Published July 26th, 2006 by hrabbach

What if His people prayed…?

The first ever song I want to look at on this site is “What if His people prayed?” by Casting Crowns. It’s a song that I can’t really get out of my head ever since I first listened to it more than a year ago. And that’s not just because I like the melody and it’s kind of a “catchy” song to sing along to. Casting Crowns just have a way of stating the inconvenient truths about our christian lives that really catches me off-guard. Maybe it’s because I’ve grown so used to two kinds of songs recorded by christian artists: those that praise God for all the good things that happen (and believe me, I’m all for that) and those that praise God “in the storm”, to quote from another Casting Crowns song that I’m sure I will write about one day.

But there seems to be a noticeable lack of songs that take an in-depth look at the christian ghettos that we often transform our churches into and point out that that’s not what God has called us to do. Now, there would be many ways to do just that and a lot of them would probably cause me to switch the radio off or skip to the next track on the CD… but not this one.

Let’s just have a look at how brilliantly the lyrics of the song convey the message. It all starts with an excellent question: “What if…?”. And oh, the slight irony in the question: “What if the armies of the Lord picked up and dusted off their swords?” - that’s when I immediately start picturing myself as a warrior of God, with a sword around my waist (you know, the metaphorical sword… I don’t believe in going on actual crusades these days), but it’s an old and rusty sword that I haven’t used in so many years. And suddenly it’s not something that “the church” should do, not something that “we” should be doing - it’s personal, it’s about me…

There are a lot more “what if?” questions in there - but it all culminates in the one question that is the title of the song: “What if His people prayed?”. Or, more to the point, what if, instead of just being sad about things that go wrong in this world, instead of complaining and moaning, instead of searching for solutions of the world for the problems of the world, I prayed? And all my christian friends? And everyone in my church, my denomination, the other churches in my country, my continent, the whole world? Things would change, for sure. Not always in big and mighty ways, but starting on a small scale. Things would change in our relationships, where there is so much mistrust and jealousy even between Christians and between churches. And the love between us, which is what everyone noticed about the first church 2000 years ago, would once again be what sets us apart and actually makes people want to know Christ.

Quite a lot to get from a song… and there’s more for you to explore. If you haven’t listened to it yet or never paid attention to the lyrics before, maybe it’s time to look it up on the web and read through it. And if we all answered the “what if” question with a “we’ll see…”, this world could be a very different place.

Technorati Tags: Casting Crowns, prayer, lyrics, song, church, change, christian

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