As For Me -- Chris Tomlin, Jason Ingram, Pat Barrett, and Joshua

 

Control and Choice. That in a very succinct way describes what Pat Barrett, Jason Ingram, and Chris Tomlin were discussing one day in 2020. Their joint thinking process led one of them to recall something he’d read, and as they all talked about the episode when Joshua challenged the people (Joshua 24:14-15) (see the map-graphic here that shows Shechem, where Joshua issued what some might say was a dare), a song emerged that used this ancient leader’s own words “As For Me”. Pat especially thought a lot about what Joshua’s words meant, and what effects that should have for his family and himself. It is rather incongruous, seemingly, that the Almighty God, the Creator and Guide and Protector, the One who brought the people through the wilderness, would then prompt Joshua to say that the people had to right to choose, that they did possess some control. What would a people or an individual do with that? Why would God take a risk on people who could turn away? Take one more look at Him before you do.

 

Perhaps that was what Pat Barrett and his two musical collaborators did, and what they saw that Joshua also modeled some 3,300 years ago as he told the people to exercise their memories and then choose. He told them all about their ancestors’ days since the time of Abraham, right up until that moment, so they were thinking about all that God had meant to them jointly in their history. So how could they say anything else but ‘Yes, we will follow Him!’. Joshua told them ‘As for me…’, and the people essentially responded, ‘we too…we’re with you’. Pat said in an interview 33 centuries later what all the choice for God has meant for him, in a similar way that really echoes what those Israelites must have considered as well. Pat said it’s really stunning to understand that you and I have a say in how our lives proceed, but that this kind of control certainly doesn’t extend to everything we see and touch. No one can make you serve God, Pat remembered, and so lots of people do not, unfortunately. And, to underscore this point, the world turned and seemed very chaotic in 2020, and Pat recalled a feeling of helplessness was very present. And yet, we can all make a contribution, even if each of us thinks of himself as insignificant and really incapacitated when it comes to everything around us. But, when it comes to one’s own family and what goes on inside your home’s four walls, you can make choices about what values will prevail in that space. Pat (and his wife, Megan?) decided that that was a principle to guide their family, and he says that the song’s bridge helped remind him that choosing God should permeate ‘…every room, [and be on] every wall, and door’, so to speak. A Christian’s lifestyle doesn’t have to be ‘flashy’, he said, but one’s own family can decide how to be around others, including those who might enter their home; so, being ‘present’, and ‘gracious’, ‘generous’, ‘hospitable’, holding to the ‘truth’, and ‘forgiving’ others, and also capable of having the ‘hard conversations’…in short, being all of the things that are ‘Godly and good’, as Pat put it, is someone making the decision to exercise control and make a choice in one’s own life.

 

‘As for me’ means seeing who He is and has been for you, and making the choice to stay with Him. Pat ended the interview by saying that ‘as for me’ has been a daily selection, and a way that spurs him to reflect each day about whom he’s serving. Be honest with yourself, Pat said. Have there been other gods elbowing their way into my space, coaxing me to look in their direction? In Pat’s life, he’s had to watch out for popularity (as a performer), but also fear. Do those have control, and steer one’s course? You can be a pastor’s/minister’s/elder’s kid, and have Joshua’s words at Shechem on your lips, but does that itself become a risk, something that becomes too familiar? Pat hinted that that was something he’d thought about too (since he was a pastor’s kid). Does my Creator see me essentially as a part of my family’s lineage – as many of Joshua’s day, and later also, might have thought? I – me, myself, and I -- make my way with Him, or I don’t. No one else can do it for me. Jesus opened the door, certainly. Will you walk through it?  

 

See/hear the song story here (at 3:05 – 11:22) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWT5StJU2XU

 

See information on the map image here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shechem and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shechem#/media/File:Nablus_and_Balata_in_the_Survey_of_Western_Palestine_1880.11_(cropped).jpg …This file is in the public domain because it is a mere mechanical scan or photocopy of a public domain original, or – from the available evidence – is so similar to such a scan or photocopy that no copyright protection can be expected to arise. The original itself is in the public domain for the following reason: This work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 70 years or fewer. {{PD-1996}} – public domain in its source country on January 1, 1996 and in the United States.

The Family Prayer Song -- Morris Chapman and Joshua

 

Morris Chapman was thinking of his own family, and probably many other men’s families too when he uttered some words that echoed what an ancient leader of Hebrews said to admonish a people who were at a crossroads. It was in a place called Shechem (see the map-image of Shechem here), where Joshua told the people “As for Me and My House”, we will serve the Lord (Joshua 24:15). (The song’s title is alternately “The Family Prayer Song.) It had been a long struggle, and Joshua sensed that the people needed to be challenged – ‘Whom will you serve?’ Morris, some 3,400 years later, was a music leader of Promise Keepers in 1995, and could he have been having similar feelings as his ancient predecessor? It is a question that people of faith should be asking themselves many times along the journey, for there are many crossroads; who is my God, and am I really serving Him?

 

It's not explicitly indicated in the song’s details, nor among the 20^th Century composer’s information that is available in the open, to explain the circumstances of the evolution of ‘The Family Prayer Song’, but certain elements can be reasonably assumed. Morris obviously didn’t just arrive at the key phrase in the song on his own, so there was some situation among Morris’ contemporaries which called to mind what Joshua said to the Israelites so long ago, after they had arrived in the Promised Land and achieved in large measure the objectives that God had set before them. They still had much to do, however, and Joshua was therefore intent on getting their attention to not let up and become complacent; what happened later – as told throughout the book of Judges – was what Joshua must have feared. Much of what Promise Keepers has stood for, from its inception in the early 1990s, has been about men being who God intended them to be – committed to men-women marriage, including in monogamous relationships, strong fatherhood, and racial harmony. One can see why Morris might have written about God-serving with the words that Joshua first used, and then with some of his own too, to counter the drift in American culture that was ongoing in the early and mid-1990s. He must have thought that Joshua was thinking similarly, when Morris lyricized about God ‘filling…homes with your presence’, giving Him ‘reverence’. Being ‘holy’ before Him was also really recalling what Joshua admonished the people to do, by getting rid of the foreign idols among them. And then Morris turned his 20^th Century crowd’s attention on themselves just a bit, by reminding them that by ‘staying’ and ‘praying’ with each other was part of their therapy, because ‘storm(y) weather’ was threatening; family members needed to practice ‘harmony and love’, and especially commit to being in ‘God’s word’. People ‘need each other’, Morris said, and that’s something that has always been true, from Joshua’s days – and indeed from the very beginning, when God made Eve for Adam – until our own time. We don’t live alone here, and we cannot make it without Him either.

 

Morris certainly didn’t say anything new, did he? But, how often do we actually express the thoughts in what’s spelled out in his lyrics? We might go through the motions just a bit too easily – attending church, carrying a bible, singing songs, giving money to charity, clasping our hands and bowing heads, and even in eating a piece of cracker and swallowing a few drops of juice. If that sums up what I do, without more depth, I probably need to do a bit of self-examination. And, as Joshua and Morris would probably say also, I need to make myself accountable to some others in this. They might see something that I don’t, like am I wavering in some of the basics, and allowing God to be pushed aside on occasion. That matters, because that’s how other gods make their inroads, just a little bit at a time. Have I accomplished something that might put me in self-congratulatory mode, like what happened some 3,400 years ago? Is there a crossroads in sight for you, too? Is there a Joshua nearby?      

 

This site indicates the composer’s situation when he wrote the song (music leader of Promise Keepers in 1995):  https://s3.amazonaws.com/media.cloversites.com/19/196db2ea-297d-4503-9a12-49043489c907/documents/June_18_-_Family_Prayer_Song.pdf

 

See here some information about the organization in which the composer-author was involved: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Promise_Keepers

 

See information on the map image here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shechem and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shechem#/media/File:Nablus_and_Balata_in_the_Survey_of_Western_Palestine_1880.11_(cropped).jpg …This file is in the public domain because it is a mere mechanical scan or photocopy of a public domain original, or – from the available evidence – is so similar to such a scan or photocopy that no copyright protection can be expected to arise. The original itself is in the public domain for the following reason: This work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 70 years or fewer. {{PD-1996}} – public domain in its source country on January 1, 1996 and in the United States.