Better than a hallelujah

Went to Hope Pres yesterday. Amy Grant was in town with hubby Vince Gill to support Target House, a facility to house children who are patients of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital when their treatment will be longer than 3 months. Amy is good friends with the worship leader there, and she helped lead all 4 services for the weekend.

Her new album, "Somewhere Down The Road," came out this year. It's incredible. I decided when I first heard it 2 months ago that I'd do my favorite song on it, "Better Than A Hallelujah," when I give my testimony at group this fall. Because it's a song that describes what true recovery, and life itself in Christ, is really all about, and aptly describes the last two years of my life. Hearing her sing it, strumming her guitar in her jeans, reinforced that message for me in a big way.

"We pour out our miseries
God just hears a melody
Beautiful, the mess we are
The honest cries of breaking hearts
Are better than a hallelujah"

Working this program, if you approach it with the right attitude, becomes so much more than a set of rules or a series of steps. You show up ragged as a vagabond, wounded and utterly broken, disheveled and bone-weary from the cumulative consequences of a lifetime's worth of regrets earned from one bad choice after another. You're sick of feeling pain, sick of causing it. Life has become an obstacle to overcome. Every day brings more nightmares, more tears, more misery. Even though I participate in "Celebrate Recovery," you start out there because there's nothing left in life (or so you think) to celebrate anymore.

CR is based on 8 Principles and 12 Steps, all straight out of scripture and so you begin to hear TRUTH. You look, REALLY look, at your life without excuse or defense. That's called "surrendering." Sometimes (well, usually) it's all you have the energy to do. Your hands are sore and arthritic from clinging, white-knuckled, to your issues because you think there's nothing left without them... There's no faith, no fight, no formula left, and you're so bent over from the chains of bondage that, when that revelation of choice comes, you just let go. It's no big, dramatic action because it's all you can do to pry your fingers off... But you do it. That moment is when your new life truly begins.

Working the program may start out as steps, but they're not aimless; this path has a purpose, a destination. This road leads straight to Christ and to freedom. The more truth you hear, the more acceptance you experience, the more love you are given by people who are just like you, the stronger your faith becomes. You stop "stepping" and start living. Each "step" is an act of obedience, and through it Jesus breathes life into you and suddenly, miraculously, life's not as heavy. You can breathe a little easier, stand a little straighter, think a little more clearly.

We are not a burden to the Lord, people. We aren't taxing Him with our whining, crying, complaining and stubborn ways... We aren't wearing Him out with our questions and prayers. He can take it; He WANTS it. There's no question too big, no issue too powerful for Him, and He already knows where each and every one of us are! Has it ever occurred to you that nothing ever occurs to God?! He knows EXACTLY what's going on in your life, in your mind and in your soul. He's just waiting on US... First to see it, then to bring it to Him and, finally, to let it go by leaving it all in HIS more-than-capable hands.

He never wastes one single second of our lives. NOT ONE. Every single moment matters. So when we truly break, when we hit our knees and just talk to Him, getting honest and pouring out our hearts to Him, rules and religion fly out the window and you've begun a bonafide relationship with Jesus... Every word we pour out to Him really is a melody!

Because "we are weak, but He is strong." Because His strength is made perfect in our weakness. Because it's not enough to simply believe; the sinner's prayer is about accepting Him first as Savior, then as LORD. That's the piece I'd missed. I believed, but I kept trying to be Lord in my life and in others' lives. But there's only room for one Lord, and it ain't me! Getting to that place is when your stone heart turns into flesh, and you see how ALIVE the love of the Lord really is. And that is truly something to celebrate.

Man I LOVE that song! It's truth. When I give Jesus all of me, even the ugliness, to Him, it is indeed "better than a hallelujah." Because those are the times I'm fulfilling the purpose He created me for: to love and worship Him in spirit and in truth. And that act of faith, in and of itself, is a resounding, "Hallelujah!" 


Here is the song. Enjoy.