I love music. Some people say that, and they mean that they find it enjoyable and entertaining. While I am definitely one that enjoys music and finds it entertaining, it's also much more to me. It's a ministry. There are all sorts of music styles that I enjoy, but music centered on Biblical Truth is what I'm talking about when I say it's a ministry. I can hear amazing sermons, but if the same content is within a song, it pierces straight into my soul and lingers there.
Recently, on a very cold and windy Fall afternoon, I was driving home from work listening to Pandora Radio. A song that is now 15 years old, came on the radio, "If You Want Me To" by Ginny Owens. This song means a lot to me. If I can say this without being selfish, I feel like it was written for me. When I first heard this song, I was 12 years old and had lived a lot of "life" through some very painful and difficult circumstances, life made no sense to me. I remember hearing this song in my bedroom and tears began streaming down my face, when these lyrics started playing:
It may not be the way I would have chosen
When You lead me through a world that's not my home
But You never said it would be easy
You only said I'd never go alone
So when the whole world turns against me and I'm all by myself
And I can't hear You answer my cries for help
I'll remember the suffering Your love put You through
And I will go through the darkness if You want me to
In that moment, in my short 12 years of living - I was given hope. This song poured hope like a salve on my soul. I had renewed strength remembering that Jesus would be with me. Life would be redeemed. In the end, it would all work out with a Jesus-glorifying ending, even if that ending was not until I went Home.
No matter what "life" throws at us, regardless of how painful or how little sense it makes. We have a Friend who perfectly knows what it's like to experience pain, abuse, heartache and abandonment. So if you've experienced one, several or a cocktail of all of these - remember that perspective.
Perspective is an amazing thing. Just think of when you were a child. You thought that slide or that uncle was huge! As you grow, your perspective changes and thing come into real focus. The same should happen with us in our walk with Christ. When we grow in faith and trust with Him, things become less daunting, less insurmountable. We experience hope.
You come to an understanding that ALL things work out for His Glory and your good. No matter what it is. This is a very simplified explanation. It's not just "that" easy because life truly is painful and can be very complicated to heal from. But He knows that. Again, perspective. He's not asking you to "go it" alone. He's asking you to trust Him with the book He is writing called, Your Life.
As I drove up to my house, I had to smile because of all of the ways that Jesus has redeemed the painful, shadows of my past and replaced it with joy. I'm thankful, yes, thankful to have experienced what I did because now I can pass on the same hope I received from the Biblical Truth in that song, to others. Beauty from ashes. Joy from pain. Redemption from despair.
This is a heavy post. Life is heavy. I hope that you, like I was the other day, are reminded that Jesus redeems and have hope and joy when you look back at what He has done in your life.
