Not just Christian music

Those of you who follow this blog will doubtless have noticed that some time has passed between posts – an embarrassing and almost inappropriate amount of time. There is no excuse for this, really. My only defence is that it is because I am just like you. I am busy and tired (oh, how busy and tired we all are) and sometimes I drop the ball. Sometimes that ball is labeled ‘administrative task’ or ‘work’ or ‘friendships’, but more often than not that ball is labeled ‘time with God’.

It has been three weeks since I have written a blog post, and even longer than that since I have picked up my bible and read it in my own time, for my own personal growth. I have been too ‘busy’ and too ‘tired’. But it has not been three weeks since I have listened to Grace Has Come.

Romans is an intimidating book of the Bible. I have studied it, but I wouldn’t dare say I have fully understood it. I look forward to grappling with it for the rest of my life. The songs of Grace Has Come are quite simple summaries of the key themes: God’s righteousness, our condemnation before the law, our salvation by grace through faith, our transformation by the work of the Spirit, our mandate to live as God’s united and chosen people.

Each of these themes is integral to understanding the gospel and should floor us equally. Day to day though, the significance of one sometimes strikes us more than another. Two songs in particular and understanding the work of the Spirit have been poignant for me over the last few weeks.

The song Glory Awaits is inspired by Romans 8 and life through the Spirit. It is still extraordinary to me that we are able to understand pain and suffering through the lens of an eternal perspective. My personal ‘pain’ and ‘suffering’ of the late is barely worth a mention, but as I read the news each day and my heart was grieved, these words came to me:

Storm-tossed pilgrim, if you’re struggling

It won’t be long, it won’t be long

Glory awaits

For all God’s redeemed

Glory awaits

And we’ll be free

Another song became a prayer for me. When I felt small and insignificant at work, when I didn’t want to work as one working for the Lord, when it became difficult to love people as I should, I repeated the words of My Life is an Offering, inspired by Romans 12:

Jesus, be glorified

Jesus, be magnified

Let me be a pleasing sacrifice

Jesus, be glorified

Jesus, be magnified

Here on the altar

My life is an offering

Overall this album is easy to digest, is catchy and memorable. It captures the basics well enough. But as I sit here with the lyrics in one hand and Romans open in the other, I realise how much is missing. It was always going to be an ambitious task to fit the contents of Romans into 13 songs!

Grace Has Come has been an unexpected aide for the last little while. It brought God’s word to the fore of my mind at a time when I might have ignored him altogether. Being ‘busy’ and ‘tired’ are never real excuses, but we have become experts at reasoning that they are. I think we’ll spend the rest of our lives disciplining ourselves to read God’s word regularly. Ok well, I will. But if that happens to be you too, may I suggest that listening to this CD and reading Romans would be a good start?

I'm listening to Christian music?

On the Equip Book Club blog this month I’m reviewing Grace Has Come from Sovereign Grace ministries. It is a CD of 13 songs that attempt to capture the big ideas and biblical truths that we find in the book of Romans. In my last post, I confessed to never listening to Christian music outside of church and that this review would also be a personal experiment – could my perspective be changed?

When it comes to musical style I’m going to say straight up, it’s not really my cup of tea. I know what kind of music I like listening to. It’s not this. But it would be misguided to buy a Christian CD solely for a preferred music style. I wouldn’t buy this because it appeals to my musical taste, but I would buy it and recommend others to buy it because words are of far greater importance and the lyrics of each song are Christ centred and gospel focused. I particularly liked that the accompanying booklet (free to download) lists not only the lyrics, but also the specific verses that each song references. I am unsure if that is the norm for Christian CDs – but I think it is very helpful and invites us to read along as we listen and I’m sure it is a useful teaching tool. While there is no substitute for personal Bible reading, music is powerful for helping us to understand and remember big themes and key parts of the bible (I swear everything I know is built on a steady diet of Colin Buchanan kids CDs in my formative years…).

‘The Gospel was Promised’, ‘Grace and Peace’ and ‘Almighty Maker’, the first three songs of the CD, provide us with our introduction to Romans. We sing verses 1-7 of chapter 1 almost verbatim in the first song, while ‘Grace and peace’ is based solely on verse 7. Interesting, I thought. Why just the one verse?

Grace and peace, oh how can this be?

The matchless King of all

Paid the blood price for me

And I realized that it cost God dearly for Paul to be able to greet the Romans with grace and peace on his behalf. They were words I had read and taken for granted many times. And 'Almighty Maker' – this is actually the exception, the favourite. I sing it to myself and imagine singing along to it with my congregation (yeah, I just said that). It’s all out praise and wonder at the God who creates and sustains all things. There are many songs for that purpose, but I’d rather sing this one than ‘Indescribable’.

Next week I’ll delve more into the album and what it teaches. In the meantime, I’m happy to report that I’m enjoying this and thinking a lot more about music in the Christian life. I was in a group this week that was asked to storyboard the first four chapters of the book of Luke. The thing that struck me the most was how extraordinarily musical the announcement of the coming of Christ was. Songs of praise preface the birth of Jesus: Mary and Zechariah are filled with the Holy Spirit and they sing - joyously. Music is indeed a gift from God and it moves people so acutely, I think, because it is the language of praise and its purpose, as with all things, is to glorify him. It would be a poverty to confine my enjoyment of music to all things secular. I’m working on it.

‘I don’t really listen to Christian music’

...and other things you probably don’t want to admit on the EQUIP book club blog.

I was excited upon first being approached to write for this blog – I love the EQUIP conference, I love that it presents decent bible teaching, and I love that this is a blog for thinkers – it’s a privilege to be asked to contribute. Except, my capacity for thinking seems to have shrunk over the last little while, somewhere between planning a wedding and heading back into full-time work. So when Siân Lim first suggested The Scriptures That Testify About Me: Jesus and the Gospel in the Old Testament, “basically a bunch of sermons which attempt biblical theology”, I baulked at the thought. This post would be due in a week!

“Got anything lighter?”

“How about the new Sovereign Grace CD, Grace Has Come?”

I agreed, but in reality my heart had sunk even further. Because, dear reader, here is my confession: I don’t listen to Christian music outside of church/conferences/those times when you subject me to Rebecca St James, Mercy Me, Garage Hymnal, et al in your car. Don’t get me wrong, I adore music and singing at church, I just never have the inclination to purchase a Christian CD and listen to it for pleasure. My prejudice tells me, whether rightly or not, that I’ll only end up cringing over acoustic melodies and cheesy lyrics. I know many of you will read this and be indignant at what is surely my ignorance of good Christian music, but it is what it is. And so this month on the EQUIP book club blog, you will be following a CD review AND my own personal experiment: can I be ‘converted’ to not only listen to but also value Christian music in my own time?

The first time I pressed play on my freshly downloaded copy of Grace Has Come, I was introduced to the album with the solo guitar strumming and accompanying male voice I expected. I reluctantly allowed the first two tracks to provide the soundtrack to the first 10 minutes of my train ride to work. They washed right over me. So far, so unmoved. (Really, am I allowed to say this?! Editor: Yes, you are… we’re all about honesty!)

48 hours later I pressed play again. This time I simply wanted to get through the album, so I listened to it as I walked around Fairfield on my errands. It was in Woolworths, picking apples for my husband that I had my first positive thought: ‘Hey! I’ve been listening to this for about half an hour now. It’s been kind of pleasant to have it playing in the background as I go about life…’ I’d still not thought deeply about what the lyrics actually meant, or how closely they followed the book of Romans (which the album is based on), but I believed I’d made some steady progress in just finding some enjoyment in the music. It wasn’t just enjoyment though, it was a comfortable, benevolent background presence. It calmed me more than my preferred musical brands of indie angst or bluesy melancholy. I began to wonder why.

Perhaps… I’m finally catching on?

About our contributor, Christine Bransdon: is married to Thom, grew up in Fairfield in Sydney's west and has stayed there, is counting down the days until she can leave behind her job in the public service and study God's word full-time, and only gets to contribute to this blog because she goes to the same church as the EQUIP chair.