O Lord, You’re Beautiful
The Jesus Revolution
How do you feel when the load you carry is too heavy and your center of gravity is off?
For many of you, when you hear the phrase, “Jesus Music,” what you think of are the 1970s and rock and roll music with Jesus lyrics.
It all started in southern California. This new kind of music entered the church and at first, a lot of people were adamantly opposed. After all, this was different. Very different. People didn’t know what to think.
People with long hair, pianos, guitars, and drum sets were coming into churches and singing songs that sounded similar to what you would hear on the radio but the lyrics were about Jesus.
The songs were loud. The lyrics were pointed. And there was a generation of people who were loving it. Churches who were open to this new kind of music were filling up with all kinds of people they had never reached before.
Time Magazine coined this movement the “Jesus Revolution” on the cover of its magazine on June 21, 1971.
Then, in 1972, this Jesus Revolution came to Dallas. And it was here in Dallas that this Jesus movement took another significant step forward.
Campus Crusade for Christ was happening at the Cotton Bowl and Billy Graham was coming to preach. Even though his advisors were against it, Billy Graham wanted this new Jesus music at the conference.
Conservative Christian churches were opposed to the conference and critical of it because of the “rock music.” But it was undeniable that something was happening.
Keith Green
In 1977, a man by the name of Keith Green came on the scene. His first solo release was a song entitled, “For Him Who Have Ears to Hear,” and it quickly rose to the top of the charts.
Keith felt strongly that he shouldn’t charge money for his music and that the purchase price should be determined by the purchaser. So in 1979 he left his recording label, he and his wife refinanced their home to pay for his next album which featured a guest appearance by Bob Dylan. They shipped out over 200,000 copies of the album, 60,000 for free!
He and his wife Melody had started a ministry and it was experiencing incredible growth. They had moved to Texas and were preparing to go on crusades around the country. Keith was writing songs that resonated with people and was leading thousands of people in worship.
But in 1982, all of that came to a tragic end when Keith was killed in a plane crash at his ranch in east Texas.
The Tragic Flight
Keith and Melody had invited some of their friends, John and Dede Smalley, along with their 6 children to the ranch. John and Dede were church planters and Keith had promised to give them a tour of the ranch from the air.
Keith asked their pilot, Don Burmiester, to get the plane ready. Their ministry leased a 1973 Cessna 414 aircraft that seated 7 people including the pilot.
It was a hot day in July when Keith boarded that plane with 2 of his children, John and Dede Smalley and their 6 children, plus the pilot. If you’re doing the math, that’s 12 people on a 7 seater plane on a hot Texas day in July.
The plane was 450 lbs overweight before take off. The pilot was a retired Marine pilot but he only had 2 hours of flight time in this particular aircraft and in the military, there are people who calculate the load for you. As a civilian pilot, it would have been his job to do this.
No one knows if he did the math or not, but either way… when took off that day his plane was over weight and the center of gravity was off with the balance exceeding the AFT limits.
The gravel runway at the ranch was about 3500 feet long. After that, there was a clearing for another 1500 feet. And then there were trees. The aircraft was never able to get high enough to clear the 30 foot trees. It crashed into those trees and all 12 people aboard that flight, 4 adults and 8 children, died.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZIriTiiJEI[/embedyt]Too Heavy to Carry and Off Center
I am not a pilot or a flight crash investigator, but they say that the reason for this particular plane crash is not a mystery. The plane should have never taken off because it was 450 lbs overweight and the center of gravity was off.
Even though I don’t really understand aerodynamics, Bernoulli’s principle, I don’t fully understand how to calculate the right weight and balance for a particular aircraft, I do understand that this same principle works in all of our lives.
When the load we carry is too heavy and our center of gravity is off, we will crash.
Whenever I sit and talk with people who are going through a dark or difficult time in their lives, these two things are almost always true…
They are Carrying a Heavy Load
They feel responsible for too many things, for too many people. Their stress load is at an all time high. They are tired, weary, and worn. They feel like they have more to do than they can possibly do.
They feel like the weight of the world is on their shoulders. They thought they could do it all, handle it all, keep up with it all. They thought they could keep all the balls in the air, all the plates spinning, but it is too much. They are over extended.
Not only does it feel like everything around them is crashing down, they are crashing as well.
And that’s not just because the load they are carrying is too heavy, it’s also because their center of gravity is off.
Their Center of Gravity is Off
They can’t tell you the last time they prayed, the last time they opened the scriptures to hear a word from God. They can’t tell you the last time they spent time with God just to spend time with God.
They feel like their life is off balance because it is. They aren’t centered.
If you’ve ever had a shopping cart where one of the wheels wobbles and squeals, you know what this is like.
Or if you’ve ever driven a car where the tires weren’t balanced so the whole car shakes when you drive, you know what this is like.
Maybe you remember what it was like when you first learned to ride a bike and how hard it was to keep your balance, but when you finally found that balance point… that’s when you took off!
A lot of people are living life like someone trying to ride a bike for the first time. Constantly out of balance, leaning one way, then the other, and eventually crashing to the ground because they can’t find their center, their balance.
Psalm 27
And if you’ve ever felt this way, or if you feel this way today, you are not alone.
If you’ve ever read the psalms what you’ll find is that this is often the human experience.
In Psalm 27, David writes about a time in his life when the load he was carrying was too heavy for him and his life was out of alignment, out of balance.
Toward the end of the psalm, David hints at what he’s dealing with. He writes,
Psalm 27.11b-12
…for my enemies are waiting for me.
Do not let me fall into their hands.
For they accuse me of things I’ve never done;
with every breath they threaten me with violence.
Anybody ever felt that way?
Like your enemies are against you, like the adversity you’re facing is too much for you, like you’re being falsely accused of things you didn’t do?
Sometimes those enemies are actual people. People we work with, people we thought were our friends, people who are a part of our family, people we thought were on our side but now, for some reason, it seems like they’ve turned against us.
Sometimes those enemies aren’t people, but they are still very much real and still coming against it. Sometimes those enemies are temptations, or struggles, or vices, or addictions, or sin. Sometimes those enemies are physical problems, illness, or pain. Sometimes they are mental, emotional, or even spiritual.
Whatever enemies we’re facing, whatever form they take, they are all real and they all weigh heavy on us.
David prays,
“Do not let me fall into their hands.”
It’s as if he says, “God, if I’ve ever needed you, I need you now!”
Have you ever prayed a prayer like that? I know I have.
When you get to that place where you realize, the load you’re carrying is too heavy, your life is off center and out of balance, the good news is that you don’t have to crash and burn.
The Alternative to Crashing
Listen to what David prays next in the middle of this heavy moment in his life….
Psalm 27.4
The one thing I ask of the Lord—
the thing I seek most—
is to live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life,
delighting in the Lord’s perfections
and meditating in his Temple.
So what do you do, where do you turn, when the load you carry is more than you can bear? How do you center your life and bring your life back into balance?
For a lot of us, when we feel fear we fix our eyes on our problem.
Contrary to popular practice, fixating on fear doesn’t alleviate fear, it only compounds it.
The Icky Sticky Frog
When my kids were little, one of my favorite books to read to them was this book called, “The Icky, Sticky Frog.” I loved reading this book.
Here’s the gist of it… the frog is the main character in this little story.
First he spies a fly, then a beetle, then a grasshopper… and each time he spies one of these creatures his tongue comes out so sticky and long and he eats it!
Now, whenever I would read this book to my kids we had sound effects and everything that made the story even more fun. And on every page, you can see the fear in the eyes of whatever critter the frog was about to eat, until… until you get to the last page.
On the last page, the frog spies a butterfly flying around and what you think is about to happen is that the icky sticky frog is about to eat the butterfly. The butterfly is worried, even scared, BUT it shouldn’t be!
Why?
Because if the butterfly would look past the frog it would see what was on the other side of the frog.
Here’s the last page of the story, and sorry if I’m spoiling the book for you… but here’s how it ends, right as the frog is about to eat the butterfly a large fish jumps out of the water and eats the frog!
You see, the butterfly didn’t have to be afraid because if it had looked past the thing it was afraid of it would have seen something bigger than it’s fear that would defeat his enemy!
Fix Your Eyes
For a lot of us, when we feel fear we fix our eyes on our problem.
But what if we fixed our eyes on something else? On Someone else?
What David writes next is one of my all time favorite verses in all of scripture.
Psalm 27.8
My heart has heard you say, “Come and talk with me.”
And my heart responds, “Lord, I am coming.”
This is the invitation of God… when the load you’re carrying is more than you can bear, when your life is out of balance and off center, Come and talk with God.
O Lord, You’re Beautiful
Who do you turn to when you’re carrying a heavy load and you feel like your life is out of balance?
Before Keith Green died, he wrote the words to this song entitled, “O Lord, You’re Beautiful,” that I believe were inspired by the words of David in Psalm 27.
Oh Lord You’re beautiful
Your face is all I seek
And when Your eyes are on this child
Your grace abounds to me
They say that the Cessna 414 with Keith Green and 11 other people on board didn’t have to crash that day. It should have never taken off in the first place, but it didn’t have to crash. After all the trees it crashed into were only 30 feet tall. That’s not that tall!
Human nature in that situation for the pilot and for any of us is to pull up the nose of the plane as much as possible to try and get high enough to get over the trees in front of us.
A lot of us do the same thing in our lives. We’re constantly trying as hard as we can to get us and the load we’re carrying up over the next obstacle in front of us, past the next thing before us.
What the pilot could have done, even though this would have been against his natural instinct, he could have pointed the nose of the aircraft down, leveled off, gained speed and ground effect, that would have then given him the ability to lift up over the trees.
Which I think is really interesting. The only way to save his life and the lives on board the plane that day was stay low to gain the speed necessary so the air could lift them up over the 30 foot trees!
The same is true in life…
Humble Yourself
James, the brother of Jesus, said it this way…
“Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.” – James 4.10
If the pilot had stayed low he could have been lifted over the trees.
But the pilot did what so many of us do and have done when we’ve got a heavy load and there are trees on the horizon. He kept pulling on the stick. He fought as hard as he could. And then, he crashed.
You know what the secret is though, don’t you?
The real secret to life, to Living Different, is not to wait until you’re carrying a heavy load and your life is off center and out of balance to humble yourself before the Lord.
I’m not a pilot but I’ve got a strong feeling that airplanes fly best when they are carrying a load that is within it’s weight limit and its balance point is where it should be. When its load and balance are within the limits it was designed to carry, it can fly! I mean, really fly!
The same is true for you, you fly best when you’re carrying the load you were created to carry and your life is centered on Jesus. And by the way, Jesus said his yoke is easy and his burden is LIGHT!
You were never created to carry a heavy load.
The invitation of Jesus is to lay your burdens down and center your life on Him.
Come and Talk with Me
What if we lived this way?
What is we as a church laid our burdens down? What if we stopped carrying such heavy loads and what if our lives were truly centered on Jesus?
Psalm 27.8
My heart has heard you say, “Come and talk with me.”
And my heart responds, “Lord, I am coming.”
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