The tone we seek to set

Some time ago, I said that the tone, the feel, the vibe I am aiming for at PCF on Sunday mornings is ‘a sweet seriousness.’ I get that phrase from Henry Martyn, the great missionary to India. He wrote in his journal, “I felt the need of setting apart a day for the restoration of my soul by solemn prayer. My views of eternity are become dim and transient…I sought to pause, and to consider what I wanted, and to look up with fear and faith, and I found the benefit; for my soul was soon composed to that devout sobriety, which I knew, by its sweetness, to be its proper frame.”

Sweet sobriety?! Martyn’s words sound paradoxical to us. Our culture doesn’t often put those two things together, but they belong together. God calls us to a serious (earnest) and sweet (joyful) pursuit of him on Sunday mornings and in all of life. Paul modeled this serious pursuit of Jesus in Philippians 3 when he said he counted all things as loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus (Philippians 3.8). He modeled this earnestness when he said that dying is gain because it means more of the presence of Christ (Philippians 1.21). And he modeled this sweetness when he related the transformative, life-upturning effects of his personal experience of Jesus’ love for him (2 Corinthians 5.14-15). Sweetness and seriousness are not opposites!

John Piper gets at this same truth when he uses the phrase ‘the deep gladness of momentous gravity.’ And the poet and priest George Herbert also understood this. Addressing Jesus, he prayed: ‘My brother, my friend, my Lord and King, who makes my joys to weep, and my griefs to sing.’ Herbert is saying that as Christians there is a seriousness in our joy and a gladness in our grief.

That’s what I’m aiming to express on Sunday mornings.

Posted by Stephen Witmer on Apr 17, 04:12 PM