First Friday Evening of Music & Singing
There's a popular contemporary song - you've probably heard it - that ponders what it'll be like when we finally get to Heaven. It's called, "I Can Only Imagine," and yes, it's one of my favorites. You see, I've pondered what we'll do for an eternity when we finally get there.
And as usual, we can not see with God's perspective so, as the song says, we can only imagine. On the other hand, God gave us His Word so we can have as good an understanding as possible, and we know something about what Heaven will be like. Two things in particular come to my mind.
I like the way a friend of mine put it once. His name is Mark Jones, and he's the Worship Minister (that's Song Leader to most of us) for Trinity Bible Church in Richardson, TX. He once said of Jeff Miller (then the Teaching Pastor, preacher to the rest of us, and also a friend) that once we got to Heaven he'd be out of a job. He said in Heaven there would be no need for preaching. Instead, we'd spend eternity worshipping and praising, which meant he'd still be doing what he already loves to do.
This is the first thing we know about what Heaven will be like, that we'll spend our time worshipping and praising God. Now at first blush this might bother some people. You might be thinking, "Won't that get boring after awhile?" But if you think about it just a little bit, I think you'll agree not.
Think about young people, twenty-something year olds, or little rubber people as I like to call them. Come Friday evening they go out to meet their friends and will spend the entire weekend, forty eight hours non-stop, dancing and cavorting with their friends. They will literally go without sleep just to continue cavorting with their friends and worshipping whatever dance band is popular this week.
But instead of asking why they do it, ask yourself why we don't. And if you think it's because we've become too mature for such childish behavior, tune into any NFL football game on any Sunday and look at the middle-aged fat men, their shirtless torsos painted their team's colors, standing out in freezing weather and screaming like the lead actress in a 1980's teen slasher movie.
No the reason we don't party for 48 hours each weekend is simple. It hurts too much. We simply don't have the stamina of those little rubber people. But to the extent that we can, each of us worships something, be it a dance band or a football team or a career. And we push ourselves to our physical limits to do so.
So the reason that young people act the way they do is because it's what God built us for. Worship and fellowship is as much a need for us as is air. Unfortunately most of us find poor substitutes for God as the focus of our worship, which is why all of it is inevitably unsatisfying. Only God can satisfy our need to worship because only God is deserving of our worship.