Chords for Should we sing Reckless Love in our churches? Is God reckless? // Worship Leader Wednesday

Today on Worship Leader Wednesday, we are going to talk about whether you should play
Reckless Love by Corey Asbury.
I can't believe you just said that.
Is God reckless?
I'm offended by that. _
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_ _ [A] Okay, [N] before we get started, I want to say a few things off the bat.
One, if you take issue with this song from a theological standpoint,
or you don't want to sing it in your church, right off the bat, that is okay.
This is not a hill worth dying on.
No, it's not.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
Okay.
If you don't want to sing it, don't sing it.
Two, the problem I think a lot of people have with this song and the usage of the word reckless
is many people think it describes God as reckless.
That's not what the song says, and we're going to talk about this in a bit.
The song is describing the love of God as reckless, which are two different things.
But we love this song.
We've been singing it in our church for a while now, and we're going to tell you today
why we like the song and sort of give you a defense, maybe from a theological standpoint,
spiritual standpoint, why we like to sing this song in our church.
So I think the challenge that we have here that we're facing is not a theological question.
I think it's the question of the limitations of the human language and the ability for us
as people and artists to communicate a concept that's mysterious and grand and holy.
Yeah.
So no matter what we say, we're going to fail.
We can't.
So I think in humility, we just got to acknowledge that.
We can't even understand it.
Artists, we're creative people trying to explain to another one how we feel about what Jesus has
done for us.
And that's what I love about the power of the song and the rawness of the song.
The word reckless is defined as this, of a person or their actions without taking or
caring about the consequence of the action.
So like you said, it's [F] not reckless God.
No.
It's his reckless love.
So first off, when you consider the definition of reckless in that light, now there are other
definitions of reckless out there, but it does describe the love of God in that God
acted without caring about consequences.
To himself.
Of his own.
Right.
To himself.
Yeah.
Because the Bible says that God showed us his love in this, that while we were still
sinners, he sent his son to die for us.
The Bible says, some versions say while we were his enemies.
And a person who shows love to their enemy does so without regard for the consequences
because the consequences are most likely going to be negative to yourself.
It's extremely unselfish.
And there are actually a couple of parables in the Bible that illustrate this that Jesus taught.
One of them is in the song itself where the line that says, leaves the 99.
So if you hear that line, you're like, what in the world does that mean?
You need to read your Bible.
References the parable of the shepherd in the Bible who lost one of the sheep.
One out of a hundred.
Left the 99 sheep.
And this was, how was this reckless?
So the sheep that he left, right?
You have to think about this in context.
He left the sheep knowing that those sheep were going to be okay.
Right.
Right.
They were in a safe space.
Because where the other sheep was, was dangerous.
Was uncharted and was unknown.
And so that shepherd left the security of the safe pasture and went into the unknown,
went into the dangerous place, hoping, not knowing, hoping that he would find this lost sheep.
Knowing he could be attacked by a bear.
He could be killed.
You know, that's dangerous.
The sheep or the shepherd.
Either one.
Either one of them. Yeah.
The other parable that I think about a lot with this is the parable of the lost son or
the prodigal son.
So the son disowns the father and basically says to him, I want your inheritance.
I wish you were dead.
Took his inheritance.
The father gives it, which is pretty crazy to begin with.
That's reckless.
I know.
And he takes it and squanders it and then comes back.
The response to the son is he kills the fattened calf and throws a huge party in his honor.
Huge party.
Now, if you read the story and you understand the scripture, the response of the older brother.
Is what our response would be.
Is like the cultural human.
What our response would be if we were in that situation is anger.
His response was, you're being reckless.
You're being irresponsible.
Yeah.
Your son has brought great shame on your name.
Has basically said you are dead.
You shouldn't even consider him as your own child.
Yeah.
And the father's love, because it has no regard for consequence, _ overcomes that cultural human
response, reaction, and just shows love to the son.
And this is the God that we're, this is the love that we're trying to describe in this song.
Finally, Corey Asbury, who's the author of this song, wrote, I don't know if you've seen it,
but we'll link below.
He wrote a post about the story of the song.
We'd like to read for you some of what he wrote about where he came from when he wrote this word
reckless, because it was very intentional.
This is what Corey Asbury says about the song.
When I use the phrase, the reckless love of God, I'm not saying that God himself is reckless.
It's the one we were talking about earlier.
I am, however, saying that the way he loves in many regards is.
What I mean is this.
He is utterly unconcerned with the consequences of his actions with regards to his own safety,
comfort, [F] or well-being.
His love isn't crafty or slick.
[D] It's not cunning or shrewd.
In fact, all things considered, it's quite childlike.
And might I even suggest sometimes downright ridiculous.
And I love this part.
His [F#] love bankrupted heaven for you.
His love doesn't consider himself first.
His love isn't selfish or self-serving.
He doesn't wonder what he'll gain or lose by [N] putting himself out there.
He simply gives himself away on the off chance that one of us might look back at him and
offer ourselves in return.
It's a great discussion.
Let's have it.
Let's comment.
Write comments.
Put your thoughts down under the comment section, and let's have real good, honest conversations about it.
And not be rude to each other.
Not be mean to each other.
Let's just talk about it, right?
Yeah, be civil.
If you are going to do this song in your church, though, we feel it's valuable.
And this is what we did when we first introduced it.
To set it up to your congregation.
To let them know what we're talking about with this word reckless.
Because it might take people by surprise.
And so if you hit the link below, we've done this for you.
We've written out sort of, we call it a spiritual direction.
Something that you can say before you sing this song, and it will reference scripture.
It will reference the word reckless.
[B] And it's kind of based on what we've [F] been talking about and a little bit about what
I said when I kind of wrote up something before we sang it for the first time at my campus.
And that's free to you to use.
Download it.
Tweak it.
[G] Use it verbatim if you want.
But it is a good thing to set it up for the very first time.
And then maybe teach the chorus.
And then off you go.
And if you want to do this song in a female key, B works really well.
Yeah.
So you could do it in the key of E for a guy.
Do it in the key of B for a female.
Simple song.
That's the other thing, too.
Four chords.
Four chords on repeat.
Simple song.
So [F#] do it if you want to do it [N] and watch God bless it.
Yeah.
Thank you for hanging out with us today on Worship Leader Wednesday.
Please do subscribe so you don't miss another one here at Worship Tutorials.
See you next time. _ _
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_ _ _ _ Worship Wednesday.
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