Published August 26th, 2006 by hrabbach
Hillsong United - From The Inside Out
Honestly, when I started thinking what I would write about today, I didn’t think I’d end up with a Hillsong United song. Somehow, I thought I’d never write about a Hillsong United song because they often are rather simple (great, but simple) and I like diving into more complex lyrics. “From The Inside Out” is a different story, at least for me, though. Ever since I first heard it on a Hillsong preview CD (those come out every couple of months and contain a number of unreleased songs as “unplugged” recordings, complete with piano sheets etc.), that song has fascinated me.
Maybe it’s the first words - “A thousand times I’ve failed, still Your mercy remains and should I stumble again, still I’m caught in Your grace” - that do a pretty good job of summing up what a failure I am. At least in my own eyes I often am. There are so many ways I fail in my everyday life, over and over again, when I compare it to the life of the one person I want to be like - Jesus. A thousand times and more. But in God’s eyes, I’m more than that… He looks beyond my failures and sees who I really am. Created in His image. Perfect in His eyes. Fallen man, saved by His grace.
And that is why I can do what I do - I can worship Him, even lead others in worship, only because I am a new man in God’s eyes. I can practise “the art of losing myself” in bringing Him praise, as the song goes on. That’s my purpose. Often I am astonished that God would really want someone like me to do that. But then again the Bible is full of people who failed in all sorts of ways and still God used them to build His kingdom - just think of David, Jonah, Peter, Paul… many more, too many to name them all. They were all fallible, some did terrible things - and they all were loved by God and he looked beyond their failures at who they really were. The Bible even calls David, the murderer and adulterer “a man after God’s heart”.
So this song really says it all for me: I am a fallen man who will in all probability never live up to the standards that Jesus set. I am loved by God for who I am because He made me the way I am. In bringing Him praise, I can draw closer to Him, pour my inside out and in the process my life will change, a little bit at a time, as I get to know Him better and our relationship grows. Wow, that’s a lot of things in just one song and it’s only half of what the song has to say. So the next time you hear someone complain about those simple (some would say “shallow”) Hillsong lyrics, think again. There are a lot more songs like that…
Song: From The Inside Out
Artist: Hillsong United
Album: United We Stand
Author: Joel Houston
