Posts for the ‘Songs’ Category
Posted December 27th, 2005
This song expresses the intimate love that is possible between a Christian and the Lord Jesus. The culminating desire of a love this deep is to be joined together with our Lord when we finally depart from this world and go home to be with Him in heaven. The Bible portrays believers as the bride of Christ in the final chapters of Revelation. Husbands are exhorted to "love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her." (Ephesians 5:25) The most intimate love possible in this world, marriage, is but a picture of the love that can and will exist between Jesus and His people. So it is right and fitting to sing such intimate and tender lyrics like "seal me upon Your arm, and wear that pledge of love forever there" (v. 1) and "but I am jealous of my heart, lest it should once from You depart" (v. 3). May songs like this help us feel love for Jesus, a love that is better even than romantic love.
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Posted April 9th, 2005
We welcome songwriter Nathan Copeland to Reformed Praise and are proud to offer his version of Be Still, My Soul! This beloved song has been a staple of worship for generations of Christians. These comforting lyrics describe the believer's desire to command their soul, as it were, to rest and trust in God. The phrase "be still," probably comes from Mark 4:30, where Jesus commands the wind and sea to be still, an act that brought His disciples to acknowledge Him as Lord and worship Him. In like manner, we want Jesus to command our souls to be still from grief, pain, fear of the future, and the death of loved ones. In the fourth verse, we realize that our soul will ultimately be still when we leave behind this sinful, grief-filled world for our heavenly home. The things described in verses 1-3 that cause our soul to be "unstill" are proclaimed to be "gone", "forgot", and "past".
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Posted March 14th, 2005
This hymn was originally written by Horatius Bonar, who has been called the prince of the Scottish hymnwriters. In it we are reminded of how God invites us to bring our sins to Jesus not just initially when we come to Christ for justification, but repeatedly as we continue to become trapped in the guilt and shame of our remaining sin. The chorus was added with Revelation 3:19-20 in mind, an often-misquoted passage about God's invitation to believers to repent and return to Him. "Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline; therefore be zealous and repent. Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me." Jesus is speaking to the church in Laodicea which had become "lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold" in thier deeds of righteousness. This song explores WHY we can bring our sins to Jesus, giving us peaceful trust that He is willing, able, and ready to forgive and restore sweet communion with Himself to us when we ask.
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Posted March 10th, 2005
We often sing songs of devotion, commitment, or love to God but fail to properly acknowledge that they are but dim sparks compared to the same devotion, commitment, and love that our intercessor, Jesus, was able to offer God in our place. As we sing this beautiful song, originally by Isaac Watts, we can confess along with the father of a demon-possessed boy in Mark 9:24, "I do believe; help my unbelief." The reality of our human condition is that when we approach God in worship, our joy is mixed with grief, our hopes are often fainting, and guilt and sorrows remain. These are caused by indwelling sin in our lives - and the basic thrust of sin is to worship the created rather than the creator. Believers in this condition who have been given new hearts and desires to worship the true God are miserable, and it is that very misery that God mercifully uses to point us back to the cross to rest our weary, sin-laden, efforts and proclaim along with Watts that it is only by God's grace that our faith is upheld.
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Posted January 8th, 2005
In this song we sing about death which, unlike to the unbelieving world, is a topic of great joy! Jesus has conquered death, removing its sting (1 Cor 15:55) so that it is now our "gate to endless life." This song offers us a chance to remind ourselves of why heaven is such a place of joy and why we should set our hope there. How wonderful that heaven is where believers will "meet to part no more" and that it is the place where we can finally sing our praise to Him alone because we will be free of the idolatrous distractions of our sinful flesh. Particularly endearing is the idea of being so moved by God's loving smile that all we can do is collapse with joy at his feet. Imagine the passionate, whole body-mind-soul worship we can enjoy forever in heaven! But this song does not only stop at describing the joys of heaven and those who have gone on before us, but it confesses the struggle of our journey there. Oh how we long to be there, stripped of this "body of death" (Rom 7:24).
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Posted January 8th, 2005
Praise God for His sovereign grace! John Kent, the hymn writer from the late 18th century, draws our attention to several things that God's sovereign grace accomplishes. First, he explains that it is the delivery method for God's limitless love. He draws from Ephesiams 3:18 when he speaks of the breadth and length of God's sovereign love that no man can know. Second, sovereign grace binds us to Christ by everlasting chains (bands) so that no one can snatch us from His hand (John 10:28). Third, God's grace gave us status as joint heirs with Jesus even before we were born (Eph 1:3-14). Fourth, sovereign grace fills us with the question "why, O Lord, such love to me?" We are given no other answer as to why God chose us to be saved other than the "kind intention of His will" (Eph 1:5). The song helps us to properly respond to this love by answering simply "hallelujah" - Praise the Lord! The chorus was added to the historic lyrics to summarize what the song is teaching us about God's grace and add a plea for God to pour it out even more abundantly in our lives so that we will passionately worship Him.
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Posted January 8th, 2005
This song is based on a hymn by famous songwriter Francis Scott Key (best known for writing "The Star Spangled Banner") named "Lord, with Glowing Heart I'd Praise Thee." In this song we praise our sovereign God who "loved and sought" us, drawing us to the cross of Christ and lifting our heads to look to Him and live. Key sweetly renders God's work in our hearts by describing how "His loving promise warmed me" (v. 3) and goes on to plead with God to make this warmth into a flame of love for Him. Unfortunately, our passion for God quickly cools when subvert it with the passing, unsatisfying pleasures of this world. We can only rely on God himself to light the fire of our love for Him - not our own efforts, not by listening to really pretty music, or by relying on the passion of others around us. In this song we pray directly to God: "God, help my weak endeavor; this dull soul to rapture raise!" May this be our prayer as we come before God in worship!
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Posted September 16th, 2004
This song is a sweet reminder of Jesus' tender friendship towards us. Friendship with God is an unfathomable privilege - one that was not always available to all of God's people in their earthly life. With the Psalmist (Psalm 8), we can marvel at that fact that God cares for us at all, let alone calling us His friends: "What is man that You take thought of him, And the son of man that You care for him? Yet You have made him a little lower than God, And You crown him with glory and majesty!" Jesus is a friend who can never fail or forsake us, a friend "stronger than a brother" (Proverbs 18:24). There is no better place to run in times of assault, temptation, sorrow, or burden, than into the arms of our loving Shepherd. The truth that Jesus has granted us forgiveness shines boundless joy even in our darkest times. May we be comforted by Jesus' friendship!
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Posted September 8th, 2004
The deepest desire of true believers is that their lives might reflect the glories of their savior and master, Jesus. In this song, we pray along with the great songwriter Charles Wesley for God to deeply implant several attributes that Jesus modeled for us in his earthly ministry, humility and contentment, in our hearts. Jesus' humility before men can be seen in his self-controlled response (or lack of response) to Pilate in Matthew 27:12-14. Jesus' humility before the Father is seen in his constant acknowledgment that his only prerogative is to do the will of the Father (John 4:34). Let us strive to have a heart like our Lord's and take joy in the promise that in heaven we will. The chorus of this song was written by David Ward, and the lyric editing and adaptation was done by David and his mom, Elizabeth.
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Posted August 20th, 2004
This song expounds the nature of God's love for us. On the one hand, God tells us that His love "surpasses knowledge," (Ephesians 3:19) while on the other hand that "In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins." (1 John 4:10). Though the mechanics of Jesus' atoning work on the cross are deeply mysterious, it shows the fullest and most explicit expression of God's love for us. Jesus "lays his life down for his sheep" (John 10:11), giving up his life so that "the one who comes to [Him], [He] will certainly not cast out."
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Reformed Praise presents Martin Luther's setting of Psalm 130 in a fresh, reflective, piano-driven setting suitable for a wide range of worship music styles.
