So I was casually listening to “The Altar and the Door” last year, when the CD was still new. Don’t ever try to just casually listen to Casting Crowns, you never know when they have something to say that really catches you off guard. “Somewhere in the middle” is one of these songs. It’s about that constant struggle between the old and the new creation in us. Yes, we have been born again. Yes, we are a new creation before God. And yes, we still often struggle with the same things as before.

The little pre-chorus line really wraps it into one so very true question: “Just how close can I get, Lord, to my surrender without losing all control?”. As long as we try to stay in control, we will remain stuck somewhere in the middle. We’ll always try to do what we think is right and we’ll always risk as much as we think can be risked. But the truth is: God knows better. And we always need to risk more (and by that I don’t mean we need to be stupid, but that’s really taking it too far away from the lyrics). And what we think is right usually isn’t… or at least not as right as what God wants us to do. “Deep water faith in the shallow end” is what they call it… and that’s a really brilliant analogy.

The song encourages me again and again to let myself be challenged by the question: is God really in control of my life? Or am I in control of my life and God is an advisor that I choose to listen to as long as it seems convenient to me? More often than not, I’m afraid, the latter is the case. But it’s songs like this (besides many other influences) that help me be aware of my failures… and encourage me to try a little bit more. Maybe one day I will truly be the new creation God enables me to be… what a day that will be.

Sometimes it’s better to just come out with the truth – I know I was hurt way more by the silence than by what came out many months later. At least now I knew… some things I could do something about, others were completely outside of my control. It really wasn’t my fault after all, but I spent months thinking it was. This song got me through some of that time… more than once I wanted to sing it out loud to the other person: “Why don’t you come right out and say it. Even if the words are going to hurt we’re better off this way. Why don’t you come right out and say what I know you’re thinking anyway“.

Song: Come right out and say it
Artist: Relient K
Album: Five score and seven years ago

Technorati : CCM, christian, friendship, honesty, lyrics, music, truth

The song addresses something that I know quite well – a disconnection between knowing and feeling. I know Jesus died for me and I know that through Him I am without sin. But it’s often seems like such an impossible thing that my feelings can’t quite keep up with my knowledge. And so there’s always the fear of backsliding into old ways, where the “old man” that has died in me comes back to life because it seems impossible for my heart to understand the magnitude of what He has done. “But today I feel like I’m just one mistake away from you leaving me this way…” is a feeling I know all too well. Don’t get me wrong, being a little bit careful and trying not to sin is a good thing – but being scared of making just one mistake is something that clearly Jesus doesn’t want us to be. “Can’t live by what I feel, but by the truth Your work reveals…” – that’s what it’s about. Our emotions and feelings are more often than not of very little help when we want to follow Jesus in every situation of our lives. “Time and time again your truth is drowned out by the storm I’m in” – if we believe the feelings that overwhelm us in the storm, then it gets a lot more difficult than it should be.

So what can we do? Nothing! We can’t do anything – but Jesus can. We know that He has removed our sin from us “as far as the east is from the west” (Psalm 103:12) and all the song is really asking for is for Jesus to show us just how far that really is. We need to understand that we cannot easily be reached by our old sin – it’s gone and Jesus hung on the Cross to get between us and that old sin. Because that’s how far the east is from the west: “from one scarred hand to the other”!

Song: East to West
Artist: Casting Crowns
Album: The Altar and the Door

Technorati : CCM, Casting Crowns, East to West, Jesus, christian music, lyrics

Ginny Owens’s “This Road” is a song that first and foremost reminds me of a very lonely time. Back in 2003, when I was living in London, part of a team where I was the only male single under 50 (and I was under 30 back then), I often felt “a million miles away from anything familiar”, so that opening line of the song touched me very deeply. The first verse quite accurately sums up my feelings of loneliness and the question in the chorus, although I knew the answer in a way, was my question at times as well – “Why this road, why this way and this load?”. And as I was still thinking this is the perfect song to nurture my self-pity, the second verse hit me right where it hurts. Ginny Owens so perfectly puts all that into perspective as she forces our eyes away from ourselves and to Christ and His suffering – and the loneliness that He felt. Wheneever I hear this song, it reminds me that whatever I go through, whatever I experience, be it good or bad, He already knows and He has done it before me.

No, my loneliness didn’t go away when I listened to this song. But still it made me feel better because it reminded me that I’m not the only one who experiences loneliness. And it reminded me that I have a God and Savior who know exactly what loneliness is like. Not a distant being, but a God who came down to this earth to live as a human being, capable of all human emotion and willing to go through everything that I could ever imagine. What is a little loneliness compared to that? And yet I know it matters to Him, as it did back then. “I don’t have to understand to believe that You know why…” – that helped me then and it still helps me now when I face situations I find hard to understand. So far, looking back at the situations I didn’t understand in the past, they all make sense now. And I know that I can simply trust Him to know why in the future as well… because who knows when He will send me onto the next road “a thousand miles away from anything familiar”…

Song: This Road
Artist: Ginny Owens
Album: Something More

Technorati : CCM, Christ, Easter, Jesus, loneliness, lyrics, suffering

What is the topic of the song? There are a few options and I am not sure what the original intention was when it was written. It could be about an ex-boyfriend or about someone who has been a bad influence on someone else’s life. It probably is about all those things, but for me it’s a song about how the power of the devil has been broken and how that changes everything.

“I know everything about you” – yes, the devil has been revealed and his disguises no longer work. We are better off without him – he’s been dismissed. Through Jesus his power has been broken and he can no longer hold us in slavery. He will still try to “hold me with a lock and key” and to deceive me and “cover my eyes so I cannot see” – but we already know that in Jesus there is victory and we don’t need to be afraid anymore. And when we are facing temptation, that knowledge is something we can hold on to in the face of adversity. We don’t need to be afraid – the devil may be strong, but Jesus is stronger and his victory cannot be reversed. And that’s why the devil is so “over, over, over…”.

Song: Dismissed
Artist: Zoegirl
Album: Life
Author: ?

Technorati : Jesus, Zoegirl, christian, devil, dismissed, lyrics, smashups, song

Written from the perspective of someone who notices his weaknesses and failings, it asks the question if there really is nobody else who experiences the same things. “Cause when I take a look around, everybody seems so strong. I know they’ll soon discover that I don’t belong.” Do you know that feeling? Looking at everybody else and they seem not to have all the same problems that you are struggling with every day? I sometimes get that – not in my church in general, but when I’m with certain people. And I also notice that I react the exact same way the “narrator” in the song does: “So with a painted grin, I play the part again, so everyone will see me the way that I see them”. I hide behind a mask, behind a fake smile and the pretension that I’m doing just as fine as they are. The problem is, once we all start to do that, there’s not much left of what being a Christian is all about. If everything’s fine, do we still need Jesus? If we lie to each other about being fine, is it because we’re afraid that nobody cares if it’s not? Or that we are a failure who really doesn’t belong in the church, maybe because we’re not spiritual enough and something must be wrong with us?

That’s probably the toughest question in the song: “Would your arms be open or would you walk away? Would the love of Jesus be enough to make you stay?”. So, would it? It’s a question that we really need to ask ourselves every day. Is it possible in our churches to be open about having problems? Do we extend a helping hand to those around us who are struggling? Are we prepared to show the love of Jesus to those who are having difficulty living according to His will? Or is all that we are prepared to do to come down on them with laws and criticism and to make them feel even worse about themselves? Let us be prepared to have open arms and to share the love. Let us be prepared to leave our masks behind and be the people we really are. It may be a shock at first… but God’s love is greater than any faults that we may have to admit to.

Song: Stained Glass Masquerade
Artist: Casting Crowns
Album: Lifesong
Author: Mark Hall, Nichole Nordeman

Technorati : Casting Crowns, Christianity, Jesus, ccm, christian music, church, grace, masks

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

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

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

Technorati : Hillsong, Hillsong United, christian, lyrics, music, praise, worship

“Blessed be Your Name”, which is based on this story, has become one of the most popular worship songs of our time, winning awards and being sung around the world and recorded by more bands and worship leaders than I can count. Maybe that shows that it is a story that is closer to the heart of every one of us than we would have thought. I think we all go through times when we feel like Job – most of the time, for no good reason, but anyway. Of course there are good times and the song explicitly mentions “the land that is plentiful, where Your streams of abundance flow” – and it is the right thing to do to praise God for the blessings that He gives. But there are other times, “the road marked with suffering”, when things don’t go well at all, when we feel down, sometimes we don’t even seem to feel God’s presence anymore. Has God abandoned us? Does He even care?

I think the most important words are probably in the bridge part of this song – “my heart will choose to say: Lord, blessed be Your name”. If we walk with God, if we trust in God, even in the hard times, continuing to praise Him is a decision we can make. Sure, when things are going well and everything is as we please, it’s easy to praise God. It may come almost automatically. When times get rough, sometimes we need to make a conscious decision to continue praising God. Because there is hope in Him, even in times of despair. Because we can trust in Him that things will work out for the best, even if we don’t understand and see it. Because He does care. Just as He did care about Job, even though it wasn’t obvious to Job himself or anyone around him.

And that’s why “Blessed be Your Name” is such a wonderful song – it’s a song for those who are going through good times as well as those going through bad times. It’s a song we can sing at a wedding or a funeral. It’s a soundtrack for life…

Song: Blessed be Your Name
Artist: Matt Redman
Album: Where Angels Fear to Tread
Author: Matt Redman

Technorati : God, Job, Matt Redman, blessed, christian, music, suffering, worship