Hello church family!
My name is Trey Penton. I occasionally run the cameras on Sunday morning. I’m also a songwriter and I just started medical school at USF. This past week I wrote and recorded a new song that I wanted to share with you because I think that it has a lot to do with what we are experiencing as a church body. The song is posted on my blog here.
I went ahead and posted the lyrics here so you can follow along as I explain them:
“The Proper Way To Raise The Dead”
I went down to the battlefield and found I only had a trumpet in my hand. A tiny joke, I thought at first, but now I know that it could be what you had planned. But if you don’t need anything Why would you ask for help from me again? I need a sign, a rock on fire, a jar of wine, some sort of fleece to keep inside my head. ‘Cuz I’m unsure and will be until I learn the proper way to raise the dead. But if you can’t bring anything Would you take this cup from me again? There’s a peace in four long years, a decade each, that seems to be what you had planned Where you could take this mess of arteries and veins and turn it all into a man. And I know you don’t need anything But could you please just speak through me again? ‘Cuz when you ask for anything It’s just a benefit to me in the end.
As I started medical school two weeks ago, I read through the story of Gideon in the book of Judges (Chapters 6-8 to be exact), and I felt like I could identify with his character and the relationship he had with God. So the first line of every verse has something specific that is related to Gideon’s story but that also means something to me personally.
The first verse starts with a trumpet in a battlefield which is more or less how Gideon defeated the Midianites (Ch. 7). It also explains my own inadequacies of entering medical school with only a guitar in my hand (metaphorically), and that although it seems odd to me, it may be just what God has planned. The last two lines of this verse express an issue I think many Christians have dealt with. Throughout the Bible, it is shown that God doesn’t need anyone, especially humans, to bring himself glory. In fact, He doesn’t need us for anything; we are the ones who need Him. So why does he ask us to do certain things in this life? Does He secretly really need our help?
The second verse starts with the notion that, like Gideon, I constantly feel that I need God to show me signs that He is with me. Gideon’s signs included a rock on fire and a fleece, and I threw in the jar of wine to reference the first miracle of Jesus as you could say it was his first “sign”. The second line just reiterates that without God making His presence known I will continue to be unsure of myself as a doctor unless, like Jesus, I am able to raise the dead. The final two lines of the verse reference Jesus’ prayer in the garden of Gethsemane where He prays to the Father to take the cup of the crucifixion away. Of course Jesus followed this by saying “Your will be done Lord” but here I only insist that if God doesn’t show me a sign that He please take away this responsibility from me.
The third verse starts with a kind of confusing line if you don’t know the story of Gideon really well. After Gideon defeated the Midianites, there were 40 years of peace in Israel. So it’s a reference to that but I’m also trying to say that these four years of medical school (though they seem like a decade each) will be a time of peace for me if they are in fact something that God has planned for my life. The second line is just an anatomy filled way of saying God may help me grow during this time. In the last two lines of this verse, it does indeed seem as if I have grown up a bit. I identify once more that God doesn’t need anything for Himself but I follow by actually asking Him to use me instead of sort of complaining that He is using me like in the first verse. Why the change of heart you ask????????
It’s explained in the last two lines of the song:
Recently, I’ve discovered something startlingly true about God’s character. Whenever He asks us to do something or go somewhere, it always proves to be beneficial to us personally in the end. And this is the main point I am trying to make to you, my church family. While helping out the local community in practical ways like adopting B.T. Washington Elementary by paying for hundreds of backpacks and cleaning their grounds may seem like a lot of work and an inconvenience at times, but it will benefit us tremendously as a church. If you take away the fact that we are getting an opportunity to help others (which is a benefit in itself), we are still profiting in so many ways! The benefits I myself can see immediately include but are not limited to: strengthening our individual and collective character as a church, becoming refocused on the mission of loving others that was at the heart of Jesus’ ministry, and forming and strengthening new bonds of friendship with each other as we work towards a common goal. And that’s just the beginning! Remember, the Bible says that the plans God has are far beyond anything we can even imagine because His ways are far superior to our own. So the next time you find yourself being discouraged by God’s seemingly strange plans for your personal life or for our church, take heart and be encouraged by the fact that God wouldn’t ask you or us to move in a certain direction if it wouldn’t turn into an incredible blessing in the end.
Love,
Trey