture, “We shall mount up on wings like an eagle when we wait on the Lord,” is because he said that eagles never die, and to the end of your days you will have the strength and you will have the joy and you will have the power to rise up over the stresses and strains of life. You will be able to find songs to sing; you will be able to keep on going on; you will be able to cope. You will be able to not just survive, but know the revival life of God within, giving you the energizing force you are going to need. Whether you are 5, 15, or 50, God promises, “It shall be so.”

Let me ask you a question. Do you know the Lord Jesus Christ in a personal way or do you just know about him in your head? Is he just a name to you, a figure in a book, somebody in history, or has he ever walked into your life, kicked his shoes off and made himself feel at home, and become your friend, your intimate companion, the one who is going to give you songs in the night? Do you know him like that?

Perhaps you have only known him as a character but not as a friend. Ask him. He is delighted to answer an invitation like that and to come to you in your trouble, in your joyless existence, perhaps even in your depression, and lift your spirits and give you a song to sing.

I would like to encourage you. I’d like to turn you to the scriptures, to turn you back to God. And I’d like to say to you, “Ask him. He is waiting. He’s the Music Maker, the Music Master.” Amen.    

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