The Sun Will Rise...

During Passion Week last week, I tweeted a harmony of the chronology as recorded by the four gospels, based on The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah by Alfred Edersheim.

In the Twitter sphere where humanity gets wrapped up in movies, bashing political figures, debating social justice issues, and showing off what they ate for lunch today, I wanted to bring to remembrance perhaps the most neglected One on Twitter - God in the flesh Himself. The very real memories He has of Passion Week must be the substance of our friendship with Him, as I briefly wrote about before starting last week.

My chronology is by no means comprehensive, but hopefully is a good representation of the events of Jesus' final week leading up to His death on the cross. In order to make the scriptures clickable, I did edit these tweets from their original form on my Twitter account by expanding "Jn" to "John", "Mt" to "Matthew", etc. Besides those edits, the lines below are exactly what I tweeted in order last week.

I hope this summary serves to encourage you and strengthen your friendship with Jesus.

Sunday

• Beginning today through next Sunday, I'll be tweeting a chronological narration of the events of Jesus' passion. Stay tuned! #passionweek
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From about age 9 until my early teen years I remember looking forward to camping in the woods of New England with my church's youth group. We would pack our provisions and drive several hours to set up our camp with the basics - shelter, food, and fire. We learned essential wilderness survival skills, knots, safe food storage, and water purification. The older ones taught the younger ones, and everyone learned and grew together. We were far from the comforts of running water, furnaces, air conditioning, and home cooking. We were in the wilderness.

Yet all of us knew that in just a few days we would be back in our comfortable beds with an easily accessible refrigerator and microwave oven. In other words, we knew that our setup at camp was just transient and temporary. We did not use brick and mortar to build our shelters, we patched holes in our tents and tarps with duct tape. We did not construct the fire pit to last for years of harsh winters. We did not bring enough food and water for more than a week. Though we were extremely grateful that we had protection from the rain, food for our bellies, and soap to clean our hands, we did not seek to overhaul our camp into our permanent home. As we camped, we let our small "delicacies" remind us of home cooking. We let our lawn chair remind us of our dad's plush lounge chair and blanket back home. Even just a day or two into our trip, we would all be longing for the comforts of home again.

In our day, some parts of the church are experiencing a resurgence of interest in the book of the Song of Solomon. Instead of bearing the stigma of an obscure book about love and marriage from the Old Testament, the book is increasingly being understood as an allegory between Jesus and His bride. Though this was probably not the primary reason for its inclusion in the canon of Scripture, the wisdom of the Holy Spirit is evidently seen in its resurgence as it undergirds the New Testament truths of Jesus as a bridegroom and His body as His bride (Matthew 9:15, Ephesians 5:32, Revelation 19:7).

The Song can be enthralling for some because the short phrases and affectionate language can be mined for meaning. Though there is enormous devotional value in the words of the Song, we must remember to hold it in its rightful place as we grow in friendship with Jesus.

Because friendship is based on relational knowledge, we can never grow in friendship with someone solely by reading an elaborate poem written about them. Once we get to know our friend, poetry may bring to remembrance the words and actions of our friend and help us appreciate them more. But the poem itself is not what made us be their friend initially, nor do the words of the poem come to mean more to us than the words from their own lips. No matter how beautifully expressive the writing is, a poem can never replace the presence of the person when it is a person we actually love.

It's been several years since I've interviewed some of the other musicians here at IHOP-KC. In the past I've had the privilege of hearing from Jordan Vanderplate, electric guitarist, Cassie Campbell, bassist, Francisco "Paco" Arteaga, drummer, and Gabriel Hancock, also a drummer. Today's interview is with David Whitworth, the drummer for Cory Asbury's worship team at IHOP-KC. I hope David's answers encourage and provoke you musicians and singers!

Josh: Hey David, I really appreciate you sharing with us! Before I jump into some questions, give us a little bit of your story.

David: Hey Josh! Well, a little about myself… I grew up in the small farming town of Bastrop, Texas. It's about 20 minutes from Austin. I was raised in a Christian home. I lived on a farm with goats, cows, dogs, chickens… the whole deal. Drumming for me started at a fairly young age. When I was a little 6 year old I would run around banging on tables, counters, pots, pans, basically anything and everything. My mom got me a small drum kit so I would stop taking the kitchenware. I never took drum lessons growing up, I just started and figured stuff out. I found myself in my room practicing for 4-5 hours a day. I would figure out the drum parts for all the Hillsong United albums. I was so drawn to worship music early in life because I would always encounter the presence of the Lord listening and practicing to those albums. At that point in my life all I wanted to do was play in Hillsong United or be in the NBA! I started playing full time with my church at the age of 12. After high school I went to the University of Texas at San Antonio for two years studying music technology. At the Christmas break in 2006 my friend invited me to a Onething Conference in Kansas City. I had a life changing encounter with God and have been on full-time staff at IHOP for almost 5 years now.