"children drop your chains and sing"

A benefit of having a brother and cousin (who are rather on the up-and-up when it comes to Christian contemporary music) is they keep you well-informed on the best songs out there. So when Daniel bought Tenth Avenue North's The Struggle c.d., I had high high hopes.

 Mike Donahey's music blesses me more and more the better I get to know it. This c.d. is full of wonderful songs, but one in particular I have taken as my catch-phrase for 2013...

"The Struggle"

"There's a wreckage, there's a fire

There's a weakness in my love

There's a hunger I can't control.

Lord I falter, and I fall down 

Then I hold onto the chains You broke

When You came down and saved my soul.

Save my soul."

This verse is my heart's cry when I'm hurting...it was David's heart's cry in the Psalms, and I think it is the prayer of every Christian at times. (And as a purely aesthetic thing, I love the play on S.O.S. "save our ship" turned to "Save my soul") This verse just pins those moments of temptation and weakness and mourning. Then comes the chorus:

"Hallelujah!

We are free to struggle,

We're not struggling to be free.

Your blood bought and makes us children

So children drop your chains and sing."

So profound. So beautiful. "We are free to struggle. We're not struggling to be free." When I first heard this song I got chills...and it's happened every time since. God's love for me. His passion and longing for His wandering people to repent and come home to His arms.// I love how the author of this song pegged the difference grace makes: as Christians we are free to struggle--the battle and war against and wrestle temptations. But we're not in bondage. We're not struggling to be free.

"So I look. Do I still fail?

Do I withold? Do I give into temptations?

On my own I am bankrupt

I will trust You. I will take You at Your word.

You promise."

Then the chorus again. A cry for the fulfillment of this promise from Jesus...and the piercing knowledge that He will give it. This promise, this oath, this glorious, incomprehensible grace. 

"Hallelujah, death is overcome

And we are breathing.

Hallelujah our stone hearts become flesh,

a flesh that's beating.

Hallelujah chains have been undone

and we are singing.

Hallelujah the fire has begun.

Can you feel it?"

The victory in this verse reminds me so of that passage in Romans: (8:38-39) 

"For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord."

"Hallelujah!

We are free to struggle,

We're not struggling to be free.

Your blood bought and makes us children

So children drop your chains and sing."

A tissue-paper election

"Look at a stone cutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred-and-first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not the last blow that did it, but all that had gone before." 

-Jacob A. Riis

You'd think that with Obama as president of our country again I'd be struck down into some dull state of depression and despair.

The temptation was there last night. It really was.

After all, for the past five days I, along with sixty students, a slew of parents, and an awesome team of fellow leaders, had worked our tails off making phone-calls twelve hours a day, running through neighborhoods passing out literature, enduring foul-mouthed people tired to death of the phone-calls, and generally pouring our every drop of life's blood into this presidential race.

When I sat with my kids and watched the results come in, when it was clear that not only was America keeping Obama, but my own state as well, it was tempting to feel a haze of depression and give into it.

But one of our leaders had the oh-so-brilliant and right idea to turn down the volume on the news and to turn up some worship music. As the words to "Ten Thousand Reasons" poured out of the speakers, I turned my heart to worship the Lord:

"Whatever may pass and whatever lies before me let me be singing when the evening comes..."

After several songs one of my dear friends and fellow leaders came over and began to pray with me. We knelt together on the ground and just poured our hearts out to the Lord...

Pleading for His mercy on our country and for His protection of the unborn children.

Praise for His marvelous ways so far beyond us.

Repentance for pride, for foolishness, and for ignorance.

Dedication of our hearts and minds to His will and service.

Trust that Obama is the president God intends to use in our lives in some way.

I cried. I laughed. And the Lord was with me. I literally felt Jesus' presence right there with me, and His voice whispering comfort and peace and joy back into my heart. It was surreal, how a half hour of deep, intense, sincere prayer changed my mourning into dancing. We prayed separately and then together, and by the end of the time we were literally laughing through the tears over how silly we were to have lost our perspective.

God is way bigger than Obama. He's way bigger than America. He's way bigger than which states went red and which went blue and if our phone-calls and door-knocking mattered at all. He's bigger than all that. The word Josie and I were given in that moment was tissue-paper: it's all tissue-paper in the face of the steel-fists of our God and King.

So Obama is our leader. We are called to pray for Him. We thought we knew what was best for America, but obviously Jesus planted Obama as president of America for another four years for a reason. To bring Himself glory in some way. Our job? Stop complaining. Get involved. And pray. Pray harder than you've ever prayed in your life and don't stop after the election buzz settles. Look for ways to serve Christ and keep on keeping on. It's life people. We weren't made for this world so we're not going feel natural and skin-smooth-fit into it. So let's be resilient, let's be humble, and let's not let a mere man steal our joy.