It’s interesting how God sometimes inspires me to think about a song. This one did come quite unexpected, it’s not one of the songs I was considering for an article in the near future. But a friend pointed me to Friday’s watchword from Proverbs 19:21 – I usually read the watchwords in the morning, but because a few days ago she had mentioned it made her think of a particular person, I took an extra good look this time. And that’s when I thought of Michael W. Smith’s “Place in this World”, the one song that made his music known outside the christian subculture. I’ve always liked it a lot because in many ways, I’ve never stopped looking for that “place in this world” and still haven’t quite found it.
The lines I thought of today are in the first verse: “A heart that’s hopeful, a head that’s full of dreams. But this becoming is harder than it seems”. Compare that to the watchword: “The human mind may devise many plans, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will be established”. Yes, my head is full of dreams, my heart is full of hope… but a lot of these things that are on my heart and mind will never become reality because they are not what God has planned for me. As long as I rely only on myself to figure out what to do, I am risking failure if what I come up with is not within the will of God (and to be clear, I believe that God has a broad plan for my life and leaves me quite a bit of room to make decisions, I don’t feel like a puppet on a string at all). But if I ask God first and then make plans according to what He reveals to me, my chances are much better. It often helps to ask God to give us “the desires of our hearts” (Ps. 37:4), but in a different way than most people understand it – not to fulfil the desires we already have, but to give us desires that are compatible with His plans.
And so the song goes on a few lines later… “I need Your light to help me find my place in this world”. What a revelation when we finally understand this – if we look for our place in this world and do not ask God for His light, we will be surrounded by darkness in which it is difficult to find anything. But if we’re willing to ask for His will, He will provide the light we need to find what we are looking for – it may take time and the place may even change over time and prompt us to search again, but we can be assured that we will find a meaningful purpose that goes beyond what our own mind could ever come up with. It’s an adventure… and it’s worth it.
Song: Place in this World
Artist: Michael W. Smith
Album: Go West Young Man
Author: Michael W. Smith, Wayne Kirkpatrick
Technorati : God, Jesus, Michael W. Smith, christian, dreams, lyrics, plans, watchword
Does it sometimes happen to you that you hear a song and it gives you that slightly uneasy feeling that there is something dangerous in it? Sometimes it may be that it’s about all the things you would do for Jesus and you realize that you wouldn’t. Sometimes it’s something else. I love Skillet’s “Earth Invasion”, but at the same time I am acutely aware that it can easily be misunderstood by those who are not Christians and quite possibly some who are, too.
If you look at the lyrics without knowing that the christian war is fought in the spiritual realm and not in the physical, I guess you would have to be forgiven for thinking that Christians are all about spreading their beliefs with the sword, in the way the crusades did many centuries ago in a mix of misguided understanding of the Bible and a hunger for power misusing scripture to justify a worldly war. We need to be very careful about the words we use when we talk about our faith. In a world that is increasingly suspicious of Christians and their motives, words like “crusade”, “army of believers” or “christian soldiers” will let us appear in the wrong light, even though we mean all the right things when we say them. But if we use the same words that are being used in military rhetoric by those who are often perceived in the non-western world as “christian” countries (and the concept of a separation between religion and state is much more difficult to grasp for those from a non-western background), then we are making it very difficult for ourselves to reach these people with the Gospel.
That said, “Earth Invasion” is still a great song – we just need to be aware that it talks about a spiritual war. “The army that’s arising” is an army of believers fighting for the souls of those who don’t know Jesus yet. And the Kingdom that is advancing every day is not a country of this world, but the Kingdom of God that goes beyond borders and as Christians allows us to be citizens of “a nation living without sin”, even though we still live in worldly nations full of sin. Yes, we are a part of this army and isn’t it encouraging to know that we can be a part of something bigger? And all that thanks to what one man did on a cross almost two thousand years ago on His mission to save the world.
Song: Earth Invasion
Artist: Skillet
Album: Alien Youth
Author: John L. Cooper
Technorati : Alien Youth, CCM, Skillet, army, bible, christian music, crusade, lyrics
First, an open admission: when I first listened to Brian Littrell’s solo debut “Welcome Home”, I was very disappointed. I was expecting something else than what I got and that’s mainly CCM Magazine’s fault – their review of the album wrote of Brian Littrell as something like “the legitimate successor to Michael W. Smith and Steven Curtis Chapman”… so I was expecting music similar to that of these artists. Well, it is not. And I’m also not sure if Littrell is as gifted a songwriter as those two. But after putting the CD to the bottom of my stack of new CDs and waiting a few weeks, I decided to have another go and forget about what my expectations were when I first bought it.
And it gets a lot better if you don’t compare it to something it doesn’t compare well to. The second time, I actually started to like the album a lot. Littrell’s voice is very nice indeed (if some girl had ever forced you to watch a Backstreet Boys a-capella session on MTV in the late 90s, you would have already known that), although at times he can’t seem to resist the temptation to overdo it a little and comes across as showing off… but he has the voice for it, so I guess he can be forgiven. And if I had any doubts how explicitly christian the lyrics of his songs would be, well I must say he’s doing pretty well on that, too.
Unfortunately, but that’s of course my personal feeling, the best songs are the ones that he didn’t write himself – and that’s also why he’s not another MWS or SCC. My personal favorite is the wonderfully weird “Angels and Heroes” with its rhythmically interesting harmonies – “Wish” is a close runner-up with lyrics that I’m relatively sure I’ll use for an article for the “Think About…” category some day. Where the album clearly fails, in my opinion, is when Littrell tries to incorporate gospel elements into the songs. What some artists have turned into an art form feels a bit silly and awkward on this one. Overall, it’s a bit of a mixed bag – some excellent songs and some that I usually skip. Maybe it’s best to listen before you buy, so you can figure out if this one’s for you.
Technorati : Backstreet Boys, Brian Littrell, CCM, CD, christian, music, review
