Month: October 2017

Songs of His Pursuit: Between the Dreaming and the Coming True

by Andrew Micah, posted in grace, music, Uncategorized

Earlier today, as part of my weekly Six for Saturday post, I highlighted a new article on Relevant magazine website called “C.S. Lewis, Sadness, and What Eternal Hope Looks Like.” The author, Jonathan Trotter, is arguing that honestly grieving the brokenness of the world we live in can be–in fact, must be–a very important step in the process of fully coming to terms with the hope of the Gospel. I’d like to try to say the same kind of thing, in my own words, using my own metaphors and examples. And because what I’m going to say ties in so much with the story of God’s grace in my life told through the music that He has used to reveal Himself and His love to me, I’m going to make this part of the series I started a couple of weeks ago called Songs of His Pursuit.

Six years ago, when I was sixteen years old, I went through a season of great personal crisis. It was a season when a hundred deeply rooted insecurities, fears, and doubts about God and who I was to Him came violently to the surface. Whatever structure and direction there was in my life at that point came suddenly and rather violently to a halt. There were spiritual realities that demanded my attention breaking out from under the surface of my life, and I fought for the right to listen to them. There was a darkness jealously contending for my soul that I had to find a way to face. Of all the various instruments of God’s grace that kept me from being overwhelmed to the point of suicide or worse, I can point to two above all. One was a youth pastor who simply listened. The other was a contemporary Christian musician named Bebo Norman. Specifically, an album that he wrote and recorded in 2006, called Between the Dreaming and the Coming True (supplemented with a few songs from 2008’s eponymous album, and a smattering of tunes from other records). Without Pastor Joe and Bebo listening to me, affirming my desperation, and helping me be a man fully assured of the poverty of my own soul apart from God, I doubt that I ever would have been able to take my own sense of suffering and spiritual need seriously enough long enough for the work of God’s saving and healing grace to take root in my heart. As much as I wanted to, there’s only so much that a broken heart can do on its own in a world that doesn’t seem to give or care.

Between the Dreaming and the Coming True (link is a youtube music playlist) is about the tension between hope and suffering, between the way things are and the way they are meant to be, and about a God who draws near to us and delivers us even as we’re torn by that tension. It opens with these words:

You could turn a hundred years and never empty all your fears
They’re pouring out like broken words and broken bones
They could fill a thousand pages, be the cry for all the ages
And the song for every soul who stands alone
The ache of life is more than you are able
Hold on love, don’t give up, don’t close your eyes

This is a way of saying, “I see you, I hear you, I feel what you feel” that goes beyond what simple sympathy can say. These are the words of a fellow sufferer who has somehow been lifted above his suffering by the kindness of a savior.

As the hungering dark gives way to the dawn, my love
Hold on, hold on
It won’t be long

I needed language like this. I needed someone to tell me that “hungering dark” was not just an overwrought construction of my imagination, that it was something that actually was, and that there was a dawn that could break through it. The open wound of my need is where the grace of God gets in.

What is hope? For suffering people, hope is the belief in a not-broken reality which we will someday come into out of our brokenness. It’s health to a sick man, full sunlight to those who cannot escape the night, spring to those for whom it is always winter and never Christmas. Our greatest danger is to forget in the midst of the sickness that health is actually a thing. “Don’t let the night become the day,” Bear Rinehart croons in the bridge of one of NEEDTOBREATHE’s best songs. The worst thing that can happen when you’re walking through the valley of the shadow of death is to forget that there’s another place which is not the valley of the shadow of death, because at that point, anything is possible. This is what Jonathan Trotter so aptly describes in the article I referenced at the beginning with these words: “hopeless people are dangerous people, willing to hurt themselves and others without measure or limit.” When Puddleglum defies the witch, it’s because he realizes that giving in to her version of reality is a worse death than death itself.

On the second song of Between the Dreaming, “Be My Covering,” Bebo sings,

War-torn are the rags of every nation
Fear lives in the heart of every home
Louder than the groans of creation
Oh, my God, be the voice of hope

One of the beautiful things about what we believe who believe in Jesus is that like no one else, we know ourselves to be fallen, and understand that we have a right to think of ourselves that way. This is a deeply comforting thing if you think about it, and I think that sometimes we as Christians take it for granted. Things are not what they were meant to be, and the word of Christ actually affirms and encourages our grief at that fact. One of the things that sets Christianity apart is that it is the only groaning ‘religion’ that has ever been. We groan, and we hear a groaning in the world around us, and instead of being told to put a faux-holy face on things, we are told to listen to the groaning and trust that the groans of Jesus on the cross has made (in a now-but-not-yet sort of way) an end of all of this groaning.

When I cry out under the weight of fatherlessness or loneliness or betrayal or cancer or poverty or whatever I might suffer, the Christian way of thinking and believing tells me that my suffering is part of a bigger story of a world that fell and a God of grace who is making all things new, and that though these waters rise, they will not pull me under, because I’ve been united to the one who has conquered death and all his friends, and I have been seated with Him above the fall. But having this certainty of victory doesn’t have to make me flippant about the fall at all. In fact, quite the opposite. The depth of our fallenness only magnifies the power and the glory of God’s grace that is lifting us out of it.

It’s the honesty of Between the Dreaming and the Coming True that drew me in. It was an honesty I could bathe in and be lost in for a while. How is it possible for an album which gave birth to such an intimate and triumphantly hopeful anthem of worship such as “I Will Lift My Eyes” (probably Bebo’s most successful radio song to this day) to close with a gut-punch of inconsolable regret like “Now That You’re Gone”? It’s possible because even though there really is a God who meets us in our emptiness and forsaken-ness, redeems us from sin and carries our burdens (“I Know Now”), sometimes our shadows still surround us (“The Way We Mend”). There are moments when the beauty of everlasting love breaks through into our little lives with such radiance that we wonder whether our dreaming can lift us right out of this life (“Sunday”), and there are moments when words of gold grow cold and it seems that time is wearing down the best of our intentions to the bone (“Time Takes Its Toll On Us”). There’s something about listening to another man be honest with himself and the world that cuts a path for you to be honest in the same way. This is one of the holiest opportunities of the artistic calling. (You might, think, for all of this talk about the lyrics of the record, that my interest in it is more lyrical than anything else. I swear, I have never heard anyone succeed in marrying lyrics with music ten to twelve times more gloriously than Bebo Norman does on this record. I’m a perfectionist about such things, and listening to the record for the second hundredth time, it still seems that almost every note is perfection.)

Bebo’s exploration of other themes only adds texture and depth to his main theme. Yes, the well of eternal things is all that I thirst for (“Bring Me To Life”), but human love is more than something I merely want (“To Find My Way to You”), and somehow those two realities don’t need to stand in opposition to each other. Maybe holiness is not about a forsaking of the creature for the Creator, but seeing and seeking the Creator through the creature. Maybe loving others and being loved by them is something that can help me understand the way God loves me. I would give up on a thousand dreams just to find my way to you, and the reason I would ever feel that way is because I’m made and being re-made in the image of a God who abandoned paradise to seek and save that which was lost, bring me to life, and reveal His kingdom in me. My feeble earthly loving is a picture, however humble, of His uncreated, everlasting love.

And as I’m drawn in by all of this, right around track nine, any sorrowful reflection on my own suffering, any quiet cherishing of my best hopes and wrestling with the day-today reality their disruption, dissolves into weeping awe and wonder at the mercy of a God of majesty who stoops to show grace to sinners.

I come in rags, tattered by the fall and all the earth
A witness to my crime

Mercy,
Weep over me and let your tears
Wash me clean
Majesty
Be merciful with me,
For my eyes have seen holy

This is what I need to hear most of all as a broken man in a broken world, because the Jesus who doesn’t belittle my suffering is the same Jesus who doesn’t belittle my sin. The kindness of God towards suffering man could not be greater. His only Son went to the cross to experience the infinite depths of every kind of suffering in order that He might one day make an end of our suffering forever. But we have to understand that He did this, not to make some sort of apology for creating a world that got broken or for writing the story of our lives with brokenness in it, but to redeem us from the sin that is the first cause of our suffering. Rightly understood, this reality of our need for redemption doesn’t act as a counterbalance to our sense of our need for healing in a broken world. Instead, it only reveals in more brilliant colors the generous heart of a God who chose to be with us in spite of ourselves and how absolutely wrong we were, and still would be without Him. This is a God who came to earth to be crushed for our sins so that we could be made holy. The morning can find us alive because there was once a morning that found Him dead. If this God is for me, who can be against me? If He did not spare Himself, how will He not also with Himself freely give me all things?

What need, then, is there for me to be anything less than honest with this God of great compassion about the suffering in my human condition? I will not close my eyes to the helplessness and turmoil and pain inside me and around me. I will lift my eyes to the maker of the mountains I can’t climb. I will lift my eyes to the calmer of the oceans, raging wild. I will lift my eyes to the healer of the hurt I hold inside. And when it seems like all that I ever wanted is broken, I don’t have to pretend to be something I’m not. I can settle into the sorrow without fear of sinking, because it is in those moments of letting go that I discover myself upheld by everlasting arms. He is, and He was, and He will be forever, the love that I need to save me.

When I listen to Between the Dreaming and the Coming True, the one voice I hear running through it all says this: Listen to the reality of your humanness. Listen to your longing. Listen to your brokenness. Don’t run from it. Don’t cover it over. Settle in, and listen, and let the sadness and the yearning that you feel in the midst of a broken world be all that it is. Jesus is here, and He will meet you here.

~Andrew

 

 

A definition of faith

by Andrew Micah, posted in encouragement, theology, Uncategorized

Faith is not a means by which we earn things from God through our own effort and force of will to believe. Faith is trusting in the Father to give us what Jesus has earned for us and what we could never earn for ourselves–including the strength to believe that the Holy Spirit supplies.

Saving is losing

by Andrew Micah, posted in exhortation, philosophy, theology, Uncategorized

Every life is going to come into judgment. None of us can escape the inevitable outcome that we must give account to God for our lives (Hebrews 4:13). The worst thing we can do in response to this knowledge is to never attempt to do anything substantial with our lives for fear of failing. There are gifts that we were given when God created us and gifts that come to us as a result both of God’s common grace and His saving grace. We can do one of two things with these talents. We can put them to use and try things and take risks for God’s glory, or we can play it as safe as possible to ensure that we never run the risk of disappointing God with our failures–as if God was not for us! There is actually a greater long-run risk in not stepping out and attempting to do risky and meaningful things for Jesus. It’s the same risk that C. S. Lewis talks about when he says in The Four Loves:

“There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”

The things we do to keep ourselves from getting hurt and disappointed ultimately killing us. Self-protection becomes self-destruction. Playing it safe turns out to be the most dangerous thing you can do. Lewis goes on:

“I believe that the most lawless and inordinate loves are less contrary to God’s will than a self-invited and self-protective lovelessness. It is like hiding the talent in a napkin and for much the same reason. ‘I knew thee that thou wert a hard man.’ Christ did not teach and suffer that we might become, even in the natural loves, more careful of our own happiness. If a man is not uncalculating towards the earthly beloveds whom he has seen, he is none the more likely to be so towards God whom he has not. We shall draw nearer to God, not by trying to avoid the sufferings inherent in all loves, but by accepting them and offering them to Him; throwing away all defensive armour. If our hearts need to be broken, and if He chooses this as the way in which they should break, so be it.”

Better to take the wildest and most irresponsible risks for a sincere motive without wisdom than to be the smartest self-serving self-preserver ever. Better to blow yourself away in some presumptious and reckless enterprise for the sake of love than to live a life shrunk down to the concern of perpetuating your own comfortable existence. It’s that cautious, careful smart self-seeking that leads to every kind of spiritual and moral poverty. As it says in Proverbs, “One gives freely, yet grows all the richer; another withholds what he should give, and only suffers want.” (11:24, ESV) Save your life, lose it. Lose your life sincerely, however unwisely, in the name of Jesus, and you will find it.

~Andrew

Springsteen again, and Chesterton; on breaking out

by Andrew Micah, posted in calling, culture, music, Uncategorized

“You can’t conform to the formula of always giving the audience what it wants, or you’re killing yourself and you’re killing the audience. Because they don’t really want it either. Just because they respond to something doesn’t mean they want it. I think it has come to the point where they respond automatically to the things they think they should respond to. You’ve got to give them more than that. Someone has to take the initiative and say, “Let’s step out of the mold. Let’s try this.” -Bruce Springsteen, quoted in Two Hearts by Dave Marsh

As I read the above this morning, I was reminded of a quote from G.K. Chesterton: “Madness does not come by breaking out, but by giving in; by settling down in some dirty, little, self-repeating circle of ideas; by being tamed.” It’s the refusal to be vulnerable and break out into new ways of thinking and seeing and expressing that leads to the death of insight, creativity, and ultimately sanity. Part of the job of an artist is to help people experience the world with fresh perspective. You’re not there to give people what they think they want per se. You’re there to surprise them, to help them break out, to lead them into reality where they’ve been drawing back. The safe approach of meeting pre-existing taste is not only self-serving (the only reason you’d do it consciously and deliberately is to satisfy your own  for attention), but taken to its extreme, leads to insanity and ultimately kills the things that art exists to preserve and give life to.

From The Rare Jewel by Burroughs: Enjoying earthly blessings as children of God

by Andrew Micah, posted in culture, encouragement, theology, Uncategorized

I mentioned on the blog on Saturday that I read a book last week called The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment by the Puritan pastor Jeremiah Burroughs. I want to quote a passage from that book which really struck me in how it encourages us to interpret our experience of temporal blessings on this earth in terms of the realities of eternal life and eternal death. This is from chapter 3:

“A godly man may very well be content, though he has only a little, for what he does have he has by right of Jesus Christ, by the purchase of Jesus Christ. He has a right to it, a different kind of right to that which a wicked man can have to what he has. Wicked men have certain outward things; I do not say they are usurpers of what they have; they have a right to it, and that before God, but how? It is a right by mere donation, that is, God by his free bounty gives it to them; but the right that the saints have is a right of purchase: it is paid for, and it is their own, and they may in a holy manner and holy way claim whatever they have need of.”

Unbelievers, he says, can own things in a sense. You can say of someone who doesn’t have Jesus, “this is his wife, this is his house,” etc. But these things aren’t properly his because his relationship with the giver of all good things is fundamentally broken. Whatever state of blessedness an lost person enjoys is doomed to fall away from him permanently one day. But there is something different in the relationship that a child of God has with God’s blessings.

Burroughs continues, “a child of God has not a right merely by donation; what he has is his own, through the purchase of Christ. Every bit of bread you eat, if you are a godly man or woman, Jesus Christ has bought it for you.

You go to market and buy your meat and drink with your money, but know that before you buy it, or pay money, Christ has bought it at the hand of God the Father with his blood. You have it at the hands of men for money, but Christ has bought it at the hand of his Father by his blood. Certainly it is a great deal better and sweeter now, though it is but a little.“What a thought, that the blessings we experience in this life are actually something which are ours by right in Jesus Christ! Here’s an idea that is rarely conveyed by modern preachers. Burroughs can say this because he understands two very important theological truths: one, that God is the author and giver of every good thing, and two, that those of us who are in Christ have a rightful claim on God’s blessing.

For some folks this sounds too proud of a way to talk about the blessing of God. They would say that everything God gives them is an unmerited gift of grace and not a response to any rightful claim of theirs. This would be true if we were all left to our own works, our own resumes, and our own reputation in our relationship to God. In and of ourselves, the only thing we have any right to claim for ourselves from God is the punishment that our sin deserves, which Paul calls “the wages of sin” in Romans 3:23.

So when Paul goes on in the early part of Romans chapter 4 to say that “to the one who works, wages are not credited as a gift but as an obligation,” he is making a point about what attitude we should have toward God’s blessings. In this world, a person who does work under a contract can lay claim to his wages as one who has a right to them. The employer can’t act as though he’s doing anything generous or magnanimous by paying up; he’s just paying what he owes the worker. What Paul is saying is that the salvation that God offers us in Jesus doesn’t operate on these terms, because we are all already sinners who fall short of God’s glory. We haven’t earned our salvation. How, then, does it end up that we have any rightful claim upon God’s blessings?

It’s because of what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:21 when he lays out for us the great legal exchange that has taken place between us and Jesus on the cross in these terms: “For our sake [God] made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.” Jesus didn’t just become sin for us on the cross; we became His righteousness before God.

We know that Jesus lived a perfect life. He “knew no sin.” Because of Jesus’ perfect life, He has a claim on God’s blessings by way of right. Jesus deserves God’s blessing. But He willingly abandoned that condition on the cross so that we could have it, so that He could be punished in our place, and so that we, in His place, could claim God’s blessings as though we had all lived perfect lives. When we say that we are saved by grace, not works, lest any man should boast, what we mean is that we are saved by Jesus’ good works which are put to our account by God’s free grace instead of being saved by our works. We didn’t do anything to earn the rights of access to God and His blessings that we have, but they are absolutely ours, now and forever, by faith in Jesus. If salvation was just God being good to us in spite of no good we’ve done, there would be no firmness to our present and eternal hope.

And while we do not experience in this life the perfection of blessing which Jesus earned for us in His perfect life and gave to us on the cross, we do experience a kind of firstfruits of our eternal inheritance in Jesus. Even if we have less than the people around us who are not in Christ, we can actually get our hopes up and really get into and enjoy God’s blessings, because we know that for us, while earthly blessings may come and go, whatever we do have is (as Burroughs goes on to say) “an earnest penny for all the glory that is reserved” for us. That is to say, it’s a down payment on our eternal inheritance.

What a better way to look at music and marriage and good food and all the things we have to enjoy on earth than to a. try to find the ultimate fulfillment of our hopes in them or b. deny ourselves or despise what God has given us in this life because we are concerned with “heavenly” things! There is a “foretaste of glory divine” in earthly blessings, and we can consider them ours by right through the rights that grace has given us.

How does all of this help us in contentment? Should knowing that God’s blessings are ours by right in Jesus make us more demanding of immediate blessing? I would think not. If we can see our eternal inheritance not set up against but instead through the smallest of earthly blessings, how can we not be content, even though our earthly blessings may be small, as God has through them conveyed a sight, however dim, of what we will enjoy for eternity? (I want to explore these thoughts further both in comparison and contrast to so-called “prosperity Gospel” teachings, but that will have to wait for another time.)

Burroughs concludes:

“Just as every affliction that the wicked have here is but the beginning of sorrows, and forerunner of those eternal sorrows that they are likely to have hereafter in Hell, so every comfort you have is a forerunner of those eternal mercies you shall have with God in Heaven. Not only are the consolations of God’s Spirit the forerunners of those eternal comforts you shall have in Heaven, but when you sit at your table, and rejoice with your wife and children and friends, you may look upon every one of those but as a forerunner, yea the very earnest penny of eternal life to you. Now if this is so, it is no marvel that a Christian is contented, but this is a mystery to the wicked. I have what I have from the love of God, and I have it sanctified to me by God, and I have it free of cost from God by the purchase of the blood of Jesus Christ, and I have it as a forerunner of those eternal mercies that are reserved for me; and in this my soul rejoices. There is a secret dew of God’s goodness and blessing upon him in his estate that others have not.”

~Andrew

Notice: Scripture quotations, unless otherwise stated, are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. May not copy or download more than 500 consecutive verses of the ESV Bible or more than one half of any book of the ESV Bible.

The unreflecting filament

by Andrew Micah, posted in imagination, Uncategorized

Learning, really learning, about the lives of people who have accomplished truly great things can be like inspecting an incandescent light and realizing that there is a burning filament at the heart of it all; something in and of itself very small through which power is surging, slowly consuming it, but filling the space around it with a glow. Like that filament, the people who accomplish great things–not just historically noteworthy things in an amoral sense, but noble and meaningful things–give themselves up to being possessed by the efforts they care too much about to set aside or take long rest from. They are too busy burning with desire and conviction and the yearning to reveal some uncreated glory to really take a lot of time to reflect on themselves and enjoy what they have done and become. The burning filament, even if it was a person, couldn’t step outside the light bulb and enjoy the light that it gives off without turning off the light. It is too preoccupied with the pain and passion that makes it shine to enjoy itself in the way that a spectator might. Its joy is in the burning and the light that is coming through it. There is a sense in which true greatness is self-unconscious. The moment that we become comfortably self-aware and self-satisfied is the moment that we stop accomplishing things. This is how artists flame out.

An encouraging word from the trenches

by Andrew Micah, posted in encouragement, exhortation, spiritual warfare, Uncategorized

In the midst of temptation and trial we are often tempted to complain to God, “I’m only human.” We have a high priest, it is true, who can sympathize with our human weakness. He was tempted in every way that we are, yet without sin (Hebrews 4:15). It is also true that God knows our frame, and remembers that we are made of dust (Psalm 103:14). But the other thing, and what I want to highlight right now, is that we are not “only human” in the sense of being left to only fallen human* resources in the fight against sin and Satan and circumstances. Paul tells us in Colossians 1:29 that he strives “with all HIS energy that HE powerfully works within me.” When we are tempted to say “I can’t do this,” the reality is that we CAN, but only through Christ who strengthens us (Philippians 4:13). God wants us to know, not just intellectually, but experientially, “what is the immeasurable greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His great might that He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead” (Eph. 1:19-20, ESV).

~Andrew

*I also want to point out as a side note that it really isn’t quite correct to say “I’m only human” when talking about our tendency to sin. Human does not equal sinful. God’s original intention and design for humanness was to represent Him, to bear His image. The human race has become sinful, but there is nothing human, really, about sin. Sin is the opposite of true humanness, because it’s the undoing of God’s image in us.

Sin is always a personal issue

by Andrew Micah, posted in philosophy, theology, Uncategorized

I saw John Mark McMillan and Kings Kaleidoscope in concert this past Saturday, and I want to share a little bit about that. Tomorrow is also Friday, which means that I will have a roundup of all the new music to do, so the concert review may have to wait until Saturday. At any rate. For now I want to spend a few moments on the subject of how God’s personal

God’s word doesn’t teach us that goodness and justice are abstract concepts out there in the universe to which God is accountable. The view of God that we get from Scripture is that goodness and justice and are attributes of His character, that they come from Him and originate from Him. If there was no God, there would be no goodness. If there was no God, there would be no such thing as justice. Moral goodness and justice are personal rather than abstract. All that we will ever experience of goodness and truth and beauty depends on the reality of God, and as a result, God Himself is the standard of what is good and true and beautiful. Goodness, truth, and beauty are because God is, because I AM is I AM. (This is not a doctrine I’m going to explain or defend in detail at the moment, although I probably will attempt to do so at some point.)

Now the most common objection that is thrown up against this is that it makes goodness arbitrary in its contingency on the will of a person, i.e. that God could do whatever He wanted, or expect of us whatever He wanted, and we would be under an obligation to think of it as good, even if it were to go against what we know to be good. But this is actually faulty for two reasons. One, it involves a subtle error of begging the question, re-asserting the very premise that is being challenged (that goodness is an impersonal absolute abstract “out there” to which God is accountable) in order to attempt to prove that premise. Everyone has presuppositions–indeed, it is impossible to begin thinking without them–but we can’t think that restating our presuppositions is the same thing as an argument. But the second and bigger mistake is that it involves a misunderstanding of what Christians are saying when they say that God is the standard of goodness. We are not saying that God decrees what is good, and that good and evil are contingent upon His say-so. We are saying that God is what is good, that goodness is His character, that everything He decrees is consistent with His character, and that one of the other important attributes of His character is that it is immutable, i.e., it never changes. That is very different than setting up the world as contingent upon the say-so of a capricious being that might say or think anything. It does, however, mean that God is accountable ultimately to Himself, and not to us. (Hebrews 6:13) For God to be good is simply for God to be true to Himself, because He is good. However, we are creatures, and on top of that, sinners who have fallen short of the glory of God, which means that we need something more than merely to be true to ourselves in order to be good. We need redemption, and we need to be true to the one who has created and redeemed us.

Where I am going with all of this is to make the point that sin is always a personal issue. When God confronts us about our sin, He is not confronting us about violating a law out there that He has the responsibility of protecting. He’s not coming to us saying, “Hey, I wish this wasn’t necessary, I really hate to break it to you, but I’m responsible to uphold the law here and you’ve blown it.” On the contrary, He is confronting us about the way we have personally violated Him. Every sin is a personal violation of God and that is what makes it wrong. It is precisely because He is immutable goodness that He must punish sin. He could either punish it or go along with it, and He cannot and will not go along with it. Repentance, also, is not about us making things up to a standard of goodness. Repentance is about us leaving sin for God, because to move toward God is to move away from sin. When God disciplines us (which is a very different thing from punishing us, as we will explore some other time), He’s not dealing with us about the way we have gone astray from some standard out there. He’s dealing with us about the way we have gone astray from Him, to urge us and help us to see the need to come back to Him, because He wants us to live with His goodness flowing through us.

~Andrew

Songs of His Pursuit: This Man

by Andrew Micah, posted in autobiography, music, Uncategorized

I blogged yesterday about how music plays a huge part in the story of God’s grace in my life so far and about my desire to tell that story by sharing about some of the songs that God has used to get through to me the reality of who He is and what He has done, is doing, and will do for me in and through Jesus Christ. Today I’m going to talk about Jeremy Camp’s This Man. This song was a single from his 2004 release Restored. It was a #1 single in early 2006, but to me, it seemed like the song was never played enough. It was one of the handful of songs that I was always searching for when I flipped through the four Christian music radio stations I had access to.

When I was a confused and lonely pre-teen, I really didn’t have a good grasp on the cross of Jesus and what it means for people who put their hope in it. I had some idea that what Jesus did on the cross was supposed to mean something for me in the way of atonement, but I didn’t really understand how. I’ve always been susceptible to being moved emotionally by music, and I remember that this song had a big emotional impact on me. There was something in the words, “Would you take the place of this Man / Would you take the nails from His hands?” sung in this way with this melody that made me realize that there could be hope and beauty and even glory in the midst of suffering, and not just in spite of the suffering, but because of what the suffering meant. It made me feel all the same longings I felt when I read about Narnia (and I lied in Narnia for a few years). Maybe that was the beginning of my hope that a desire for otherworldly love and meaning could be in some way fulfilled in this world instead of being shunted off into fantasies of another world that didn’t really exist. All of this came at me in a mystical sort of way, instead of being anchored in concrete propositional truths about Jesus, who He is, and what He has done. But I can say that it made me feel the sort of things that a person should feel about those truths, and made me suspect that there was a beauty to be found in the Gospel of Jesus Christ itself that was deeper than the music and the poetry, a beauty which I might somehow be able to find my way into.

Fast forward ten years, and a more perfect realization of what the Gospel is and what it means has only made this song more precious to me. When we really understand the perfect sacrifice of Jesus, all of our efforts at do-it-yourself atonement have to come to an end. This Man, hanging on a cross, rejected by men and carrying the wrath of God, has done something for us that we could never do for ourselves. He has put our sin to death, carried the wrath of God we deserved, and made a way for us to be welcomed into the fullness of God’s presence. And sometimes we simply have to stop ourselves in our efforts of making our way with God through our efforts at being good and our efforts at making up to Him for our failures to be good, and ask ourselves, “How can I ever think that I can take the place of this Man? How could I ever do for myself what He has done for me? Why am I trying to carry for myself a burden that He has taken for me?” I ask myself that question a little more frequently because of this song’s presence in my life, and it’s so good for my heart and my walk with Jesus.

~Andrew