I'm a BIG David Crowder Band fan. I have all of their albums. I love the creativity they use in their music. I love the fact that they can come up with over 15 amazing songs on a album that just glorify God for who he is. I love the messages found in their songs.
I was listening to the Church Music album for about the 290,778th time this week when this epiphany hit me. In the song "How He Loves", the band attempts to describe how awe-inspiring, how vast, how incomparable, how great God's love is for us. Crazy right? The band paints a picture that our mind and our words can identify with to describe the love of God. Now, as much credit as the band and the original author of the song deserve for this, they don't even begin to scratch the surface of comprehending the love of God.
So I had an idea. I don't know how this will play out, but that's why I love a blog. I can just give it a try. I decided I wanted to go line by line of this song and just dive into what the words are saying. Last time I listened to this song, I had to stop singing because I realized what I was saying. When I really thought about how His grace is an ocean that I'm sinking in...it blew me away.
You've probably heard the song a million times by now, but I challenge you to focus on the words of this song and I hope you grasp how amazing His love is for us, a sinful people.
"HOW HE LOVES"
He is jealous for me: God is jealous for me. The Creator of the universe wants me. ME. A filthy, horrible sinner undeserving of love or mercy. I AM wants me. He wants to gather me into His arms. He wants to hold me, provide for me and protect me. He wants to make me His child. He wants to be my Abba Father. Right from the beginning of this song, we since the desire that God has for us to come to Him through faith. The rest of the song just spells out how strong that desire is...
Loves like a hurricane, I am a tree:,
Bending beneath the weight of his wind and mercy. We are all familiar with hurricanes. Those huge tropical storms with winds exceeding 100 miles an hour and extreme force. We are all familiar with trees. We've all climbed them as kids, sat beneath their shade on a picnic, or carved our initials in them. Put the two pictures together. Every time a news station is covering a hurricane, the cameraman ALWAYS gets a shot of a tree bending over from the force of the wind so much that you think it's going to snap. THAT is an intense picture of God's love for us. God's love is a hurricane and His wind is mercy that has so much power behind it, that we can't help but to give way to it's strength. This is one of my favorite pictures of this song. It's so vivid. Another interesting thing about a hurricane: you can see the effects of the storm even after it stops. All we have to do is open our eyes and look around us to see the effects of God's love and mercy. It's everywhere. You can't miss it.
When all of a sudden,
I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory: This was me a week ago. I had sung this song a thousand times and I never stopped to meditate on the words. Then it me. All of a sudden. I realized just how incalculable God's love is. All of the afflictions of life just vanished in the background of His glory. All the stress from school? Gone. Stress about daily responsibilities? Gone. Stress about what the future holds? Gone. Everything else that I thought mattered in that moment? Gone. All of my afflictions were eclipsed by His glory.
And I realise just how beautiful You are: When was the last time you stopped and thought about how beautiful God is? I understand that a lot of times we use that term to describe (at least in my life) how attractive a girl is. I looked up the term "beautiful" and this is what I found: having qualities that give great pleasure or satisfaction to see, hear, think about or feel; excellent of it's kind; wonderful, very pleasing; satisfying; wonderful; fantastic; extraordinary; incredible. When was the last time we thought about how beautiful God is? When was the last time that we took great pleasure in just thinking about Him??
And how great Your affections are for me: This is where it gets good...
And oh, how He loves us so,
Oh how He loves us,
How He loves us all
Yeah, He loves us,
Oh! how He loves us,
Loves like a hurricane, I am a tree:,
Bending beneath the weight of his wind and mercy. We are all familiar with hurricanes. Those huge tropical storms with winds exceeding 100 miles an hour and extreme force. We are all familiar with trees. We've all climbed them as kids, sat beneath their shade on a picnic, or carved our initials in them. Put the two pictures together. Every time a news station is covering a hurricane, the cameraman ALWAYS gets a shot of a tree bending over from the force of the wind so much that you think it's going to snap. THAT is an intense picture of God's love for us. God's love is a hurricane and His wind is mercy that has so much power behind it, that we can't help but to give way to it's strength. This is one of my favorite pictures of this song. It's so vivid. Another interesting thing about a hurricane: you can see the effects of the storm even after it stops. All we have to do is open our eyes and look around us to see the effects of God's love and mercy. It's everywhere. You can't miss it.
When all of a sudden,
I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory: This was me a week ago. I had sung this song a thousand times and I never stopped to meditate on the words. Then it me. All of a sudden. I realized just how incalculable God's love is. All of the afflictions of life just vanished in the background of His glory. All the stress from school? Gone. Stress about daily responsibilities? Gone. Stress about what the future holds? Gone. Everything else that I thought mattered in that moment? Gone. All of my afflictions were eclipsed by His glory.
And I realise just how beautiful You are: When was the last time you stopped and thought about how beautiful God is? I understand that a lot of times we use that term to describe (at least in my life) how attractive a girl is. I looked up the term "beautiful" and this is what I found: having qualities that give great pleasure or satisfaction to see, hear, think about or feel; excellent of it's kind; wonderful, very pleasing; satisfying; wonderful; fantastic; extraordinary; incredible. When was the last time we thought about how beautiful God is? When was the last time that we took great pleasure in just thinking about Him??
And how great Your affections are for me: This is where it gets good...
And oh, how He loves us so,
Oh how He loves us,
How He loves us all
Yeah, He loves us,
Oh! how He loves us,
Oh! how He loves us,
Oh! how He loves. : Wow. There is nothing deep theologically about the chorus. It's just a simple phrase repeated over and over. Oh! How He loves us. In my personal translation (although it doesn't fit with the timing of the song): WOW! I CAN'T EVEN BEGIN TO FATHOM HOW MUCH THE ALPHA AND THE OMEGA LOVES ME!!! THIS IS CRAZY!! THE ALMIGHTY GOD LOVES ME!!! HELLO?!?!? DOES ANYONE ELSE SEE HOW RIDICULOUSLY AWESOME IT IS THAT THE ONE TRUE GOD WHO IS SITTING ON HIS THRONE IN HEAVEN LOVES A SMALL AND INSIGNIFICANT PIECE OF DUST IN THIS GIGANTIC UNIVERSE LIKE ME?!?!?! OH! HOW HE LOVES US!!!!!!!!!
We are His portion and He is our prize: Portion literally means "part of a whole." WE are HIS portion. All he wants is for us to be made complete through Him. To be made whole. That's His desire. That ALL men come to Him. And HE is our prize. Not escaping hell. Not a lavish mansion in heaven. Not streets of gold. Those aren't the prizes of salvation. A relationship with the God we have been describing throughout this entire song. THAT is our prize. HE is our prize. I'm fine with that.
Drawn to redemption by the grace in His eyes: I love this line. So many times we feel like God is sitting on His throne keeping track of all our wrongs and that in turn determines how He views and feels about us. Is God disappointed in sin? Absolutely. But just like the story of the prodigal son in Luke 15, God just wants us to come home. His grace literally draws us into redemption. REDEMPTION. The strongest sense of freedom we can think of. I love how the song says that grace is in His eyes. We literally have to face God, repent of our sin, and acknowledge the fact that we need saving. Then by the grace in His eyes, He draws us into redemption. Freedom. Safety. Home.
If His grace is an ocean, we're all sinking: This is my favorite line in the song. It's so epic. The music builds at this point and it's just awesome. Grace is getting what we don't deserve. As sinful people, we don't deserve His love, His mercy, His blessings, His desire to have a relationship with us. Yet, God is gracious. Basically, if you relate God's grace to an ocean and you were forced to swim the entire length of the ocean, we all know that you would drown. It's impossible to explore and navigate the entirety of that ocean. So it is with God's grace. It's an ocean. Sinking may be a terrible and deadly thing to do in a literal ocean, but in the ocean of God's grace, it the best and most refreshing thing you can do.
And Heaven meets earth like an unforseen kiss: Seriously. When was the last time we just basked in the beauty of God's creation?? When was the last time we looked at pictures from the Hubble Telescope and just marveled at the vastness of God's universe? When we just stop thinking about ourselves and see the majesty of God's creation coming together like a passionate, loving kiss, it should leave us speechless.
And my heart turns violently inside of my chest: I love this picture. A heart turning, and wrestling violently with this realization. The realization of just how great God's love is. This picture makes me think of an epic battle raging inside of us to truly comprehend the beauty of God's love. It's a battle that will continue until we are standing face to face with Him.
I don't have time to maintain these regrets
When I think about, the way He loves us: Why worry? Why stress? Nothing in this life is that important. Not school. Not relationships. Not money. Not power. Not authority. I'll tell you what I'm going to do today. I'm going to bask in the love of my Father and just soak it up.
Oh! how He loves. : Wow. There is nothing deep theologically about the chorus. It's just a simple phrase repeated over and over. Oh! How He loves us. In my personal translation (although it doesn't fit with the timing of the song): WOW! I CAN'T EVEN BEGIN TO FATHOM HOW MUCH THE ALPHA AND THE OMEGA LOVES ME!!! THIS IS CRAZY!! THE ALMIGHTY GOD LOVES ME!!! HELLO?!?!? DOES ANYONE ELSE SEE HOW RIDICULOUSLY AWESOME IT IS THAT THE ONE TRUE GOD WHO IS SITTING ON HIS THRONE IN HEAVEN LOVES A SMALL AND INSIGNIFICANT PIECE OF DUST IN THIS GIGANTIC UNIVERSE LIKE ME?!?!?! OH! HOW HE LOVES US!!!!!!!!!
We are His portion and He is our prize: Portion literally means "part of a whole." WE are HIS portion. All he wants is for us to be made complete through Him. To be made whole. That's His desire. That ALL men come to Him. And HE is our prize. Not escaping hell. Not a lavish mansion in heaven. Not streets of gold. Those aren't the prizes of salvation. A relationship with the God we have been describing throughout this entire song. THAT is our prize. HE is our prize. I'm fine with that.
Drawn to redemption by the grace in His eyes: I love this line. So many times we feel like God is sitting on His throne keeping track of all our wrongs and that in turn determines how He views and feels about us. Is God disappointed in sin? Absolutely. But just like the story of the prodigal son in Luke 15, God just wants us to come home. His grace literally draws us into redemption. REDEMPTION. The strongest sense of freedom we can think of. I love how the song says that grace is in His eyes. We literally have to face God, repent of our sin, and acknowledge the fact that we need saving. Then by the grace in His eyes, He draws us into redemption. Freedom. Safety. Home.
If His grace is an ocean, we're all sinking: This is my favorite line in the song. It's so epic. The music builds at this point and it's just awesome. Grace is getting what we don't deserve. As sinful people, we don't deserve His love, His mercy, His blessings, His desire to have a relationship with us. Yet, God is gracious. Basically, if you relate God's grace to an ocean and you were forced to swim the entire length of the ocean, we all know that you would drown. It's impossible to explore and navigate the entirety of that ocean. So it is with God's grace. It's an ocean. Sinking may be a terrible and deadly thing to do in a literal ocean, but in the ocean of God's grace, it the best and most refreshing thing you can do.
And Heaven meets earth like an unforseen kiss: Seriously. When was the last time we just basked in the beauty of God's creation?? When was the last time we looked at pictures from the Hubble Telescope and just marveled at the vastness of God's universe? When we just stop thinking about ourselves and see the majesty of God's creation coming together like a passionate, loving kiss, it should leave us speechless.
And my heart turns violently inside of my chest: I love this picture. A heart turning, and wrestling violently with this realization. The realization of just how great God's love is. This picture makes me think of an epic battle raging inside of us to truly comprehend the beauty of God's love. It's a battle that will continue until we are standing face to face with Him.
I don't have time to maintain these regrets
When I think about, the way He loves us: Why worry? Why stress? Nothing in this life is that important. Not school. Not relationships. Not money. Not power. Not authority. I'll tell you what I'm going to do today. I'm going to bask in the love of my Father and just soak it up.
What about you?
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