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Release/Renew
I’ve loved this song since I first heard it back in 2006. I was a sophomore in bible college and thought it had a good vibe and a solid message, but it wasn’t until just recently hearing it again that the lyrics really came alive to me. Over the last year or so the Lord has been doing a major work in my heart regarding how I interact with my family and others in my life. He pointed out that I, like apparently many other men, had stopped growing in maturity and began fitting into the mold of what a culturally accepted for a man — more on that idea at a later time.
The last year he has grown and stretched me. It took time, but over the last few months I’ve seen and my wife has witnessed a substantial change for the better. In many ways He has been undoing a lot of the learned habits and behaviors that I’d picked up and replacing them with a strong desire to walk with Him in a genuine humility and to loving lead my family with grace, peace, and true biblical justice. It’s been difficult at times. It’s not easy to unlearn and change behaviors and ideas that you have carried and believed in for years, but it has been genuinely refreshing.
A Thought for the Men
One of the things that Jesus has really laid on my wife’s heart and mine, is to see other families submit themselves to God to allow His transforming work in their lives. For me, the focus is on the young men, the husbands, and the fathers. So many of the wives of my friends think they are doing well while their wives are feeling crushed under the weight and burden of being a godly wife. Now I’m not saying the ladies don’t have things they need to work on or repent from, but as the spiritual head of our homes it is on us to lift them up and to participate. They need us to share the burden just as Jesus carried the burden for his bride, the Church.This is all sounding very lofty and idealized, but it’s rooted in a very real and practical need. It can also be very frustrating! I talk to men about this and how we need to be a community of brothers who can spur one another on to live like Jesus only to be met with vague agreement and empty platitudes of sermon note principles. Those things are good to know, and they are true, but unless those ideas translate into action they are meaningless. Consider the following verse from this song:
Strip away the layers and reveal your soul
Got to give yourself up and then you become whole
You’re a slave to yourself and you don’t even know
You want to live the fast life but your brain moves slow
If you’re trying to stay high then you’re bound to stay low
You want God but you can’t deflate your ego
If you’re already there then there’s nowhere to go
If you’re cup’s already full then its bound to overflow
If you’re drowning in the water’s and you can’t stay afloat
Ask Hashem1 for mercy and he’ll throw you a rope
You’re looking for help from God you say he couldn’t be found
Looking up to the sky and searchin’ beneath the ground
Like a King without his Crown
You keep fallin’ down
You really want to live but can’t get rid of your frown
Tried to reach unto the heights and wound bound down on the ground
Given up your pride and the you heard a sound
Out of night comes day and out of day comes light
Nullified to the One like sunlight in a ray,
Makin’ room for his love and a fire gon blaze
Makin’ room for his love and a fire gon blaze
I will have a lot more on this topic in the future, but to keep it brief and to the point I’m increasingly finding men in the Church to have one of two problems…
Ancient Abandon 