4 Songs to remind you that God’s got this
- Desert Road by Casting Crowns
- Broken Things by Matthew West
- Come as You Are by Crowder
- Rattle! by Elevation Worship
Songs have a special way of driving home some valuable messages when you actually stop and listen to the words. My problem is that my mind is always thinking about 756 different things, so even if I am singing along to a song I have heard 100 times, I still don’t think about what the words are saying.
1. Desert Road by Casting Crowns
My 8 year old has a particularly expert ear for hearing words in songs. At age 5, she memorized all of the words to Aaron Burr, Sir from the Hamilton musical. (If you are familiar with that song, she believes it ends with the words “Hercules Mulligan.” What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her!). A few days ago we were in the car, and she said “This song comes on all the time, can you turn it up?” It was Desert Road by Casting Crowns. She proceeded to sing nearly every word completely correctly. Hearing her little voice annunciating the precise words she had heard so many times before caused me to pause and actually listen to the lyrics. To say I had a Jesus moment was putting it lightly. This song, one that I had heard before, probably more times than she had, had always gone in one ear and out the other. This time, I heard:
Are you sure this is the plan that You have for me?
Out here in the dust and clay
God, if there’s a bigger picture
It’s gettin’ hard to see today
But I know that You won’t leave me
I don’t know where this is goin’
But I know who holds my hand
It’s not the path I would’ve chosen
But I’ll follow You to the end.
I often reflect on where I am today compared to where I was 15-20 years ago. I can genuinely say that I am who I am today because of some of the hardships I faced, and I am thankful for that. However, I would stop short to say that I am thankful that certain events happened the way they did because they were super hard (to put it mildly). When the song says “It’s not the path I would’ve chosen,” I feel like it puts words to my age-old feelings that I have struggled with for so long. I would never have chosen for things in my past to transpire as they did, and I don’t think I am thankful that things happened the way they did, but man, it is so great to serve the most high God who can take those crummy things and turn them into a beautiful masterpiece.
2. Broken Things by Matthew West
There is a line in Broken Things by Matthew West that talks about all of the misfit heroes God chose to save a sinner like me – and that line gets me every time. The people God chose in the Bible to do amazing things were the most ordinary, messed up people. Do you know any ordinary messed up people? Anyone who blunders and fumbles every day? People who know the right thing to do, and yet they do the wrong thing anyway? Sinners? Like me? God can take the broken and make it beautiful. It has been proven time and time again by characters in the Bible. Eve messed up (Genesis 3). Moses messed up (Exodus 2, Numbers 20). David messed up (2 Samuel 11). Jonah messed up (Jonah 1). Peter messed up (Luke 22:54-62). Paul messed up (Romans 7:19). The list could go on. I am thankful that Jesus washed me clean and took away the pain of my sin, even though I did nothing to deserve it. I was a broken thing, but because of Jesus, I am made whole.
3. Come as You Are by Crowder
Come as You Are speaks for itself in the title. Life is messy and it can get ugly sometimes. There is a lot of pain in this world and sometimes we have to deal with things we don’t want to deal with or don’t deserve to deal with. Sometimes we do things to ourselves and have to handle the consequences of our poor choices. The beauty that is found in this song is that we can lay those problems down and come as we are to the feet of Jesus.
God promises a lot through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. These lyrics speak the truth that “there’s hope for the hopeless” and everyone can “come taste the grace” because “Earth has no sorrow that heaven can’t cure.”
I am so encouraged by this part near the end of this song:
So lay down your burdens
Lay down your shame
All who are broken
Lift up your face
Oh wanderer come home
You’re not too far
Lay down your hurt lay down your heart
Come as you are
It doesn’t matter what I’ve done or how far I have strayed. God will always always always welcome me home in his wide open arms (Luke 15:11-32). That is always a reminder worth remembering.
4. Rattle! by Elevation Worship
To fully comprehend the song, “Rattle!” by Elevation Worship, you need to understand a tiny little story in 2 Kings. Elisha was a prophet who performed many miracles. On one occasion, he was able to raise a boy from the dead by laying on his body. On another occasion, he was already dead and buried in a tomb. There were some other people nearby who were burying a person who had died, but they were at risk of being attacked by some people who were raiding their town. The men threw the body they were about to bury into Elisha’s tomb and when the body touched Elisha’s bones, the body came back to life. Even as I am typing this, I am thinking about how outlandish that sounds. It is hard to wrap my head around the reality that God can make anything happen. Any. Thing. An early line in the song says, “since when has impossible ever stopped You?” If you have faith enough to believe that what God says through the words in the Bible is true, then you can believe that He really can do the impossible.
The following chorus repeats throughout the song:
This is the sound of dry bones rattling
This is the praise, make a dead man walk again
Open the grave, I’m coming out
I’m gonna live, gonna live again
This is the sound of dry bones rattling, yeah
I find it incredibly encouraging that God can heal a random, nameless man and bring him back to life. This whole story is only 2 verses in the entire Bible, and it can be used as the basis of a song that can give me hope thousands of years later. If God is able to orchestrate this miracle (which He did), then nothing is impossible in my life. I can get in my own thoughts sometimes, and think that I’m not doing enough, not Christian enough, not good enough… This song always serves as a good reminder that I don’t have to be anything because God is everything.
