Welcome back to Aspastor John. This summer Pastor John is out of the studio preaching in Belfast in Scotland before returning to the States for a 40-day writing leave to finish up a book on Providence on the sovereignty of God a book he started last summer and hopes to finish this summer I cannot wait to see it and all of it the travel the book writing in this very podcast is all made possible by you we are supported by the prayers and the funding of God's people so thank you for generously

investing in this important and eternal work so with Pastor John busy we're diving into our archive of 1500 episodes and this summer we're pulling out some of your favorites about once every 50 episodes we release one that touches a nerve and touches the 300,000 play mark these are the elite episodes in our six and a half year history we only have about 30 of them and here's one of them

you

reckless love that's the mega hit worship song and it's lyrics have reached millions and it's inspired over a dozen emails our way in just the past month like this one from Tim a regular listener to the podcast pastor John hello over the past couple of months

I've been hearing the song reckless love playing over and over in churches and on the radio one of the main lines in the chorus celebrates the overwhelming never ending reckless love of God

my question is is this a biblically and theologically correct way to describe God's love is the term reckless to reckless

I don't want to sound too judgmental but every time I bring this up I get called the Pharisee for focusing on just one word rather than the message of the whole song

just hoping you could shed some light because I truly believe the words matter especially in songs of worship and praise

my response to this concern needs to be expressed to two different groups of people pastors

and lead worshipers on the one hand and I'm lumping those together as worship service shapers

and the congregation on the other hand the shepherds who feed the flock with songs and the sheep

who are asked to savor the truth and the music that they're being fed I have two words for the

pastors and lead worshipers and then something for for the rest of us first we we live in a time of

unprecedented wealth of Christian music and there is no shortage whatsoever of older songs

and newer songs and fresh renditions of older songs that are rock solid in their biblical content

and creative and fresh and powerful both in their lyrics and in their tunes which means that pastors

and lead worshipers are never boxed in to using theologically defective or musically dated

songs if you don't want to if you want to be theologically and biblically faithful

as a lead worshiper and feed your flock with the richest of biblical food and the most engaging

of tunes there is a wealth of old and new to choose from so that you never have to sing something

theologically defective or misleading or unhelpful the second thing I want to say to to pastors and

lead worshipers is that it is your primary responsibility to build into the minds and hearts of the

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