Music Monday: Deliverer

Leave a comment

Today I’d like to share the new single from Audrey Assad entitled “Deliverer”.

Rather than sharing the lyrics (which are in the video anyway), I’d like to share Audrey’s words explaining the origin of this song:

I grew up with some rather terrible and terrifying ideas about who God was. Mostly, I believed that God only loved me because Jesus stepped in between us and God couldn’t see me anymore—this contributed to many years of a tormented and broken-down relationship with God, based mostly in fear and shame.

Jesus is often called ‘Immanuel’, which means ‘God with us.’ Imagine the deep healing that took place when I came to recognize that Jesus came not to defend us from God, but to display in His life, death, and resurrection exactly who God has always been.

When I took a good honest look at the ruins in my heart, it is no surprise that I found Him there, ‘preaching His gospel to the poor’ (T. Merton) — He had been with me and within me all along, delivering me not from God, but from my own inner death.

I truly hope you are blessed and ministered to by this song. It was a healing experience to write it.

PWJ: S1E3 – MC B1C1 – “The Law of Human Nature”

9 comments

In today’s episode we begin Book I of “Mere Christianity”, which is entitled “Right and wrong as a clue to the meaning of the universe”. In this book, C.S. Lewis builds an argument for the existence of God based upon the idea that there is a Moral Law.

If you enjoy this episode, you can subscribe using iTunes or Google Play. As always, if you have any objections, comments or questions, please send us an email through my website or tweet us @pintswithjack.

Episode 3: “The Law of Human Nature” (Download)

Read more

Mere Christianity – Book IV – Chapter 3 (“Time and beyond time”)

2 comments

Book-4

Picking back up my notes for C.S. Lewis’ “Mere Christianity”…

1. Some people struggle with the idea of prayer

(a) It relates to how God hears prayer

“A man put it to me by saying ‘I can believe in God all right, but what I cannot swallow is the idea of Him attending to several hundred million human beings who are all addressing Him at the same moment.'” 

(b) Specifically, how God can hear prayers at the same time

“Most of us can imagine God attending to any number of applicants if only they came one by one and He had an endless time to do it in. So what is really at the back of this difficulty is the idea of God having to fit too many things into one moment of time”

2. Our trouble stems from how we experience life in time

“Our life comes to us moment by moment One moment disappears before the next comes along: and there is room for very little in each. That is what Time is like”

(a) They assume that God experiences things in the same way

We tend to assume that the whole universe and God Himself are always moving on from past to future just as we do. But many learned men do not agree with that. It was the Theologians who first started the idea that some things are not in Time at all: later the Philosophers took it over: and now some of the scientists are doing the same.

(b) However, God is not in Time

“His life does not consist of moments following one another. If a million people are praying to Him at ten-thirty tonight, He need not listen to them all in that one little snippet which we call ten-thirty. Ten-thirty-and every other moment from the beginning of the world-is always the Present for Him”

Read more

Wise Words on Wednesday: The Lord in disguise

Leave a comment

statue_in_rome

“Why is it, Lord, that your feet delay?
Did you forget that this was the day?”
Then soft in the silence a voice he heard,
“Lift up your heart, for I have kept my word.
Three times I came to your friendly door;
Three times my shadow was on your floor.
I was a beggar with the bruised feet;
I was the woman you gave to eat;
I was the child on the homeless street!”

– Edwin Markham, How the Great Guest Came

Music Monday: Death was arrested

Leave a comment

Alone in my sorrow and dead in my sin
Lost without hope with no place to begin
Your love Made a way to let mercy come in
When death was arrested and my life began

Ash was redeemed only beauty remains
My orphan heart was given a name
My mourning grew quiet my feet rose to dance
When death was arrested and my life began

Oh, Your grace so free
Washes over me
You have made me new
Now life begins with You
It’s your endless love
Pouring down on us
You have made us new
Now life begins with You

Released from my chains I’m a prisoner no more
My shame was a ransom He faithfully bore
He cancelled my debt and He called me His friend
When death was arrested and my life began

Our savior displayed on a criminal’s cross
Darkness rejoiced as though heaven had lost
But then Jesus arose with our freedom in hand
That’s when death was arrested and my life began

Oh, we’re free, free
Forever we’re free
Come join the song
Of all the redeemed
Yes, we’re free free
Forever amen
When death was arrested and my life began

1 … 201 202 203 204 205 … 586