Not Far Gone

Listen to Never Too Far Gone on Spotify. Jordan Feliz · Song · 2016.

Jordan Feliz is one of my favorite artists because he does a wonderful job of tackling tough issues and circumstances while uplifting the people struggling through them.  In “Never Too Far Gone,” Feliz gives hope to those who feel far away from God, who have done wrong, who have hurt others, who have hurt themselves, and reminds them that there’s no place they can be physically, mentally, emotionally, or spiritually that God does not have covered in His loving presence.

The message of this song describes how, even when we run away from God, it takes only one step in the right direction to be back in His loving embrace. It takes only one action to be forgiven, only one action to be found, to be caught.

People all over the world are currently lost or in the process of losing themselves. Some may be stumbling around in the dark already, dazed, confused, blind, in despair and unable or unwilling to call out for someone to turn on the lights. Some are sprinting at a breakneck speed away from the light because it stung their eyes, and they think they will find comfort in the darkness.

There are two images I get from the lyrics in Feliz’s song. The first is kind of like a chase scene in a horror/slasher movie. If you’ve ever seen one, you know that the protagonist is sprinting as fast as possible away from the killer, who often appears to be casually walking, but never seems to lose him. No matter how fast the protagonist runs, nor how cleverly he disguises his path, the killer is always there.

In a way, that’s kind of what running from God is like. No matter how far or fast you run, God’s always right behind you waiting for you to slow down and give in, to recognize that it’s not a killer who’s after you, rather, in a parody of a horror/slasher situation, it’s a friend and guide who wants to help you escape from death.

I imagine that it might feel scary or daunting in some ways to those who only see the bright light of God from the darkness, who have never experienced the warmth and love that His light provides. And I personally think we don’t give enough credence to the fact that God can be scary to people who don’t know Him—Christianity can be scary to people who don’t truly know it, who have only ever seen it from the outside, or maybe just experienced the worst parts of believers and the church.

The second image/scenario I envision involves a large room filled with swirling darkness. The darkness ebbs and flows and changes constantly, seeking to block people in the room from seeing the light shining from the exit. The darkness is disorienting and confusing, causing those within to stumble and wander, losing all sense of direction. Even if they manage to spot the light, the suffocating darkness moves to cover it up, leaving them without a clue which way to go. But the God of light does not need to stay at the doorway; when someone calls out from the darkness, He goes to them, cutting a swath through the darkness with His light, picks them up, and carries them to the exit.

I don’t have to imagine reality for this scenario; I’ve been through things just like it. I’ve tried to walk myself out of the darkness of emotional and mental health struggles. I’ve tried to walk myself out of the suffocating room wherein I feel trapped. I’ve tried to combat my sin and temptation on my own. But it was only when I called out to God that He carried me free of those things.

In Sunday School this week, we touched on a related topic as we discussed grief and other hard-hitting emotions: the idea that Jesus, that God, has felt everything we could feel. And that’s true. We can attribute this experience of Jesus to His suffering and death on the cross. In those moments of His death, He felt every last bit of every sin. Before yesterday morning, I had never really given thought to the idea that Jesus had felt the same shame, guilt, failure, etc. that I’ve felt, that you’ve felt, that we’ve all felt. Not just that He has felt shame, guilt, failure,

Whenever I thought about Jesus being able to relate to me, I always dwelled on things in general; I never made the emotional, relational connection specific to me. But when He died on that cross, He felt all the bad, the things that God doesn’t, can’t, shouldn’t feel. A perfect God can feel no shame or guilt, but He did. He suffered under the weight of guilt for us. He suffered the load of shame for us. He suffered the pain of failure for us.

And He did not just generically feel those things. He felt the exact shame I feel whenever I give into lust or anger. He felt the guilt of each time I sinned and knew I was doing it. He felt the weight of every failure I have committed. Why? So He could chase us down, seek us out, pick us up, and show us with the scars on His hands, His feet, His side, and His head that we are not too far gone to be rescued.

Showing your Thankfulness

It’s very nearly Thanksgiving, so everyone, as usual, is talking about being thankful—why you should be thankful, what you should be thankful for, how to express thanks, etc. And, of course, I have something to say on the subject, too, but I want to approach this not from a why or what perspective, but from a how perspective, because we sometimes forget that certain things carry more weight than others.

When my dad and I would get upset at each other as I was growing up, sometimes conversation turned to me being an ungrateful child, and in many ways, I was. Not because I, myself, felt ungrateful for the things that were done for me, but because I often acted like I felt that way. It was always easy to be thankful with my words rather than thankful with my actions, and that created a disconnect between what I thought and felt and what I showed/proved to be true to my dad.

It’s rather easy to be thankful with your words—the phrase “thank you” is an incredibly easy one to say, even when you don’t mean it, which somewhat takes away its power. That’s why some people might even consider a “thank you” to be meaningless until the sentiment behind it is proved in some other way.

And I say all this to get to my final point: in terms of gratefulness, actions truly do speak louder than words. You can’t just talk the talk of gratefulness, you must walk the walk, lest you risk demeaning the gift given to you, and in a way, the person who gave you that gift as well.

Don’t you think, then, that you should be grateful to God in the same way? Don’t you think you should show your appreciation for His gift of eternal life by obeying Him, by doing as He asks? I do.  I truly think that you demean the gift of salvation if you don’t go out of your way to show how grateful you are to have received it. In that case, you should be giving thanks to God by going out and pointing others to Him so that they might receive the gift as well.

I like the Sidewalk Prophets’ song “Live Like That” for this reason. I think it captures quite well what we should all be doing to thank God for the gift of eternal life, to express the feelings of a grateful heart.

Was I love
When no one else would show up
Was I Jesus to the least of us
Was my worship more than just a song

We likely all know that worship and praise are part of us being grateful to God. We praise Him because of who He is and what He did and does. But the last line of this second verse points to what I said earlier—your praise and worship have to be more than going through the words of a song in church or whispering a practiced prayer. There must be feeling involved, a heartfelt expression of gratitude.

One of the best ways to express gratitude is to be who we are meant to be, who God wants us to be, by becoming more like Jesus and loving like He did and does because it requires more from us than to express thanks verbally, it requires a real change of who we are and how we act.

Am I proof
That You are who you say You are
That grace can really change a heart
Do I live like Your love is true

People pass
And even if they don't know my name
Is there evidence that I've been changed
When they see me, do they see You 

When my dad said I was being ungrateful, it was because I didn’t show proof of my being grateful through my actions. When he did good things for me, I didn’t treat him better—his gifts and hard work didn’t change my heart or attitude—or a better explanation is that I didn’t allow what he did to impact me. He was looking for evidence of me changing and finding none, despite the fact that there should have been some.

And when you accept God’s gift and choose Him as your Lord and Savior, there should be evidence of change, proof of a changed heart out of your gratefulness towards Him. You should treat God better, treat others better, and treat yourself better. You should have a different attitude—evidence that you were impacted by the gift you received.

I want to live like that
And give it all I have
So that everything I say and do
Points to You 

If love is who I am
Then this is where I'll stand
Recklessly abandoned
Never holding back

 In the end, the theme behind everything I write always turns back to love—to true, selfless, sacrificial love. And for good reason—sacrificial love is who God is, and it is who we should be also.

When you’re truly grateful for something, you find yourself trying to pay back the one to whom you’re grateful in equal measure to the gift you received. If someone buys you a $25 Christmas gift, it’s only fair and right to give them a gift of the same price in return. If someone gives an hour of their time to help you with something, it’s only just to give them an hour of your own time to help them when they’re in need.

Now, you can’t work your way to being even with God; you can’t pay the debt that would incur if you were to buy the gift He freely gave. That’s not what this is about. But you can show you’re grateful to Him by sacrificing yourself for Him the same way He sacrificed Himself, Jesus, for you. Jesus gave His life for yours; I think it’s only fair to give your life to Him. Isn’t it? That’s the same kind of love He showed when He did it. He held nothing back. Why should you?

Express your thanks in more than just a few words from a worship song or a nightly prayer—truly show your gratefulness by handing yourself over to God for Him to lead.

Listen to Live Like That on Spotify. Sidewalk Prophets · Song · 2017.

Where You Belong

Election day is tomorrow. I don’t really want to touch politics more than I have through mere references in other blog posts. This morning, I woke up not knowing what I was going to write about today, but I prayed and asked God to give me a message to deliver while I was listening to music, and the song that came up shortly thereafter immediately gave me something worth writing to Christians about.

I know I’ve touched on this before, but last time I meant it to teach a lesson. This time, I’m here to pass on some hope to you with a reminder that this is not where you belong. This life and the things that infect it are merely a temporary dwelling leading up to a fabulous eternal life.

Whenever I feel down thanks to the struggles of this life, the first thing I jump to is good, healthy, Christian music because it speaks to me, and one of the songs that hits me harder than most when I’m feeling depressed and anxious about where things in my life are going is “Where I Belong” by Building 429.

Sometimes it feels like I'm watching from the outside

Sometimes it feels like I'm breathing, but am I alive?

I will keep searching for answers that aren't here to find

I sometimes dwell too deeply on things that I can’t change, questions I can’t answer, experiences I go through yet feel no control over. I know that right now a lot of others are doing the same things. It’s easy to look at the state of the nation we live in—no matter where you are—and despair over the past, wonder about the future, and worry for the current situation, which seems so bleak.

In the United States, specifically, many Christian ideals, biblical ideals, and their implementation in our society, are being decided over and over again as elections come every four years, and as we so desperately cling to what we know is right by the Bible, it becomes so easy to feel like we’re losing the presence of God in our nation. We have questions for God about why he would allow leaders in charge who condone the ruthless murder of unborn children, about why he would allow His people to be persecuted when He could protect them.

So when the walls come falling down on me

And when I'm lost in the current of a raging sea

I have this blessed assurance holding me

And sometimes, we feel so hopeless, like the world our God set up is falling in on itself, preparing to crush us. We’re outnumbered and in over our heads. We’re not capable of doing what must be done on our own. But here’s the hope.

All I know is I'm not home yet

This is not where I belong

Take this world and give me Jesus

This is not where I belong

When it feels like it’s too much; when you think you have no hold, no influence, on the situation, remember these things. Here—this Earth—is not the end. There is more to come; there is better to come.

We sometimes try to grasp the world and hold on for dear life as we work to finagle and wrangle it around to God’s way of thinking. We try to take the whole world in our arms at one time and wrestle it into submission. But we don’t have to.

Sometimes—all the time—we need to step back and stop trying to take the world. We need to let God take it, the only one who can hold it all in a single hand. The third line of the chorus in this song is so simple, yet so profound. “Take this world and give me Jesus.” When you feel overwhelmed, keep that in mind, too. When you chose to follow Jesus and love the Lord your God, you made a trade.

We think of salvation as a gift, and it truly is, but it’s a trade just as much. You get to trade the weight of the world for the help of Jesus. You get to say to God, “take this burden from me,” and be carried by Jesus to the place you belong, because you don’t belong here. I don’t belong here. You and I belong with the Father.

So, no matter what happens tomorrow, no matter who becomes president or senator or representative or governor, remember that your time here is temporary. The lease on your home here is short; soon you won’t have to pay that rent anymore. When all’s said and done, you’ll have a wonderful, permanent home waiting for you. And there, you will be at home forevermore.

Listen to Where I Belong on Spotify. Building 429 · Song · 2011.

Gambling with Satan

I love being able to take something that isn’t Christian, or is only Christian-adjacent, and use it to teach a Christian message. Not only does it freshen up whatever lesson I’m using it to teach and potentially reach more people, but it also serves to affirm that the things of this world point back to the God who made it, even if they’re not always intended to by the person who idealized it.

So, today, let’s take a look at the popular country song by Charlie Daniels, “The Devil Went Down to Georgia.”

I think most people look at this song in a pretty positive light, as in “Wow, Johnny faced down Satan and won. I can, too!” If they took this song that deep in meaning, that is. I, however, want to use it to explain why you should not try to face down the devil in a challenge of skill, wit, endurance, guts, or what have you, because the outcome is the same no matter the result. If you lose, you lose, and if you win, you lose. It’s best not to do battle at all if you don’t have to.

So, let’s detail the story of Johnny’s fiddle showdown with Satan. It starts with Satan doing what he’s always doing: trying to steal souls and cause people to experience eternal suffering. And let me pause for just a minute because the imagery from “He was lookin’ for a soul to steal” is so potent. It should serve as a reminder that your soul doesn’t belong to the devil. You and your soul belong to God; Satan’s trying to steal you away from Him.

When Satan appears to Johnny and challenges him to a duel, he appeals to two different sins. In fact, if you’re familiar with some Roman Catholic church teachings, you’ll note that they happen to be two of the seven deadly sins: greed and pride.

Now you play a pretty good fiddle, boy, but give the Devil his due.
I'll bet a fiddle of gold against your soul 'cause I think I'm better than you.

The first thing he does is appeal to greed. Look, I’ll give you a shiny fiddle made entirely of gold! Do you know how much a solid gold fiddle would be worth? Well, I did the research so you wouldn’t have to guess. A solid gold fiddle would weigh around 30 pounds and be worth $251,520 in 1979 when Daniels released this song. In today’s money, that’s $901,730.38.

Next, Satan appeals to Johnny’s pride. He basically pulled the, “Anything you can do, I can do better” card. So, not only does he have the hook into Johnny on the value of the fiddle—despite the fact that Johnny clearly has a perfectly good one in his hands—he also suckered him in on claims that he wasn’t good enough.

So, what does Johnny do in response? He sins, and he knows it, too.

The boy said, "My name's Johnny, and it might be a sin,
But I'll take your bet
And you're gonna regret 'cause I'm the best there's ever been.

He admits that what he’s doing is wrong, but he’s been so thoroughly ensnared by his greed and his desire to prove his superiority that he jumps right into boiling water without thinking twice. There’s also something incredibly dangerous in the last line above, but hold off on that in the back of your mind until I get through the next two verses.

Johnny, rosin up your bow and play your fiddle hard.
'Cause Hell's broke loose in Georgia and the Devil deals the cards.

Have you heard the saying, “The house always wins?” In gambling, it’s a poorly hidden allusion to the understanding that even when you win you lose because, at the end of the day, no matter how much money you make, the house always makes more. The house always comes out better than the people gambling in the casino—how else do you think a casino manages to run itself if it doesn’t win more money than its patrons?

That’s the case here, too. It doesn’t matter if Johnny comes out on top in the fiddle duel because the devil’s victory is so much larger than Johnny’s. That’s why you don’t gamble with Satan/sin. When you do, Satan always deals, and the dealer always wins.

When the Devil finished, Johnny said, "Well, you're pretty good ol' son, But sit down in that chair right there and let me show you how it's done."

If you’ll refer back to the idea I wanted you to keep in mind earlier, here’s where the devil’s plan all falls into place. In the context of the song, the “let me show you how it’s done” from Johnny right here sounds like he’s talking about playing fiddle. However, if you take it in the context I’m providing, he’s actually claiming hierarchical superiority over Satan, and even over God.

We know that Satan’s biggest wrongdoing was when he tried to claim himself as God’s equal. One of the things about pride is that it makes you believe you’re superior to your own position. If you apply what Johnny says in the context of his pride and the theme of sin, you don’t get an uppity boy claiming to be better at fiddling than Satan. You get a boy claiming to be better at sinning than the devil. You get a boy saying, “Satan, this is how you challenge God. Clearly, you’ve been doing it wrong.” Because what else is sin but challenging God as if you’re equal to Him?

The Devil bowed his head because he knew that he'd been beat.
And he laid that golden fiddle on the ground at Johnny's feet.
Johnny said, "Devil, just come on back if you ever wanna try again,
'Cause I've told you once--you son of a gun*--I'm the best there's ever been.

Bear with me; there’s a lot left for me to unpack to wrap this up, but it’s fairly simple. When the devil bows his head here, I can guarantee to you that he’s not doing it to admit defeat but to hide the ear-to-ear smirk on his face. Because even though the song says the devil was beaten in the fiddle battle, he didn’t lose the war.

Here’s how he won: to start with, Johnny’s prize is meaningless. He’s a fiddler, but he receives a useless fiddle. How on Earth are you going to play a fiddle of solid gold? You wouldn’t be able to hold it up, and even if you could, the strings wouldn’t reverberate. Even if they did, though, the acoustics would be horrible. It’d never work. Sure, he could sell it, I guess, but that’s like throwing away the prize from the story he could be telling everyone.

Real quick metaphor time because I know that reads a little awkward. Selling the fiddle would be like trying to hide the sin in your past and acting like you never messed up. It doesn’t do justice to your story or the story God’s working in your life when you repent.

Goal 2 in Satan’s winning plan is that Johnny’s pride is still intact. He still firmly believes himself to be above Satan and above God because he thinks he fought off sin and won on his own.

The final phase of Satan’s winning outcome stems from the third line when Johnny says to Satan, “Come on back whenever you want now.” He’s given the devil free reign to continue inviting sin into his life. And you know what that means? It means that Satan walked out of Georgia one soul richer. That line was enough to indicate that Satan won Johnny’s soul in the battle. Why? Because the way the devil gets your soul is by you continuing to act against God’s will and grace by sinning against Him.

Johnny thought he won by gambling himself against Satan, but Satan had two pocket aces the whole time. In the end, when we try to beat sin by wagering ourselves against it, we only lose. The only way to win against Satan is to walk away from the table, to not be dealt a hand at all. Because even if you’re walking away from the cards with a couple extra dollars in your pocket, Satan’s walking away with your sinful soul.

Work Goes On

What are the things that keep you from sharing the Good News? When you feel the need to speak to someone about Christ, what causes you to say no? I can’t speak to the exact thoughts of every person reading this, but I know for me, and for many others, it’s selfishness. It’s the selfish desire to protect yourself on this Earth fighting against the desire to protect someone else’s eternity.

Think about that: if you don’t share the Gospel because you’re more afraid of the consequences you might face in this life than you are of the consequences of an eternity in Hell for the person you’re speaking to, that’s really selfish, at its core, don’t you think? And more than that, it’s misguided selfishness, in most cases, because you’re valuing life on Earth more than you’re valuing life in Heaven with the Father. (There’s a bit of gray area where a father/mother might be less selfish if the consequences are death because they have children to care for, but that’s rarely the case.)

Philippians 1:21 says, “For me, to live is Christ, to die is gain.” For you, to die should be gain. So why, then, do you avoid sharing the Gospel if the consequence is death? Or even less, what if the consequence is just to potentially lose a friend here or make things a little awkward at work for a while? Because the consequences for sharing the Gospel are rarely death for most of us.

That’s why it’s a desire for me, and it should be for you, to live with the same fervor for Christ that those like Stephen, Peter, James, Paul, and many others lived for when they died for preaching about Jesus. A good song to hear to get your heart and mind into this living ideal is “Bury the Workman” by Unspoken.

An old hymn writer, Charles Wesley, was quoted saying, “God buries His workmen but carries on His work,” which some allege is the inspiration for this song, and it makes sense because the chorus practically quotes Wesley.

Cause you can bury the workmen but the work will go on
And you can silence the voices but you can't stop the song
When the Spirit's moving, His will will be done
And you can bury the workmen but the work will go on

And while these lyrics should move you significantly, it’s important to keep in perspective why the work goes on when the workmen are dead and gone. Work doesn’t get done without men/women to do it. So, the important follow-up is that when one workman is buried, another must come to fill his place, and that’s the key.

The thing that motivated all those who were martyrs for Christ was their love for Christ and their love for others, but, at least in small part, there was hope in their death that those they discipled would carry on the work they did. You can see the evidence of this idea in most of Paul’s letters, and Peter’s, and James’s. It’s almost implicit in the system of discipleship: one teaches a student who then becomes a master and teaches his own student and so on. One of the clearest examples is Jesus, who said to his disciples, “I’m leaving now. Go and teach what I’ve taught you.”

If you’ve ever read a great battle in a fantasy novel, you’ll have read the expression, “for every one enemy they killed, two more took his place.” It makes the army the hero is facing look to be unending. That’s the impression we ought to be giving to this world; for every Christian they take down, we should have two more stepping into the hole that formed from his/her death.

And it’s important, too, to remember that we do have a job that needs to be finished. If you picture our work as believers as mining souls, which is pretty much what it is, there will come a day when the mine will run out. That’s our goal. The work will go on until that moment, so the more of us working, the faster it gets here, right? (Don’t take that as me trying to rush the day and hour the Lord returns, but it’s a good sentiment we need to work towards. The more souls we can save faster, the better!)

Look, I know it’s hard to step out and do the work when you’re afraid but remember that the Lord is with you when you go to fulfill your responsibility, and when the Spirit moves, His will is done. If you are hurt by this world, what does it matter? If you are alive, you become more like Christ. If you die, you go to be with Christ in perfection for eternity. It’s a win-win situation.

Listen to Bury The Workmen on Spotify. Unspoken · Song · 2014.

Where's Your Allegiance?

To whom do you owe allegiance? Where do your loyalties lie? For a lot of Christians, I genuinely wonder about this question because I can’t tell whether they are loyal to Jesus or something else entirely. And I’m not necessarily referring to sin here, though sin can be something you choose to be your master over Christ.

Every day we face decisions that indicate to whom we give glory as our master, and far too often, we try to split our loyalties to give a little glory to Jesus, a little glory to ourselves, a little to our state, our country, our sin.

I’ve been thinking about this topic a lot recently, and the idea for this little lesson was brought to mind again thanks to two things. The first is an image with a quote that’s going around the Internet right now relating to politics that says, “Some of y’all are too busy being Republican or Democrat to notice you stopped being decent a long time ago.” The second is the song “20:17 (Raise the Banner),” by Audio Adrenaline.

The saddest part about that quote is that it is disturbingly and apparently true, especially of Christians. There are so many Christians I’ve heard from who are trying to corrupt the Word of God to make it match their politics—on every side of every issue. There are “Christians” who put more of their identity in being Republican or Democrat than they do being a follower of Christ. And they’ve stopped being decent human beings and they’ve stopped being Christian. Their master is no longer Christ; it’s Donald Trump or Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama or Mike Pence or George Bush or whoever else they happen to like in the political spectrum.

Now, I’m not going any farther into politics than this: stop that. Stop following any of those people like they’re your master. Did any of them save you? Do any of them rule your life because they created it? No. So you’d better stop serving them as if they did what Christ did. I’m saying that so clear cut because it is crystal clear in the Bible.

Matthew 6:24 says, “No one can be a slave of two masters, since either he will hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot be slaves of God and money.” And you can replace money with literally anything else: sex, career, politics, games, books, sports, your country. It’s that simple: if you choose to serve God, you cannot serve anything else lest you tell God you despise Him.

Now, before I go farther, I need to clarify so no one will jump on my case thinking I’ve said something I didn’t. What I’m saying here does not mean you are exempt from following the rules of the government you live under, or that you can’t like a politician or the country you live in, or that you can’t/shouldn’t serve in the military. All I’m saying is that you cannot make them an idol. You cannot make them so important in your life that you end up following and serving them with fervor. That position belongs solely to God. That glory belongs solely to God. See, your master is the one to whom you give glory

The Church is a nation without borders temporarily encapsulated by Earth. Instead of picturing ourselves as Americans, Europeans, Australians, Germans, Canadians, etc. it’s time we remember that we are Christians living in America, Europe, Australia, Germany, Canada, etc. with a Visa. Our home here is temporary; as soon as we are done with our work, we will return to be with our Lord, Jesus, in our own place in His house.

While you’re here, your job is to give Him glory so that the inhabitants of the nations you temporarily live in say, “I like this Lord you serve; can I move to where you live?” And that’s where the Audio Adrenaline song comes in.

In 2 Chronicles 20, Jehoshaphat was set to lead the inhabitants of Jerusalem out to battle an opposing force much stronger than their own army. He prayed about what he should do, and the Lord told him to face them even though they were weaker. When it came time to do battle, Jehoshaphat had his warriors lined up and ready to fight, but God ordered singers to be sent in front of the warriors to shout praises as they marched.

Jehoshaphat had two choices: he could choose to ignore God and march out with his warriors in front to gain glory for himself, his people, and Jerusalem, or he could listen to God and give Him the glory for routing the opposing army and securing the victory.

Let’s think of it like some of the song lyrics:

Raise the banner high march with I and I
Lift your voices up loud and high
Strength and unity, faith and victory
Let the battle rage on we cry

In medieval times, major lords had minor lords who swore allegiance to them, called vassals, but for the sake of my metaphor, we’ll call them “bannermen.” I’m stealing a fantasy term here, but rest assured the concept existed in medieval reality. One of the ways to tell who served who in battle was to see the banners each army marched under. Each lord had someone in his troops carry a banner that depicted his house in some way that was easily identifiable to friend and foe alike. Those troops would sometimes rally together under a central banner, the lord to whom their individual lords owed allegiance. Then, each house was seen as inconsequential because all the armies would be directed by the major lord. Instead of multiple separate armies, they would become one massive army under a single banner.

See, like those troops, we march around with a banner held over our heads. The key is to make sure we’re holding up the right one or else our allegiance comes into question. If we walk around with our own house banner over our heads, we take the glory that belongs to our Lord for ourselves. If we walk around with our country’s banner over our heads, we take the glory that belongs to our Lord for His enemy. And rest assured that the things that do not explicitly state they are with God are against Him (Matthew 12:30). But if we accomplish all that we do with God’s banner over our heads held high, He receives the glory due to Him.

So, don’t forget that you owe your ultimate allegiance to God, not your county, not your high school or college, not your state, not your country, and not your political leaders. But to God and God alone.

Words are Powerful

“Actions speak louder than words.” “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” “Words may show a man’s wit, but actions his meaning.”

“The pen is mightier than the sword.” “I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak, for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.” “Not many should become teachers, my brothers, knowing that we will receive a stricter judgment; for we all stumble in many ways. If anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a mature man who is also able to control his whole body.”

We were, at least I was, raised in a society that repeated the first paragraph over and over again, that perpetuated this idea that words spoken by the tongue and mouth were somehow less important, less impactful, than actions done with the hands and feet. And I hate to break it to you, but that’s just so wrong. Words are just as impactful, just as meaningful, as actions are. Not more so, and often they need to be backed up by what you do, but words are important. And even more so now that we live in an age where we can bandy them back and forth without ever revealing our own actions to others via social media.

Personally, I heard “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me” frequently as I struggled to get over the mean words and insults spoken to me by students and even a few teachers who were not my biggest fans. From as early as 1st grade I was taught to repeat this phrase to myself whenever someone insulted or bullied me to attempt to stop it from hurting so much. And I know millions of other kids are likely taught the same thing.

But you know what? Words do hurt. Words are powerful. They can build and break people, cities, countries, ideals. They can incentivize a rebellion or quell one. They can speak through high-strung emotions and broken hearts and minds. They can drive a person to the edge of a cliff and convince them to jump, and they can pull up someone who’s hanging by their fingertips about to let go.

But we don’t talk about that enough, especially now. With the advent of social media, words have become tantamount to actions in our society. You can impact someone across the world through a pair of screens without them ever seeing your face or watching you live. Just a few words can hurt or heal someone you might never meet. And that, and more, is why you need to take the song “Words” by Hawk Nelson and memorize it, hide it in your heart, and let everything you say flow from the understanding that your words are powerful.

They've made me feel like a prisoner
They've made me feel set free
They've made me feel like a criminal
Made me feel like a king

Honestly, this song is fairly straightforward in its lyrics, so I’m just going to provide examples to fit the lyrics so you can more easily apply them.

A child might feel like a prisoner in his/her own mind if a parent doesn’t take time to converse with them daily about what they think and feel. When you tell your kids, “because I said so,” you tell them that their thoughts are not important to you.

A healthy parent/child relationship is one where the child is encouraged to freely share what he/she thinks because the parent talks and explains actions, decisions, and the world that the child is so inquisitive about.

A child might feel like a criminal for everything they do when they are constantly berated for mistakes but never praised. But the right compliment at the right time puts them on top of the world.

Parents, sorry for picking on you so much, but I’m just using some of my life examples as inspiration.

Words can build you up
Words can break you down
Start a fire in your heart or
Put it out

Another way I realize the power of words in my own life comes from myself and how I used to speak compared to how I try to speak now. If you knew me even two years ago and got on my bad side, you’d know just how much words could hurt because I was an expert at making them sting. And while I’m not proud to say it, I’ve broken down plenty of people with my vocabulary and proficiency with the written and spoken word. You can turn a confident individual into a stuttering mess when you know what to say and how to say it.

But you can also turn the shiest mouse into a lion roaring with confidence. Sometimes, just one compliment is enough to start off a career or a passion. The right word about someone’s singing or playing could create the next Casting Crowns or Matthew West or Francesca Batastelli.

And I’ve seen this happen a thousand times, but you can start fires in people’s hearts for their passions or end them entirely with a careless word. I’m here, writing this today, because a few people took the time to tell second and third grade me that I could be a good writer. But there are also millions of people out there who never pursue their passions because a parent, teacher, friend, or significant other never told them that. Their passion was never realized because someone told them, “that will never work out.”

I look at words kind of like the Butterfly Effect. One small word in the right place at the right time can change the course of someone’s life. Their changed life could impact millions or billions of other people. Even though they seem small and insignificant, words can make huge waves just like actions can.

The Bible tells us that the tongue is powerful. Proverbs 18:21 says, “Life and death are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit.” And it’s important to know this, and that you have no power to stop the tongue from speaking. The only thing you can do is guide it to speaking the right things. Whatever comes from your mouth is what is in your heart, so make sure to only feed good things to your heart and tongue so that you only speak good.

So, let your words be life, truth, healing, fixing, complimenting, and pointing people to Jesus. Don’t hold back that compliment because you’re afraid it would sound awkward. Or for whatever reason you might hold back a good word. Compliment endlessly and unashamedly. Tell people how much they mean to you. Lavish people with praise about their skills. Learn about your friends’ passions and talk to them about them. Tell people about Jesus, even when you feel like you can’t.

Listen to Words on Spotify. Hawk Nelson · Song · 2013.

Knowing the Plan

What’s in store for you and me? What’s ahead of us in our futures? Which choice should I make? Which option should I pick? These are thoughts that likely run through any given person’s mind fairly often. I know I think about them, probably more than I should. And I decided to write about this today because it’s recently come up in my church community.

Without getting into the specifics of other people’s lives, there are a couple people in my church who don’t really know the details of what’s ahead of them in their lives. It’s likely that a lot of things will be changing for them. To paraphrase, the individuals said, “We don’t really know what we’re going to do next. We don’t really know the plan.”

I spoke to my worship pastor about it after service, and I said, “I think it’s okay to not know the plan. When we know the plan, we tend to get in God’s way and mess it up.” He said I should probably write about that subject, and I at first kind of dismissed it because I wasn’t sure how to tackle the subject, but I heard a song on the way home from church by Avicii that hit me. It’s not even a Christian song, but it had just the words I needed to inspire this:

These are the days we've been waiting for
Neither of us knows what's in storeYou just roll your window down and place your bets
These are the days we won't regret
These are the days we'll never forget!

Think about that for a minute. Really, from the moment you give your life to Christ, you should be waiting for the day He says, “Go, it’s your turn to make disciples. Here’s what you’ll do.” I think that comes in the moment you’ve grown in Christ enough to spread the Gospel, because there is a certain level of spiritual maturity you need to reach for that, in my own opinion.

It’s kind of like how we all grow up. You spent a majority of your younger years being cared for, fed, and nurtured by your parents, ideally, and then, once you’re grown in maturity, you go out on your own. As Christians, we must be fed by the Spirit and nurtured until we are capable of going out and spreading our faith. So, really, you should be spending every moment you are being nurtured by the Spirit preparing and waiting to be sent out into the unknown.

I’ve talked about not knowing what’s in our future before, briefly, when I wrote about Tenth Avenue North’s song, “What You Want.” But I want to expand on the not knowing. I think all throughout the Bible we have examples of all the things that happen when we know God’s plans for us, and very few of them are good. We often end up causing problems for ourselves due to our own unbelief and prejudices.

Moses, for example, when told that God wanted him to free the Israelites by speaking to Pharaoh, was so worried over his own oratory skills that he tried to avoid going through with it. He tried to stop God’s plan because he was worried he couldn’t do it. Jonah tried to run from God because he knew His plan for Nineveh and didn’t think the people could be changed. The Israelites got themselves banished to wander the desert for 40 years because they knew God wanted them to wage war against the peoples in the promised land to uproot them and thought they couldn’t do it.

But when people didn’t know exactly what God had in store for them, they were able to rely on God rather than be discouraged by what they saw in front of them. I think of the disciples shortly after Jesus returned to be with the Father. They didn’t know exactly what they had to do. But they did know which direction they had to go in. Would, perhaps, Peter have been too scared to go to Rome if he knew ahead of time that he would die there? Would Paul have gone to all the places he went if he knew how he would be received?

Perhaps even the most telling story about this is Joseph, who was sold into slavery by his own brothers. Do you think he would have trotted out to them as carefree as he did if he knew what they would do to him? If he knew the pain that would come from it? Even if Joseph knew it was God’s plan for him? I wouldn’t have.

And therein lies the problem: when we know too much, we come up with regrets. We bring up all the things possible we can to convince ourselves that the upsides to our choices will be far less significant than the downsides. Our fear often outweighs our faith and our lives are unbalanced. The more we know about what’s ahead, the more courage we need, and that is something we sadly lack.

To put it in more concrete terms, it’s kind of like asking someone out on a date and being rejected. The first time you go to ask a girl or guy out on a date, it might not be that hard, especially the younger you are. You’re either confident he/she will say yes, or you’re sure you can handle the pain that comes from rejection. Why? Because you don’t know what that feels like yet. But each subsequent time, asking that question becomes harder and harder because you know how much it hurts to be rejected, and you fear that pain. Since you know it hurts, you’re less likely to do it.

But what I urge everyone to do is to not focus on the pain, which is why I think it’s beneficial for us to know less rather than more about what God has in store for our lives. When we hear from older, wiser folks about their lives, it’s not often that we hear about the hurts as they reminisce. It’s far more common for them to retell the good things.

But one thing I’ve noticed as I have matured is that even when you have to tell about the pain in your life on the way to big things, you rarely end up saying you regretted making that decision. In fact, I don’t know anyone who has regretted getting the courage to ask their now wife on a date. I don’t hear anyone say they regret taking the chance on asking their boss for a promotion for all the hard work they’ve been doing when they’ve made it to the manager position. I don’t hear anybody who stepped out into the unknown on the word of God say they wish they’d never done it.

Why? Because they didn’t allow themselves to get in God’s way and mess things up. They didn’t let their fear or pain control their lives. They didn’t let sorrow or shame make their choices. They let courage and faith step out for them.

Do you think Peter regretted walking on water? Do you think he would have regretted it if the rest of the disciples picked on him as Jesus told him he had little faith? No. I’m sure he regretted doubting as he stood on the water, but I know in my heart that he didn’t regret taking the step out of the boat for a single second after all was said and done.

And it’s likely something he remembered doing for the rest of his life. It was something he could share with others thousands of times as he preached the Gospel and showed them who Jesus was and why they needed him. That one small act of faith when he stepped into the unknown, not knowing what would happen, could have impacted thousands of lives. Just like you stepping out in faith when you don’t know what’s in store could do the same for thousands more.

You don’t need to know the plan. In fact, I still say it’s better you don’t. Lean on your faith in the one who’s writing the story, the one who holds your tomorrow, and know that He will work everything together for the good of those who love Him.

Listen to The Days on Spotify. Avicii · Song · 2014.

Not Your Mistakes

One of the greatest lies of the world is that you are what you do. This sentiment is expressed in hundreds of arguments, such as “well, I’m a good person, so I’ll get to heaven,” or, “he cheated on her, so karma will get him,” or even in seemingly innocuous phrases like, “once a thief, always a thief.”

But the Bible tells us that what you do is merely a product of who you are, of how you think, of where your heart is. Sin comes from a broken heart that is focused on selfish pleasures. Goodness comes from a heart that is the home of Jesus Christ. But another thing the Bible tells us is that, when you are saved from your past, you are saved into a new being, one that is defined not by who you are, but by the God who has claimed you.

I briefly touched on this topic last week with Casting Crowns’ “Who am I,” but I wanted to expand on the idea of God’s claim on us and how a life after that moment can look from Tenth Avenue North’s “You Are More.”

There's a girl in the corner
With tear stains on her eyes
From the places she's wandered
And the shame she can't hide

She says, how did I get here?
I'm not who I once was.
And I'm crippled by the fear
That I've fallen too far to love

Here are some thoughts that, personally, I’ve had before. And I think many people probably have thought some of these things. Constantly, I think back to choices I made that I would like to have again to change who I am now. I can pinpoint the day and the time that caused me problems for ten years and changed who I was, and who I became to be. And I think many people feel this way, and the fear that comes from these thoughts can be incredibly crippling when you try to move forward.

Sometimes, it feels like you’ve messed up one too many times. And I actually think that’s something we don’t discuss a lot in the Christian community, especially if you grew up in church. We have a problem of trying to tackle actions and past choices but not actually discussing and confronting the issues that are from the heart and the mind. And pardon me for saying it, but that’s kind of pharasaical.

You are more than the choices that you've made,
You are more than the sum of your past mistakes,
You are more than the problems you create,
You've been remade

Two things I love about this: it covers the past mistakes and the current problems that are created. For believers, who you are is not found by adding up every choice you’ve ever made. You are not your thoughts and your actions combined. You are not defined by your sins or your good works. And you are most certainly not defined by the sinful thoughts and actions you still struggle with. As a follower of Christ, you have been spiritually and mentally remade, formed into something new.

Well she tries to believe it
That she's been given new life
But she can't shake the feeling
That it's not true tonight

And here’s where we get into the practical application of this song and the message I’m bringing tangentially through it. Even when you know you’ve been given a new life. Even when you know that God has saved you and you know the results of that, sometimes, you still doubt. Maybe you don’t doubt God, but you doubt that you’re doing the right things, that you’re thinking the right way.

And here’s the important thing: these things don’t just magically go away when you get saved. The process of sanctification, of being made like Jesus, isn’t immediate. It takes time for you to be fully transformed, some people take longer than others. And these doubts will always be present. The heart is misleading and untrustworthy, so of course it will occasionally lead you astray, and no amount of knowing you’ve been remade can combat that sometimes.

She knows all the answers
And she's rehearsed all the lines
And so she'll try to do better
But then she's too weak to try 

Sometimes, it’s just not enough to know the words and actions. I can speak to that from experience. This idea that salvation comes from effort is not new, but it’s so close to how Christians are supposed to live that it seems like it’s real. It’s so easy to get wrapped up in, “well, if I just knew more of the Bible,” or, “if I just didn’t give into sin that one time, then God would help me more, then God would save me from it.” But you’re too weak, I’m too weak, we’re all too weak to do these things, so we are trapped by our lying heart into thinking we’ll never be okay. 

'Cause this is not about what you've done,
But what's been done for you.
This is not about where you've been,
But where your brokenness brings you to

This is not about what you feel,
But what He felt to forgive you,
And what He felt to make you loved

But here’s the thing: there’s only one thing you need to know, and it’s not the Bible by memory, it’s not the mistakes you’ve made, it’s not how you’re going to do better in the future. The one thing you need to know is what’s been done for you. The one thing you need to understand is that it’s not about feelings or thoughts, it’s about the one action that Jesus Christ made, and that no matter what, once you’ve chosen to believe in Him and what He did, you are claimed by Him and nothing can change that. No mistakes, no thoughts, no feelings. Nothing. Take refuge in that.

In a sense, who you are is not about you at all. Who you are is all about God and how He loves you enough that He would sacrifice His son, over and over and over again if that was what it took, so that He could say, “You are mine.”

Now, here’s a call to action for the Christian community out there. Let’s stop doing the things that cause people to think this way. Let’s stop making our thoughts and actions and gossip about who did what and what happened from that (let’s just stop gossiping anyway). Let’s stop thinking that once someone confesses belief in Jesus that everything’s perfectly fine for them.

Let’s start leading people to grow closer to Christ. Let’s start encouraging those who make mistakes. Let’s lean on the gospel and not on our feelings of Jesus. Let’s aid those who are lost in their thoughts and emotions and don’t know where to go. Let’s tackle the heart and the mind, not the actions. Let’s dive deeper into how we can help others rather than stick to the surface because we feel like it’s not our problem.

When Jesus died, He didn’t just wipe away the actions of sin. He changed who we are and how we thought and felt. He didn’t stick to the surface and do an incomplete job. He fully and thoroughly cleaned us and made us whole. We’re supposed to follow the example of Christ, so let’s follow this example first.

Whose We Are

There are a few giants when it comes to the Contemporary Christian music world. Bands like Elevation Worship, Hillsong and all its variants, and Bethel Music pretty much own the worship music industry in my experience. Folks like Chris Tomlin, TobyMac, Lauren Daigle, and Jeremy Camp run the radio world with their musical brilliance.

But on top of all these groups, there stand a few lyrical giants, including Matthew West, who I have mentioned before as being a master of the rhythmic word. But another very popular group does a fantastic job of making music that can be dissected spectacularly, and that is Casting Crowns.

(What a fancy introduction I’ve written just so I could hype up one of the earliest Casting Crowns songs written all because I love the absolute weight behind the seeming simplicity of some of the lyrics.)

“Who Am I” was, indeed, one of the earliest songs performed by Casting Crowns, written by member Mark Hall. When I talk about lyrical genius, I’m really not stretching the truth. There is so much emotion conveyed by the words in this song, and many of their songs, along with a startling complexity if we really break down what’s going on behind all the words.

While what I really want to talk about is the pre-chorus, we’ll start from the top. Mark Hall stated that the emotion behind this song stemmed partially from this question: “Who am I to think that I can just call up to God whenever I want, from the middle of nowhere, and expect Him to hear me?”

Speaking for myself, I never really had this thought, but I also grew up in church being taught that God loves me and wants to hear from me, but I try to imagine this now: what is it like to not know that God cares for you so much that He wants to hear from you, and indeed, seeks you out when you’re in the middle of nowhere? I think it’s integral to get the background of this song to truly understand where the lyrics come from.

Who am I, that the Lord of all the earth
Would care to know my name
Would care to feel my hurt?
Who am I, that the bright and morning star
Would choose to light the way
For my ever-wandering heart?

To one who doesn’t know our God, these questions seem incredibly valid, but even to those who do know our God, doubt sometimes causes us to feel this way. Because, really, who are we to receive such special care from an infinite being who is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent? How does He even notice us? To Him, we are smaller than ants.

But the great part of these lyrics is that they ask these questions without ever denying the intrinsic truth behind the actions the Lord takes. We know from the Bible that He forms us in our mother’s womb; He knows the number of hairs on our head. We know that He felt our hurt as Jesus who came and felt not only all our hurt, but all the eternal hurt that we should feel from the consequences of sin.

We know that we have a God who chooses to be the lamp to our feet and light for our path not because we follow the path well, but in spite of our inability to walk in a straight line. 

But we know what God has done and continues to do for us. That subject fills a majority of the time spent teaching, preaching, and proselytizing. But what we oh so rarely consider, beyond the surface truth of being sinners who are either relishing sin or saved from it, is who we are in comparison to God. Really: who are we in comparison to omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence? With our lifespans of 85 years and our meager strength and will that isn’t even capable of consistently choosing to do what is right, who are we?  

I am a flower quickly fading
Here today and gone tomorrow
A wave tossed in the ocean
A vapor in the wind 

Let’s not shy away from this, because it’s incredibly important in helping us realize just how gracious our God is. These are things that, to our perspective, pass by quickly. A flower can be bright and blooming one day and ripped to shreds by a strong wind or swept away by floods the very next day. It is so weak. A wave peeks out from the endless mass of the ocean, looking separated, only to be tossed back down into the frothing waters of the sea. It is important, distinct, for all of a second before it no longer matters. A vapor, a wisp, of material in the wind is tossed about, unable to control itself. It cannot decide where it goes or stays; it just gets whisked by wherever the wind takes it. 

If that’s how we see these things, how much less could our infinite God see us as? We could go to sleep healthy and never wake up. We could seem like we’re important to this world for a moment, but how much do we matter in the grand scheme of things, in even just the timeline of humanity on Earth? 85 years isn’t a lot compared to roughly 6,000. With all the conflicting forces bouncing us around in this world, how much power do we truly have to get where we want to go? 

Who am I, that the eyes that see my sin
Would look on me with love
And watch me rise again?
Who am I, that the voice that calmed the sea
Would call out through the rain
And calm the storm in me? 

But out of all the dreariness, the tone starts to change. Because if you know our God, you know that even though we should be insignificant, we aren’t. Even though we mess up, sometimes, maybe often, more than we get it right, our God loves us. Our God picks us up from where the winds ripped us apart and pieces us back together. Our God sees every last wave and counts it as important to the ocean. Our God calms the wind and guides us through the breezes to where we belong.

The one with the power to calm raging oceans and stormy gales uses his mighty power to quell the tiny whirlwinds that go off in our hearts as we struggle through this life.

Why? Such a simple question with an incredibly simple answer that is complicated by our human nature. It’s not because of who we are or anything we could do. But because of the one we belong to.

Still you hear me when I'm calling
Lord, you catch me when I'm falling
And you've told me who I am
I am yours

Even though we are tiny and insignificant, our God directs His ears towards us. He’s always listening, always watching, always waiting. To hear and speak when we call out to Him. To hold us by the hand when we stumble. To pick us up when we fall. To carry us when we are too weak. Because we are not left out here on our own. We are His.

But again, why? Why does the Almighty God choose to call us His own? Here’s the lyrics I really wanted to talk about to answer that question:

Not because of who I am
But because of what you've done
Not because of what I've done
But because of who you are

Four lines that seem so simple at first glance reveal myriad truths about who we are, why God claims us as His, and why He continues to fight for us. Literally, these four lines are the pinnacle of precision when it comes to explaining the Gospel.

God chose us, but He did not choose us because of who we are or who we could be. None of us are so special as to be chosen over any other. We were saved because of what Jesus did. Because He did what we could not do, and He lived perfectly and died, taking on the wrath of God we could not handle. He provided a way for us to be with God for eternity, but He does not provide us eternity because of anything we did, do, or could do. He provides us salvation because it is who He is. Because His very nature is good. Because His very nature is love. And because we are His, He loves us.

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How He Loves

How do you see people? Do you even notice others when you’re out and about? Or are you so absorbed in yourself and what you’re doing that you’d miss a crime if it happened right in front of you? How do you love?

I’ve been on a kick about how we, as Christians, should love recently. Why? Because it’s the most important thing for us to get right because without us showing love as we are called to, we have no purpose here. Literally our sole purpose is to be an extension, a visual representation, of God’s love on Earth, and I write about it a lot because we fail to be that far more often than we succeed.

“We love because He first loved us.” 1 John 4:19. Are we loving like He first loved us?

“You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt should lose its taste, how can it be made salty? It’s no longer good for anything but to be thrown out and trampled on by men.” Matthew 5:13.

I’ve been thinking about this verse a lot when it comes to determining how nonbelievers see us. Have you ever thought that the world has denied Christianity so hard because we’ve become useless? Because we’ve lost our taste? They’ve thrown out God because the salt he’s using isn’t changing the taste of the world.

That’s because we see too much with our own eyes and hearts. When we look at others through our own eyes, they’re hard to love. All we can see are faults and issues. That’s why we need to look at things through God’s eyes and love people through His heart.

Brandon Heath is one of my favorite artists, and one of his top songs is “Give Me Your Eyes.” And in it, he covers this subject fairly thoroughly.

Breathe in the familiar shock of confusion and chaos
All those people going somewhere, why have I never cared

This goes back to my opening point: are you really seeing those around you? Do you actually care about them? Is your goal to show as many people as possible to Jesus? Do you care enough about them to reach out and attempt to save them from eternal damnation? Because all the people you come across daily are going somewhere after they die.

Step out on the busy street.
See a girl and our eyes meet.
Does her best to smile at me.
To hide what's underneath.
There's a man just to her right
Black suit and a bright red tie.
Too ashamed to tell his wife he's out of work, he's buyin time.

There are two ways you can take these lyrics. One interpretation is that, if you pay attention, you’ll find that many people wear their hearts on their sleeves, and you can see right into their lives if you actually try to see them and not just glance past while moving about your day.

The other is that you don’t know what people are going through just by passing them by on the street. We are incredibly crafty when it comes to hiding the things that hurt us because we don’t want people to know what it is that hurts us. We don’t like being vulnerable. And here’s the point: it takes time, effort, and love to learn of what troubles people you meet. It’s hard to do, but it’s one of those things that makes us like salt, makes us different enough that the world will recognize it needs us, and more importantly, the God we serve.

It’s difficult, and we can’t do it on our own. Thankfully, He first loved us and gave us the ability to love like He loves.

Give me Your eyes for just one second
Give me Your eyes so I can see,
Everything that I keep missing,
Give me Your love for humanity.
Give me Your arms for the broken-hearted
The ones that are far beyond my reach.
Give me Your heart for the ones forgotten

Three key things are here: eyes, arms, and heart. We have to see others the way God sees them in order to see what’s troubling them. We can’t see people as a liar or a thief. We have to see them as a person who is broken and lost in sin.

We have to reach out for them with the arms of God to show them the love that only He is capable of showing, to comfort them, and to hold on when our own grip is too weak to drag them out of the hole they’re in.

Finally, we have to love with God’s heart for mankind. We have to love with the kind of heart that had God sacrifice his own son for the sins of all. Sacrifice the humanity in yourself that says, “well they deserve it because they did—insert crime here—”and dedicate yourself to loving to save them from what they deserve because Christ saved you from what you deserve. We cannot afford to forget any. We cannot afford to forsake any. Christ did not; we should not.

Just moving past me by, I swear I never thought that I was wrong
But I wanna second glance so give me a second chance
To see the way you've seen the people all along

I know it feels like it’s not wrong to treat people like the crimes and wrongs they’ve committed. I know that I will never live up to what I’m writing here perfectly, and neither will anyone who reads this. But how much better off do you think the world would be if we stopped viewing people as the sins they’ve committed and started viewing them as God sees them?

What if we saw people as broken rather than horrid? What if we treated people as fixable rather than permanently destroyed? What if we were actually the salt of the Earth, meant to make this place so much better than the sin that permeates it?

What Christian Means

Just this last weekend I was introduced to Christian rapper Nathan Feuerstein, otherwise known as NF, by my little brother. I’ve only heard a few of his songs thus far, but I’ve found quite a lot of valuable information in them to mine, especially in “Therapy Session,” which I want to talk about today.

I want to discuss a few ideas before I get into the lyrics and the themes in this song. The first is the meaning behind music. A lot of times, I think people forget that music is a language—it is meant to convey things: feelings, thoughts, experiences, dreams, life. It’s not just entertainment, and it’s usually not single-minded in purpose. One song can portray a variety of things when you analyze it as you should. My point in this is that you shouldn’t dismiss music just because it’s not something you enjoy listening to.

It’s something we, meaning the Christian community (and others) do far too often. The older generation typically doesn’t like contemporary music during worship because they prefer the style of hymns. The younger generation typically doesn’t like hymns because they’re too slow and boring, or they’re hard to sing during worship, or whatever. And, to be honest, the argument between the two groups has left worship music in kind of a dark place of extremely simplified lyrics sung loudly to appease both.

I say all this because I don’t want anyone dismissing the message from music like this because it’s “not their style” or because NF doesn’t necessarily define himself as a Christian rapper and his music isn’t always the prettiest in terms of sound. Therapy session is actually rather dark at surface level. But when you go deeper, there’s a ton of God-given wisdom behind the words.

So, into the lyrics.

This music is more than you think
Don't book me for just entertainment, it's entertaining
Hearing these parents, they telling their kids
My music is violent, you gotta be kidding me
I guess that your definition of violence and mine
Is something that we look at differently

These verses go back to the topic discussed earlier and breach into the next. A lot of times, we Christians have an incredibly bad habit of railing harshly against things that don’t look, smell, taste, feel, and sound Christian right off the bat. Rap is a prime example in and of itself. Wider sects of the Christian community hate it because sometimes it sounds angry or too loud, and the words aren’t straight from Bible verses. Heavy metal is another genre that tends to get the stink eye from us because of similar reasons.

But this causes a ton of problems when the rest of the world sees it. Trust me when I say that we often have this reputation as practitioners of “cancel culture.” If you don’t know what that is, it’s the name behind the practice of blacklisting something because it doesn’t fit your idea of “good,” or because it made a mistake and said or did something “wrong.” I’m going to avoid getting technically political here, but just go search up some news articles about “Christians boycotting companies,” and just see what’s pulled up.

I won’t deny that there are certainly groups and companies we shouldn’t give our business to, but we exercise the “that’s satanic” thing way too much. We’re talking about those who don’t allow their kids to read Harry Potter because it has witches and magic in it or Percy Jackson because it’s about Greek mythology. In all honesty, Christians are becoming rather like the Pharisees in practice, disallowing things like video games, certain books, movies, songs, bands, etc.

Want me to smile, you want me to laugh
You want me to walk in the stage with a smile on my face
When I'm mad and put on a mask, for real though
I mean, what you expect from me?

Another thing we do far too often as Christians is attempt to come off as perfect. We sugarcoat ideas, we put on masks to hide our true identities and feelings when we go to church on Sundays, we live double lives because we think that’s what it means to be Christians. But I think the rest of the world actually has it right when it comes to talking about how you feel.

It’s okay to be real with your emotions and thoughts. It’s okay to admit that sometimes you doubt God. It’s okay to acknowledge how hard it is to love how Christ loves. It’s okay to admit your struggles. And it’s high past time we started making the body of Christ a safe place to be imperfect humans.

I'm taking pictures with thousands of people
But honestly, I feel like nobody knows me
I'm trying to deal with depression
I'm trying to deal with the pressure

How many people do you actually know? How many actually know you? Who can you genuinely say you are vulnerable with? That’s what’s being expressed here. How many times do you walk out of church on Sunday, talk to some people on the way out to your car, and then not speak to them again until the same time next week? Are you connecting? Are they? It’s so superficial, and most certainly it is not what God wanted for us when he declared that we should meet together and fellowship.

How many Christians deal with depression and anxiety but no one in the church knows? No one is there to help them? It goes back to some of my earlier points—we’re too willing to judge and not willing enough to learn. Personally, I fall victim to not connecting with others well. I have anxiety—talking about myself and being vulnerable is akin to jumping out of an airplane in my head, but these are the things that we must do better, even if it’s difficult, or else we risk failing at the mission God has for us.

I ain't gon' walk on these stages in front of these people
And act like I live my life perfectly
That doesn't work for me
Christian is not the definition of what perfect means

I love that last line more than any other line in this song for a number of reasons. Being Christian does not mean to be perfect. It means to follow the only one who lived a life of perfection. We strive for perfection knowing we will never reach it. The problem is that we pretend to be perfect far too much.

I’ve said this more times than I care to count at this point, but I’ll say it again. I honestly believe that most nonbelievers have no problem with God. If they knew Him, they’d love Him. They all have a problem with us. Because we do an absolutely miserable job of showing them who He is. Nonbelievers don’t hate God; they hate us. We’re judgmental and prudes and snobby and rude. We hate and despise them and then act like we’re better than them because we’re “saved.” They don’t want anything to do with that, and I don’t blame them.

What you probably don’t know, unless you’ve heard this song before, is that pretty much the entire song is NF venting his thoughts and emotions at fellow Christians. Why? Because, not only has he gotten death threats for his music, but someone, and I can almost guarantee it was a “Christian” threatened to slaughter his entire family. Why? Because he didn’t fit their idea of being saved.

That has to stop. NF has likely done more to spread the kingdom of God by the age of 29 than many Christians will manage in an entire lifetime. Now, I’m not trying to be high and mighty about this. This message applies to me, too, as all of my blog posts do. But it needed to be said, and it needs to be said over and over and over again until we get it and start changing how we live.

Listen to Therapy Session on Spotify. NF · Song · 2016.

No Good Alone

In my blog post Bible study on Ecclesiastes, I mentioned the song, “It’s No Good to be Alone” by Brandon Heath along with the theme of the necessity of companionship for us. Today, I’m doubling down on that and bringing in the song, “No Man is an Island” by Tenth Avenue North to talk about some good things that can be done with companions that you can’t find when you’re throwing others to the wayside to chase down a dream.

Biblically, I think it’s pretty clear that we need socialization. We need intimate, vulnerable, human connection to survive and thrive on this Earth. Whether that is through close friendships or a spouse, it is, quite simply, necessary to our existence, our nature.

The songs I’m talking about today I won’t spend too much time going in-depth into the lyrics because they’re pretty straightforward, and I explained a lot of it in Friday’s post. But these songs are more recommendations that you can have on hand to listen to whenever you feel overwhelmed. Hopefully, they’ll remind you that you need people you can count on so you aren’t alone.

One of my favorite verses from “It’s No Good to be Alone” comes after the first chorus.

It's been a little while, you've been outta the scene
Spending all your time chasing down a dream
Takes a lifetime, takes a lifetime
It's a short life, it's a short life

This is, personally, one of the things I struggle with a lot. When I was in middle and high school, I would talk to my friends every day. It wasn’t difficult, but when we all split off to college, I spoke to them maybe once a semester. We were all so busy that we couldn’t even bother with each other for 90 percent of our year. Thankfully, we’ve all been good friends since elementary school and don’t have any problem starting back where we left off, but it’s important to not forget connections like that.

One of the things I think we, as Christians, tend to forget is that life is short, and we don’t have to live it all business-like. The things we will accomplish, either for ourselves or for God, will take our entire lives to achieve. You can’t, and shouldn’t, rush it, and mentally, you can’t handle the strain of dedicating yourself solely to it. Sometimes, we have to let loose and live, experience life with our friends. To me, that’s why part of the opening of this song hits so hard.

We're leaving you a message on your telephone
Everybody's wondering what you're doing home
Yeah, we're starting and you're missing the party
Can you hear it playing your favorite song
Everybody's singing but something's wrong
'Cause you're missing, 'cause you're missing

Just as much as your friends should be a vital part of your life, you are likely a vital part of someone else’s life. Sometimes, you need to give up on the extra hours of work on the weekend and spend some time with people who love you. Otherwise, those connections die, and speaking from experience, it really sucks when you let them go.

Tenth Avenue North’s song, on the other hand, speaks about the things friends can do rather than the necessity of having them. I like “No Man is an Island” because it’s coming from the perspective of a friend reaching out to another rather than the other way around.

I believe the best way to have good friends is to be a good friend, a lot like the adage, “You can’t hate someone who is always nice to you.” You can’t have bad friends if you’re a good friend. Barring an incredible lack of empathy in a person, a bad friend won’t be able to put up with the guilt of being a bad friend to a good friend. They’ll either change to be better or leave the friendship entirely.

But the problem with this is that becoming good friends requires vulnerability. It’s a hard thing to get past.

I see fear in your eyes, there's no safety here
Oh, my friend, let me in, I will share your tears

This is a commonly experienced thought, I believe. Often, we lack the courage to break through the fear of opening up to someone because of potential judgment. But being a good friend is showing empathy and understanding, and then being there for the person who shows that vulnerability, whether that means to be a shoulder to cry on or someone to help them get through the issues.

I wish you never thought you had to go,
Wish you never thought you had to leave!
Together we can lift each other up,
We can build a shelter for the weak!

More biblical truth, which is also why I like Tenth Avenue North so much. A good friend provides a human version of what God provides. It’ll be imperfect, but it’ll help so much for your friends to know that you are a safe place, a shelter, for them to come to and weather the storms of life. But one of the best things about the lyrics above is that you can lift each other up. When one part of a friendship goes down, the other can lift them up in prayer, or lead them to a Biblical answer to the trouble.

I think one of the biggest struggles we feel when attempting to actively find companionship is the belief that no one will ever see us for who we are inside, that no one will find us. And that if they ever do, they won’t understand us or love us in that identity. But here’s the thing, as the song says, we can be found. God is the perfect seeker and He can always find us, but even among other people, there are those who will see you for you and love you.

Even though, as humans, our love is finite because we are not God, we love because He first loved us, and that includes loving in the same ways He loves us.

No man is an island, we can be found
No man is an island, let your guard down!

Listen to No Man Is an Island on Spotify. Tenth Avenue North · Song · 2014.

Listen to It's No Good To Be Alone on Spotify. Brandon Heath · Song · 2011.

Tell the Gospel

You know, there are a lot of lost people out there, wandering around with pain and suffering, but they don’t know where to go to heal. Some don’t even know there’s a chance to heal. I’ve not written about this as much as I probably should have, but now’s the time. Somebody has to tell them about the one who loves them enough to heal their suffering, and to be honest, we don’t do it enough.

One of the most striking lines in the song “Somebody Tell Them” by City Harbor is the fourth. Here it is in context:

There's a child on the subway
His story is written on his face
And the pain he's felt, is enough to fill a lifetime
But he doesn't know any other way

If there is nothing else that could motivate you to share the gospel, this line right here should be plenty. Clearly, something horrible has happened in this child’s life for it to be so visible, but the last line makes this situation even worse.

Most children are happy, joyful—no matter what happens in the world around them, it’s difficult to steal a child’s sense of wonder about the world. The hypothetical child—who is all too real in many situations around the world—has had his joy stolen so thoroughly that all he knows is pain and loss and suffering. He literally does not know anything about the world other than “it hurts.”

I hope you understand how saddening that is. I hope you understand that it shouldn’t be that way. I hope you understand that because you hold the key to the door that can fix it, as the next few lines are about.

Somebody tell him that the lost are saved
Somebody tell him that his debt's been paid
And let him know, love is calling out his name
Somebody tell him, he's a child of the king
And there is an end to this suffering
And hope that never fades, through grace that's made a way
Somebody tell him, somebody tell him now.

It’s your job to step in and comfort those people, especially children. I could make the metaphor about all of us being children who are lost without the Father, but I think it’s fairly clear that such is the case. So, as believers, it’s our job to share the love of Christ.

There’s another point to make in this situation, too. Notice the setting the opening lines take place in: the subway, and the last line: “Somebody tell him now.” There’s a time crunch here. You only have so much time to share the gospel with those you meet. Sometimes, people are in our lives for the entirety of it, and sometimes, they are only there for but a few brief moments, but you impact everyone you ever meet, no matter how long you spend in their presence. It’s your job to make that impact a good one.

I’ve said before that love is sacrifice, but it’s time to reiterate that. Sometimes, love’s sacrifice is death on a cross to save all people who choose to accept the gift. But sometimes, love’s sacrifice isn’t that large. Sometimes, love is just sacrificing your comfort in exchange for a little bit of awkwardness as you speak to a stranger who looks like they’ve been going through a mess. It’s just a little bit of time and a little bit of energy to listen and empathize with someone who’s hurting. It’s just telling the actions of someone who loves them endlessly.

I’m just going to end this with more lyrics from this song, because, truthfully, I don’t think I could write anything better:

Too many times we've all held back
The truth from those put in our path
So let us be the voice of love to them.

What God Wants

If anyone else is like me, you’ll have struggled with God in an attempt to rationalize doing what you want rather than what He wants, or at least trying to figure out every last move He has set up for you. Personally, I hate not knowing what’s going to happen to me on any given day. I prefer a structured environment with no surprises so I can mentally prepare for what’s ahead.

Well, this mindset is what the song “What You Want” by Tenth Avenue North tackles. Let’s just jump into this with the opening lyrics.

Everyday I've been feeling the pressure
I always gotta know the plan
It's been a weight that I've tried to shoulder
I thought I could, but I can’t

Seriously think hard about how annoying and stressful it is to plan even the smallest things. Take a party, for instance. You have to find a place, get the food, arrange for drinks, invite all the people, make sure everyone knows where it’s at, arrange entertainment, arrange a cleanup, and deal with what’s leftover. There are hundreds of contingencies you have to be ready for, and that’s a lot of pressure for a party.

How much more do you have to think of when you try to plan out your life? There are things you’re going to have to react to that you would never even be able to consider at the start. Where there are hundreds of contingencies you might need to plan for something small, there are hundreds of thousands, or even millions, you have to look out for when you’re planning something big. And before you even start thinking you can, let me tell you that you aren’t capable of thinking of everything. None of us are.

When you think about it, and the next set of lyrics convey this, we’re wired for someone else to take control of all that, someone with an infinitely powerful mind who can see everything we’ll ever have to face.

And I'm so tired
Of chasing dreams
When I am wired to let you lead

About those first two lines, I want to say that there’s nothing wrong with chasing your dreams. Many desires are placed on our hearts by God to be fulfilled, but I qualify it with this: don’t let your dreams be set completely in stone. Be ready, if God wants you to do something different, to follow after His plan instead.

You're changing my heart
To want what you want
To love how you love
And that is enough
There's no greater plan that I need to know
You only ask me to follow

When we choose to follow God, there is a renewal by the Holy Spirit, and it should change our hearts to want what God wants and to love like God loves so that we become more like Him. And really, is there anything we need to do that is more than to love how He loves? I don’t think so. I say if you truly exemplify God’s love, you’ll never go wrong. Other people might do wrong to you, but you can never do any wrong by just loving people the way God loves us.

I’ve seen so many examples of those last two lines in the Bible, wherein people called by God didn’t know the outcome of their actions but did as God asked anyway, and they were rewarded greatly because of it. One of the best examples I know of is with Abraham and Isaac. Abraham had no idea what would happen when he went up to sacrifice his son, but because he did what the Lord asked him to, not only did he strengthen his faith in God, but he also was blessed beyond measure and from him came millions of descendants. What was a heavy burden in sacrificing his son became a very light one by the end of it.

Oh, there's freedom in this surrender
I feel myself come alive
And the burden feels like a feather
When I let my agenda die

it’s incredibly freeing when you just listen to God. It takes all of your energy to try and fight against him, as Jonah found out, and it inevitably fails. But when you just follow God’s will, as Abraham did, the burden you’re granted is like a feather. At the end of the day, Abraham’s burden was to, basically, do nothing. His only job was having descendants, and he’d already started that.

Basically, what this all boils down to is that it’s so much easier to just let go and follow the plan God has already written than it is to try to throw away his plan and make your own. When you want what God wants, everything becomes so much easier.

Listen to What You Want on Spotify. Tenth Avenue North · Song · 2016.

Where Healing Begins

The song “Healing Begins” by Tenth Avenue North has one of my favorite lyrics in all of Contemporary Christian music because it holds so much wisdom within it, and I need to share it.

In fact, this whole song is full of amazing wisdom, and I’m going to use it to lend a helping hand to an argument I’ve wanted to make for a couple of days now, which regards how to speak to those who are not saved and living in sin.

We often say, “Love the sinner. Hate the sin.” And I think we’re all on board with that. But I want to take that a step farther: you don’t express your hate of the sin to people who don’t care about your opinions on what is sin and what isn’t.

Why? Because as far as they’re concerned, their beliefs say they’re doing nothing wrong. At that point, your job is only to love them, not point out how much you hate what they do. You have to love them to the gospel so they can see Jesus’s love from the cross, and from there, they can work on changing themselves if they choose to accept Jesus’s sacrifice and worship Him as Lord.

This is a big topic, and I’m not going to do the whole thing justice, but this is a short example of what I mean and how it works. Foul language is wrong. The Bible says, “No foul language is to come from your mouth,” in Ephesians 4:29. But that’s a belief that Christians hold, not a belief that the rest of the world holds. Therefore, it’s not something that can or should be fixed until after someone becomes a believer.

See, our job is to get nonbelievers to the cross so they can accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior. Then the Lord works on their hearts to change their behavior. It’s something that must happen within them first before you or anyone else can help them.

But back to my favorite lyrics ever, which are these:

So you thought you had to keep this up
All the work that you do
So we think that you're good
And you can't believe it's not enough
All the walls you built up
Are just glass on the outside

These six lines can encompass so many different things. Whether you’re talking about faith through works or working and living like a super Christian on the outside when you know your heart isn’t in it, these lyrics are so broad, yet so specific, they can be applied to any situation. But the key point is the separation between you and others.

The last two lines of the first stanza are flawless, in my opinion, and this comes from someone who used to put up his own walls like these. See, while we think the walls we’re building up keep people from getting too close and seeing the darkness in our hearts, it actually just keeps us locked in. Others can see right through the glass separating us to see us suffering in our own hurt.

The walls don’t keep others or God out. They just keep you in; they keep you from experiencing the freedom that comes with letting go of yourself. They keep you from receiving help from others because though people can see through the glass to your suffering, they can’t get through it to help ease your pain and share your burdens, as Christians are called to do.

But, as the next stanza describes, when you let your walls fall down, people will be there to help you, and you’ll experience freedom.

The chorus is pretty great, too.

This is where the healing begins, oh
This is where the healing starts
When you come to where you're broken within
The light meets the dark
The light meets the dark

Healing begins when you let your walls fall down so the light can come to the dark and clear it out. This is quite literally one of the best metaphors for salvation I have ever seen. Sin is darkness and in us. Jesus is light and outside of us. We block him out by thinking we’re good enough on our own and building up walls with our own works. But when we break those walls down, the light is able to reach us and begin clearing out the sin, the darkness, within us. The only thing stopping Jesus from reaching us is us letting Him in.

And all that happens inside of you. It’s a change of heart and mind, not just actions. Because when you just try to change your actions instead of your heart and mind, you get the next few lines.

Afraid to let your secrets out
Everything that you hide
Can come crashing through the door now
But too scared to face all your fear
So you hide but you find
That the shame won't disappear

We’re often afraid to confront that which we know is wrong. We want to keep it a secret from God, so we hide it, but that leads to shame, which further leads us to separation from God. And, this leads you right back to building up walls to keeping God out. You have to literally come to where you’re broken with God and let Him cover the sin.

Sparks will fly as grace collides
With the dark inside of us
So please don't fight
This coming light
Let this blood come cover us
His blood can cover us

His blood is capable of covering the wrongs inside of you. His light is capable of rooting out the darkness. His grace easily defeats your sins and mistakes. So let your walls down, reach inside yourself, and let God confront your problems with you so healing can begin.

Listen to Healing Begins on Spotify. Tenth Avenue North · Song · 2010.

Each Day Anew

Insofar as sin, nobody’s keeping score of your wrongdoing. God doesn’t hold a record of your wrongs over your head when it comes to your salvation. In fact, the Bible says that once you repent of your sins and ask Him for forgiveness, He removes your sin as far as the east is from the west. “As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.” That’s Psalm 103:12.

I don’t remember where I heard it, but I’m going to reiterate it because I hadn’t thought of it this way before someone else said it. That Psalm is really cool because east and west are the only directions that never touch, by definition. If you travel north, you can, and will, at some point reach a place where you will no longer be going north, but south. If you travel south, you will end up going north once you reach a certain spot in Antarctica. But east and west don’t work that way. If you flew across the Atlantic Ocean from the east coast of the U.S. all the way across Europe, Asia, and back to North America, you would always be traveling east. Even once you passed the spot you started, you’d still be going east.

The metaphysical points labeled “east” and “west” never touch. They actually become increasingly distant as time goes on. It’s kind of like the expansion of the universe. One edge of the universe continues expanding while the opposite does the same. Those two “edges” of the universe are constantly growing farther apart.

Mathematically, it’s like infinity and negative infinity. The points of these numbers aren’t fixed. They’re ever-increasing and constantly creating a wider gap between the two of them. It’s kind of abstract, but incredibly cool when you really think about it.

Last Monday, I wrote about shame along with Dan Bremmes’s “Get up Again.” Today, I’m talking about moving past the sin involved in shame with Matthew West’s “Day One.”

These two songs have similar themes, though I particularly love the idea behind the phrase “day one.” Day one is a moniker for a new beginning. A fresh start. A first step. It’s acting as if the things that came before no longer exist, and your journey of life only begins on that day.

So, let’s talk about it. The song opens with the sentiment of stepping out of the past:

Well, I wish I had a short term memory
Wish the only thing my eyes could see
Was the future burning bright right in front of me
But I can't stop looking back

Sometimes, it’s easier to remember particularly bad memories because of the emotions attached to them. Personally, I can remember almost every single time I embarrassed myself throughout my life because the memories are burning with the shame and embarrassment I felt at the time. Our brains store and recall information far more easily when that information is supercharged with emotion. That’s what the opening lines of the song mean. It’s hard to forget those things, even when there is so much good to look forward to.

Things would be far easier if we were perfect and never messed up, but we can’t hold on to that image, and we end up wishing and praying for God to just remove our imperfections, as the next stanza of the song says. But I’m here to tell you, in case you didn’t know, that such a thing will not happen in this life. God will not remove your imperfections while you’re still on Earth. And that’s where the lead into the chorus comes in:

I wish I wasn't wishing anymore
Wish I could remember that nobody's keeping score
I'm tired of throwing pennies in a well
I gotta do something
Here goes nothin’

It’s time to stop wishing and praying for things to change when you aren’t doing anything about it yourself. Like I said last week, we wallow in shame and avoid coming to God a lot out of that shame, and it stops us from doing what we need to do for the kingdom. You have to do something. You have to get up and change yourself.

See my hourglass is upside down
My someday soon is here and now
The clock is tickin'
And I'm so sick and tired of missing out

I love the imagery of these lines. There’s so much in these four lines that I won’t be able to talk deeply about all of it without making this about 4,000 words longer than it should be. This is a call to action. It’s saying not to let your sand sit at the bottom of the hourglass as if time isn’t ticking by. Turn the thing up and get your own timer going. See, you’ve only got so much time on Earth, whether you’re measuring it or not (as in the third line) so you’d better start measuring it.

The second line expresses the same sentiment as Matthew West’s “Do Something.” You keep saying you’re going to do it tomorrow? Soon? It won’t happen. Make your tomorrow a today. Make your soon a right now. Otherwise, it’ll never come. Don’t miss out on the things God has for you because you won’t make today Day One.

Every morning, mercy’s new, so start over and march on to the beat of a new drum. Today could be day one of the rest and best of your life if you’re willing to step out on the grace of the amazingly forgiving God we have who is so merciful He is willing to let you start each day anew. He is willing to essentially forget every wrong you have ever done so that, to Him, you committed no wrongs at all.

Don’t sit there wishing that you didn’t do those things you did. Get up and live like those things didn’t happen.

Get up Again

I’m choosing to talk about the themes in this song, “Up Again” by Dan Bremmes, now because of the subject covered in my Ecclesiastes study on Friday. Part of the song talks about living your life on this Earth well, but what’s more important is the acknowledgement that you are going to fail. You just need to get back up afterward and continue to chase Christ.

One of the things I haven’t really talked about in Ecclesiastes is that Solomon sinned, a lot, in his attempts to find joy in the things of Earth. His having 700 wives and 300 concubines was not a cool thing by God. His massive collection of gold and silver that he idolized at one point was not a cool thing. He even had too many horses according to one of the laws in Deuteronomy 17:16.

The point is, there was a lot that Solomon did wrong. He has a lot of people beat purely on the wives and concubines portion, if we were to compare sins—not that we should. But even though he sinned often, he was, and is, considered the wisest man to ever walk the Earth. 1 Kings 3:12 says, “I will therefore do what you have asked. I will give you a wise and understanding heart, so that there has never been anyone like you before and never will be again.”

So, how much more allowable, then, is it for us to fail if Solomon could fail? And look at David, too. He was called a man after God’s own heart, and even he sinned many times. That’s why the following is one of my favorite lines:

And I guess not every little thing

Works out just the way you dreamed

You can take a couple wrong turns

Still end up where you’re supposed to be.

Sometimes, I catch myself looking at my past for too long—all the horrible decisions I’ve made, friends lost and found, opportunities missed—and I worry and fear for my future. Did I mess it up? Have I lost my chance at God’s promises for my life? If you think about that, too, know that the answer to your questions is: no. You absolutely have not messed up God’s plan for your life. You’re not strong enough to do that.

You can mess up. You can step off the straight and narrow. You can turn around and walk away for a time and still go where God will have you go. Especially if you didn’t just look God in the face and say, “I’m not doing that, God.” Jonah basically told God no and still ended up doing exactly what God had planned for him to do. So will you. A few steps in the wrong direction because you couldn’t resist temptation briefly in your human imperfection cannot stop God from doing what He plans to do through you and for you.

But it’s hard for us to think about that because we have trouble stepping outside of our past. We remember our mistakes for so much longer than we remember the good we’ve done. That’s another reason I like this song. It confronts our shame and tells us to leave it behind, which is exactly how God would have us do it:

The other day, I was thinking to myself

Made a list of all my mitakes

Oh, I wish I could’ve run to you

And tell you all about my heartbreak

And I wondered to myself ‘wait a minute

Am I even on the right path now?’

Had a couple wins, but I got knocked down

But I know that if you were here right now, and you’d say

Sometimes you lose, sometimes you win

You gotta get up, up again

Keep holding on, it’s not the end.

Hear it from me: God doesn’t want you living in shame. He’s forgiven you of your sin. It’s time that you forgive yourself and let your heart move on to serving God fully. Trust me. Living in your own shame will only hold you back from doing what God asks you to do. You don’t want that, and God doesn’t want that.

Feel guilt, because you are guilty of sinning. But let that guilt drive you to Christ. Then give it all to Him and move on. Get back up from your fall and keep on fighting. As the song says, you’ve only got one life, so don’t let it get away by staying down when you’re knocked on your butt. Hike yourself up and get after it again.

Listen to Up Again on Spotify. Dan Bremnes · Song · 2019.

We are Nobody

This is an important truth we as Christians must realize that is spoken of in the rather popular song called “Nobody” by Casting Crowns, featuring Matthew West. It’s interesting that this issue, in my opinion, happens to be the biggest holdup most Christians have when it comes to living their lives as God has called. We don’t like being nobody because it means we have to give up ourselves, and that’s hard.

But we’re called to do it. Philippians 1:21 says, “For me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” Notice that this verse doesn’t say, “To live is Nathaniel, or Jacob, or Elizabeth,” or any other name. It says to live is Christ. While you live, you are to be Christ, not yourself.

And in case that one isn’t enough, here’s another one straight from the mouth of Jesus in Luke 14:25-27, “If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his own father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, and even his own life—he cannot be My disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple.” The Greek word for “hate” there, miseo, means hate, detest, love less, denounce. If you can’t denounce your own life, then you can’t live as Christ because you’re living for yourself.

This doesn’t mean you can’t value a wife, children, your parents, or your own passions because those are gifts given to you by God, but if you value them more than God, then you’re not doing it right.

That’s why I think the message of “Nobody” is so important. Specifically, I think of these lines:

So let me go down, down, down in history

As another blood-bought faithful member of the family

And if they all forget my name, well, that’s fine with me

I’m living for the world to see

Nobody but Jesus.

Your name, your legacy, it’s just not important. It’s not anywhere near as important as the legacy of Christ. Sure, you can leave your name and family legacy to your children, but if you don’t leave them the legacy of Jesus, what does it matter? If they don’t have Jesus, they’re going to Hell. Carrying on whatever human legacy you want to leave behind isn’t even close to the significance of leaving an inheritance that could show them to their eternal salvation.

To become nobody, to give up yourself to follow Christ is the ultimate goal. You want to go down in history as a member of Jesus’s family above all else. And being nobody comes with some really good news.

Have you ever felt called by God to speak to someone or do something? Have you ever been directed down a certain path, but you’ve chickened out because you’re scared, or run away because you didn’t want to do it?

Really think about this. How many times have you allowed your reputation, friendships, or job to keep you from sharing the Gospel? How often do you let your inhibitions stop you from going where God has called you?

The good news about making yourself nobody is that you give plenty of room for God to step in and take care of your fears. You give God room to do great things through you that He won’t do if you’re trying to stop Him every stop of the way because of your fears. Take these next lines:

Moses had stage fright

And David brought a rock to a sword fight

You picked 12 outsiders nobody would’ve chosen

And You changed the world

Moses was afraid of speaking to Pharaoh, but instead of giving into his own fear, he made his own fear nothingness and let God speak through him. Moses was unable, but God was able.

David was a shepherd with no skills but those meant to protect a flock of sheep. He was a boy, not a warrior. But he gave up who he was and God used him to defeat the mightiest Philistine warrior. David the shepherd never could’ve performed such a feat, but David, the nobody directed by God, did this amazing thing.

The 12 disciples were already nobodies, and Jesus picked them up and turned them into somebodies, using them to create a kingdom of nobodies who are somebodies in Jesus. See, our persons get in the way of God because they can fail, they have insecurities. But if we push those aside and keep ourselves from getting in the way of God, He can accomplish wonderful things through us.

So, go to the end of the line with the not-quites, the never-get-it-rights, the nobodies, and let God use you to do amazing things for the kingdom because that’s worth so much more than anything we could ever do alone.

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Burn the Ships

I don’t know about anyone else, but I grew up with music as an integral part of my life. My mom is a music teacher and was the choir director at my first church, so I was surrounded by, and practically bathed in, music for most of my life, and so I have a connection with it. There are some things that I just get better from music than anywhere else, but sometimes, lyrics don’t quite make sense the first couple times through, which is why I decided to start this section of my blog: lyric breakdowns.

See, for me, I sometimes hear God speak better when I’m listening to music. There’s something about worship that gets me focused on listening a little better than reading sometimes. So, without further ado, For King and Country’s “Burn the Ships.”

How did we get here?
All castaway on a lonely shore
I can see in your eyes, dear
It's hard to take for a moment more

This song starts with what I would deem the most ambiguous part of it, which makes sense, because it’s a query. That query is a question that I’m sure a lot of us ask when we struggle with sin. You get in so deep, and before you know it, you’re a castaway, abandoned on an island by yourself with no clue of how you arrived or where to go afterward.

If you check out the background of this song, you’ll find that Luke Smallbone, one of the writers, was driven to writing this partially by his wife’s battle with a prescription medication addiction. That’s where the last two lines of the first stanza come from.

Another part of the driving force behind the lyrics of this song has to do with historical figure Hernán Cortés, who, to ensure his men would follow through on their conquest of Mexico, ordered them to burn their ships, eliminating any chance of backing out.

We've got to

Burn the ships, cut the ties
Send a flare into the night
Say a prayer, turn the tide
Dry your tears and wave goodbye

While mostly self-explanatory, “Burn the ships, cut the ties,” is doubling down on eliminating escape routes. Basically, this is setting the boats on fire and then casting them off to sea, as well. So, not only are you destroying the integrity of the ship, you’re also sinking it so there’s no chance of salvaging any part of it.

“Send a flare into the night.” Flares are for emergency rescue situations. It’s a call for help because it’s so much harder to fight sin alone.

To turn the tide is to reverse the situation, as a tide turns from high to low. In the times of sailboats, the turning of the tide was extremely important to casting off to sea. If you were trying to set sail as the tide was coming in, it was far more difficult than if you cast out as the tide was going out. You had to put yourself in a favorable situation to more easily escape the harbor, and it’s the same with sin.

Step into a new day
We can rise up from the dust and walk away
We can dance upon our heartache, yeah
So light a match, leave the past, burn the ships
And don't you look back

I really love the first line of the chorus because it implies so many things. Not only is it mentioning a new beginning (“a new day”) but it also mentions that changing your life isn’t a passive thing. You can’t just let the new day come upon you, you must “step into” it. It’s an action of moving forward.

The second line re-enforces the first. Rising up from being knocked down isn’t something that just happens. You have to force your muscles into action, even against their aching protest (because you’d definitely be aching if you were knocked into the ground hard enough to kick up dust). And, you also have to “walk away” from the fight. A deeper implication here is that you have to pick yourself up and let someone take over the battle you were fighting, i.e., God.

And then, “dance upon our heartache” is significant in that it implies the necessity of joy, of finding the energy, the grace of God, to find joy even when you’re aching, in pain. I believe that’s important because we are called to have joy even when we are suffering.

Finally, “don’t you look back.” One of the most dangerous things about turning away from sin is the temptation to look back at what you’re running from. It’s dangerous because you see what you had, and you know it, and it attempts to draw you back in. Not looking at sin is the easiest way to avoid the temptation, I believe.

Don't let it arrest you
This fear is fear of fallin' again
And if you need a refuge
I will be right here until the end

For King and Country would agree with me, I think, based on the next stanza. We often consider the fear of the unknown as being literally that, fear of what you don’t know, but I’d argue that it’s more of a fear that we can’t handle what’s ahead. The first two lines are stating as such: don’t let the fear of failing stop you from moving forward. The next two lines serve as encouragement to go forward: even if you fall, there is a safe place where you can heal and rest to go forward again.

So long to shame, walk through the sorrow
Out of the fire into tomorrow
So flush the pills, face the fear
Feel the wave disappear
We're comin' clear, we're born again
Our hopeful lungs can breathe again

The last stanza to talk about is absolutely filled with metaphors that I could go on and on about, but I’ll keep it as short as possible.

One of the things that keeps us back from God is shame, feeling like we’re not enough and we won’t be accepted. Say bye to shame and go through the necessary feelings to shed that. If you have to be sad, hurt, in pain, walk through it. It’s something that’s here now, but there is another side to it where you’ll be free. You’ll eventually escape the “fire” and get to a new chance.

“Flush the pills” is another reference to Luke’s wife’s addiction, but it also serves as a symbol of any sin. Flush that down the toilet. Get rid of it in a way that you can’t go back for it. “Face the fear” of the unknown, of the uncomfortable and feel the unbearable weight that was prepared to come crashing down vanish.

Resurface from the water and breathe in the air, breathe in the hope of starting again, of being free from that pain and suffering of drowning.

I absolutely love this song, and I hope I’ve done a decent job of explaining it in a somewhat short manner. It’s filled with so much advice on how to combat sin in this life and really gets deep into the feelings that people who are suffering with these incredibly addictive sins such as drugs, porn, etc. feel as they’re trying to turn to God.

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