I
got my first electric keyboard when I was eight years old. I think I was in
Primary 3 or 4 at that time. What earned me the keyboard was simple. We had a
music class in school where we had to learn to play the recorder (the plastic
toy-like one). I turned out to be pretty impressive for a girl my age at
playing the recorder and dad noticed. So he promised to get me a way better
instrument – a real saxophone. I got a keyboard instead. Many years later, from
conversations with dad, I now suspect that he got the keyboard because he
always wished he knew how to play the instrument, and since he couldn’t, he
hoped his children would be able to. Yeah,
that’s not selfish at all. *wink*.
Okay,
at this point, I should clarify that dad didn’t buy that keyboard specifically
for me. He got it for all of us kids, but I happened to be the only one
interested in it, so I took control of it and luckily, my siblings didn’t
object.
Twenty-One
years later and a newer, bigger electric keyboard (standing right beside where I write now), I still cannot play the keyboard
to save my life.
While
I agree that my musical intelligence is highly pathetic, I must say that I know
a few things about instruments. I know that:
- An instrument cannot play itself. It requires the input of a musician – skilled or amateur (like me) to produce sound from it.
- The quality of music produced from an instrument is highly dependent on the skills of the musician who plays it.
- If an instrument refuses to yield to the musician – if the keys of the piano are too stiff; if the pedals of the drum-set wouldn’t move; if the strings of the guitar or violin are broken – the instrument cannot be played; at least, not to its optimum performance. A good musician will try to get his instrument fixed; however, if the instrument doesn’t bulge after his efforts, he’ll get a replacement.
These
things I know for sure… And you know, it kind of explains Romans 6:13.
Neither yield ye your members as instruments of
unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are
alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.
– Romans 6:13
For
a long time, I thought I had to bring the music out of my life. I thought it
was my job to do the work that needs to be done to get it right with God. I
thought for many years that Jesus had done the work on Calvary and it was my
turn to get it right for myself – “put in
the hard work, get it right Temi or get out of God’s Big Book of Life.” But
then I read Galatians 3:1-3. In this passage, Paul expressed anger at the
Christians in Galatia for trying to work out their salvation by themselves
without the Holy Spirit who convicted them of sin and caused them to be saved.
Paul, in fact, told them it was foolish to even think like that.
Here’s
part of what he told them:
Let me put
this question to you: How did your new life begin? Was it by working your heads
off to please God? Or was it by responding to God’s Message to you? Are you
going to continue this craziness? For only crazy people would think they could
complete by their own efforts what was begun by God. – Galatians 3:2-3 (The Message)
Hmmm…
So it meant I was doing it wrong.
A
while later, I found out, through study of my Bible, that that portion of the
Bible where we are asked to work out our salvation with fear and trembling has
a follow-up verse. No one told me about verse 13. They always stopped at 12. So
who could blame me for trying – working my salvation out – with literal fear
and obvious trembling?
Oh
how liberating it was to find the treasure in verse thirteen!
For it is God which worketh in you both to will
and to do of his good pleasure. –
Philippians 2:13
That
certainly buttressed Paul’s point in Galatians. Working out one’s salvation
isn’t the work of an individual by himself. He has to do it in partnership with
the Holy Spirit – God taking the lead. You cannot do it by yourself; you’ll
only crumble under the weight of it all. If it was something you could do for
yourself, Jesus needn’t have come to die for us. If we could maintain our
salvation by ourselves, we could as well have saved ourselves from the start.
This
truth perhaps goes to show the difference between the Christian who lives in
line with God’s principle and those who live carnally. If we would ask Paul
today, “How can God work in us to will
and to do of His good pleasure?”
He’ll
refer us to Romans 6:13, and give us this simple answer: Yield!
To yield is to “give up or
surrender oneself; to give over, to relinquish, to resign oneself to something
else.”
What
amazes me most about that verse is that Paul didn’t ask believers to only yield
ourselves to God. He also asks us to yield our bodies as instruments of
righteousness unto God.
So,
back to instruments… Being told to yield ourselves as instruments unto God, we
can rightly say that God is our Musician and we are His Musical Instruments. If
we yield to Him, He’ll produce amazing Music from our lives. Just as an
instrument cannot play itself, in the same way, we cannot play music off of
ourselves. We cannot become perfect by our own human efforts. We cannot work
out our own salvation without Him working in and through us for His good
pleasure. We need the input of the Master Musician to produce beautiful music
out of our lives. How Amazing! How Relieving!
But…
If
you followed closely, you’ll realize that I skipped something. I didn’t mention
that there are two musicians – both, highly skilled. The earlier phrase in Romans
6:13 tells us of another musician - Sin.
There are two musicians; and this goes to show that unlike my inanimate
keyboard that has no choice as to who plays it, every person decides which
musician plays him/her. Your choice against one musician is an automatic choice
for the other. So, the difference between a believer who pleases God and he who
pleases the devil is the choice each made on to whom he’ll yield.
God
wants to produce pleasant music out of our lives. He wants our lives to call
the world’s attention of His love and sacrifice on Calvary. He wants the music
of our lives to turn others to Him. But this is completely dependent upon us.
Yes, it is foolish to try to finish what God began, but God won’t force Himself
against our will. If you refuse to yield as an instrument in His hand, it will
be difficult for Him to produce good music out of your life.
So
my friends, to whom do you yield?
