He Is Lord, or is He?

As a general rule I don’t care much for praise choruses. Oh, sure, they usually have a nice beat, they’re easy enough to sing, and there’s nothing offensive about the words; but they generally don’t have much in them that explains any deep theology truths. Besides I get bored easily, so repeating a few words a whole lot of times just doesn’t cut it; unless of course you’re in the advertizing field and like to remind your customers that their customers need to hear something at least 7 times before it sticks.
And we all have our favorite ‘jingles’ – the ones that we absolutely hate, but can’t get out of our head: if we ever need that particular product or service won’t be able to remember any other name until it’s too late to change our mind.
But if we go to the source and study the scripture that a praise chorus is based on, we just might expand our knowledge. This week I’m looking at the lessons in the chorus “He Is Lord” – which is based on Philippians 2:11.
The words are fairly simple but they point out some basic tenets of the faith: Jesus is Lord; He was resurrected (which adds a lot of credibility to all the rest of it); and that one day He will return and everyone will acknowledge His Lordship.
That sounds a lot like basic Christianity. We accept Jesus as Lord and Savior, we believe that through His resurrection He conquered sin and death, and we are adamant about the fact that He is going to return and at that point everyone, some willingly, some not so much, will bow down to worship him.
But as I studied a little bit about what ‘Lord’ means when we call Jesus Lord and Savior, I was left with the sinking feeling, that all too many of us are happy to name Him as Savior with all the benefits that He can offer us for eternity; but we’re a lot less happy with the idea of letting Jesus be in total charge of our life: relationships, finances, work, school, playtime, morals, values, even where we go on vacation.
I’m not sure what having Jesus as Lord over my life might look like in 5 years, but I’m being convicted that even though I’ve given up a lot of control over the past decade, He needs to be handling a lot more of my life than I’m entrusting to Him now.
How about you? Other than Sunday morning, how much of your life does Jesus get to be Lord over?