A couple of years back, this song “How He Loves” surfaced. Written by John Mark McMillan, I actually heard a version from Eddie Kirkland first. I was immediately in love with it. The poetry and imagery were strong and beautiful. The message was inspiring. As a guy who really struggles to believe how much God loves me, it was very refreshing for me to listen to. However, then I began to hear it being used all over in corporate worship settings and I was frankly very concerned.

I always strive to maintain a Christ-centered, gospel-centered approach to my worship leadership. If the glory of Christ and the cross are not the focus of our songs and the thrust of everything we are presenting in a corporate worship gathering, it’s all pointless. As a result, it’s been incredibly easy for me to gravitate toward the truth that Jesus died for His glory, but unfortunately, it’s often been at the expense of believing it was out of His love for us as well. I regrettably have almost fostered a distaste for singing about God’s love for us in a corporate worship setting. I want to focus on His glory, sovereignty, power and other manly type topics.

But no matter how much I struggle to exalt these incredible attributes of God, the fact of this strong biblical truth remains: that He demonstrated His love for us in this: that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. His love for His creation was indeed quite a motivator for His crusade to conquer sin, even become sin on our behalf, so that He might impute His righteousness to us. We cannot leave this out of the story we present in worship in our churches; it MUST inform the way we worship and plan for leading worship.

Bryan Chapell, in his book, “Christ-Centered Worship” says,

“Worship is not only for God’s glory, and it is not only for our good. In order for the gospel to be good news for God’s people it must have both goals, and worship that is reflective of the gospel must also have both goals… Making God’s glory the exclusive goal of worship sounds very reverent, but actually fails to respect Scripture’s own gospel priorities.”

He goes on to say,

“The vertical, heaven directed aspects of worship do not require us to ignore human concerns. In fact, praising God without acknowledging His love for His people would make our worship incomplete… In order for our worship to minister God’s goodness to His people, we must have a means to reflect His love in our liturgy.”

God has done a complete 180 in my heart toward “How He Loves.” I used to question its appropriateness in a congregational worship setting, but now I question how one can corporately worship without addressing the great love with which He has loved us. One of the most man-centered things we could do is ignore the very love God gave His son to display. He glories in His own love enough to call Himself Love. If we ignore that, we ignore a large portion of who God chooses to identify Himself as.

However, keeping a Christ-centered view of God’s love in singing this song must always and unwaveringly be our goal. Our Savior is who we are singing to, and who our affections are being directed at. He is the subject of the song. It is His love… We must not make the mistake of exalting ourselves as the subjects of the song, as could potentially be our tendency in any type of worship. That’s why a good worship leader will shepherd people away from that idolatry by keeping the focus on Christ’s character and work.

At this juncture, I must point out that the song does not ever specifically mention Christ, or the cross. This does not make it unusable… many songs never make mention specifically of those things. It does, however, incline the worship leader to insert a rubric of some sort as an introduction to the song, pointing out that the ultimate sacrifice and infinite cost Christ paid on the cross was the full demonstration of His love for us.

Christ is absolutely everything! He is the subject of the song, and object of our affection and His great love with which He has loved us ought to spur our hearts toward a lively worship and affection for Him because of who He is and all He has done.

I will be planning and using “How He Loves” in my worship sets…

Grace and peace,
Stephen Miller

We have had our shirts available for pre-order for a couple of days now and the response has been so encouraging. From emails of encouragement, to people letting us know they’re praying for us, to the fact that we’ve sold 20 shirts in the last 6 days, it’s just been such a great week of confirmation for us.

However, we keep getting requests from people who are not on PayPal, nor do they desire to be on PayPal, as to how they can give to our Ethiopian adoption. We certainly want to make it as convenient as possible for you to give, and realize this isn’t always the most convenient for people.

So we have opened a bank account dedicated strictly to the funding of our Ethiopian adoption. You can now send in shirt orders, or even just donations in the form of check or money order to:

The Journey
C/O Stephen Miller
7701 Maryland Ave.
Clayton, Missouri 63105

Just make the checks out to Stephen Miller, and put “Ethiopian Adoption” in the subject line. Make sure if you’re ordering shirts to include your order (sizes, number of shirts, return address) in the envelope.

Thank you all so much!

Grace and peace,
The Millers

P.S. For more to the minute updates on the adoption, follow Stephen on Twitter, username @_stephen_miller.

I remember sitting in the dark in our little duplex in Austin, TX back in 1999. I was a sophomore in High School and my dad had just left my mom to pursue another woman who he assumed would make him happier. Mom wanted us to still have a relationship with dad, so we moved to Austin to follow him as he followed her. I love Austin, but at that point, I was just mad.

We started going to this church called Bannockburn Baptist Church. “Cool,” I thought, “We’re going to a church named after the field that Scotland won their freedom in the Academy Award winning movie, Braveheart.” Yeah, I was a dork, but that’s neither here nor there.

My youth pastor, Charlie Harrisberger, was quite the God-send. He took me under his wing and really became a father figure to me. I can honestly say that his influence shaped me more than any other man in my life. He began to give me books by Piper, Tozer, Sproul, Edwards, etc. and really challenging me to pursue Christ, and it was in the midst of that that our story picks up.

I sat alone in that dark duplex, 10:30 at night, reading a Piper sermon called The Depths of Christ’s Love: It’s Lavish Benefits, that changed my life forever. It was about 2 warring tribes in Rwanda, and a man losing His son in the process of trying to save the life of a child from the enemy tribe. In the wake of the disaster, he clothes, feeds, rescues, adopts and gives everything He owns (which is surprisingly substantial) to this enemy child.

It was illustrating that the power of the gospel for us is in our adoption. I woke up this morning thinking about this and the profound impact it made on me as a 16 year old boy. Now 11 years later, I have often thought about this obscure sermon that Piper preached so many years ago. How it impacted me then, and still impacts me now. How it was really the first front that the Lord used to move my heart to displaying the gospel through adoption… to follow His example.

I don’t know a whole ton of 16 year old boys who want to adopt. I think that can tend to be a girl thing. My 6 year old wants to adopt. It’s not unique to girls, but for a boy, that’s pretty weird. But I distinctly remember thinking, “I can not be the same. I want to adopt.” And I began praying that the Lord would send me a wife when the time was right who would have a heart for adoption as well. I’m so glad He did.

I’m so glad that God had given Amanda a heart for children and orphans and to respond to the call to take care of the fatherless through adoption before we ever met.

I’m so glad for that night in 2005 at the Frank Irwin Center in Austin, TX when Steven Curtis Chapman challenged an auditorium full of people who called themselves Christians to actually live out their faith through adoption, and all the conversations that sparked then. The passion it ignited in us as a married couple. And the journey it got back on track.

I’m so glad for meeting Aaron Ivey back in 2008. How he has become such a dear friend and fellow worship pastor, and reminds me what it means to be a man of God. Who displays the gospel with his life and reminds others to do the same. Who does the hard work of obedience, not for the sake of legalism, but out of a righteous heart to see the glory of Jesus Christ known in all the Earth. And who challenges me to do that through adoption.

I am so glad for moments that I can look back at and see time and time again how the Lord has been bringing us to this moment for the last 11 years and reminded that it is He who will carry it through to completion. And He will… for His name’s sake.