Vote for the song here: http://lifespan.venturaassociates.net/gallerydetails.php?vid=165

Please consider voting for the song. If I win the song will be featured on Martin’s website (or YouTube channel) and I’d win a very nice Martin Guitar.

And in case you caught it, the webcam recording software I used somehow flipped the image… I’m not left-handed!

Here are the lyrics. The second verse made the song too long for their contest (3m) but I’m including it here anyway.
Vanity

The seasons change, mountains rise,
Clouds appear in ev’ry corner of my skies.
My days pass by, my secrets known,
My lifespan races on, all I can do is groan.
From dust we came, to dust we shall,
Return as quickly as we came.

{The wind blows in, rivers rush
The wind returns and the sea is never hushed.
What has been done will come again
There’s nothing new under this tireless sun.
From dust we came, to dust we shall,
Return as quickly as we came.}

It is vanity, vanity, vanity,
This is vanity, vanity, vanity.

Where can I go to end this strife,
To find the meaning of my temporary life.
For a thousand years there’s been a place-
Men sought their Maker for His mercy and His grace.
Return, O Lord, reveal Your works
And make our days of darkness glad.

He saw our strife, He saw our pain,
He saw our waywardness, our self-appointed reign.
In love He came, rich became poor,
He lived in toil and pain though innocent and pure.
From life He came, to death He went,
To rescue us from vanity.
From life He came, to death He went,
To rescue us from vanity.

From our vanity, vanity, vanity,
From our vanity, vanity, vanity.

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The song When Adam By Transgression Fell was written to accompany a Scripture reading from Genesis 3 about the fall of man into sin. The Anglican liturgy of Lessons and Carols includes this reading at Christmas

Last Christmas Eric Schumacher, Jeff Bourque, and I collaborated to write a new tune (and some new lyrics) to Eric’s already existing Christmas hymn How Beautiful the Mystery. Here’s the new tune, and here’s the original hymn text.

I wrote the song My Precious Savior Gave His All a few years ago to describe what Jesus gave in order to redeem His people from their sins. The first verse refers to the incarnation when it says “He left His majesty behind- The King became a slave!”

This is a much older song, in fact, one of my first hymn re-writes: The Everlasting Lord. The text is by Charles Wesley and features the verse “Equal He with God most high, mild, He laid His glory by; He, eternal God, was born, object of His creatures’ scorn; Man with men did He appear, pleased a servant’s form to wear.”

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What kind of worship do we want to cultivate? Seventh: All-of-Life

Most of us use the word worship far too narrowly. We normally attend a “worship” service on Sunday mornings, and may even refer to the music and singing part of the service as “the worship.” While worship certainly takes place during the Sunday morning gathering and during our songs, surprisingly, the New Testament does not use the word in connection with public services. Rather, worship is defined as what is happening on the inside which works itself outwards. Consider Romans 12:1-2, “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”

In response to God’s initiative in revealing Himself, we are moved in mind and heart to respond appropriately outwardly. Sometimes that means participating in a public worship service. Other times that means quiet, personal reflection on the beauty that God has made for us to enjoy. Other times that means serving others in a concrete demonstration of selflessness, out of gratefulness for how Jesus has served us. Jesus explained this radical shift in our understanding of worship when he said in John 4:23, “the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth.” Worship is possible anywhere and at any time because it is firstly an inner disposition of the heart, and secondly made acceptable through the work of Jesus, not by following the proper forms or service orders.

Outward Manifestations of Worship
Scripture reveals several ways that worship manifests itself: public or gathered worship, family worship, private worship, and conversational worship. First, a few words about public worship. I like to refer to the public worship service as “gathered worship” because it connotes the reality that this is only one kind of worship; we are naturally led to ask “what then is scattered worship?” Public worship refers to the gathered assembly of a local church or sub-group of the local church. There is clear biblical precedence for a local church meeting at least weekly to practice the so-called “one anothers” – the commands to love and care for one another. For example, in Acts 20, Paul attends the gathered assembly, who were meeting on the first day of the week (Sunday) to preach. Hebrews 10:25 also records the command for believers not to forsake assembling together.

Family worship refers to those in a household turning their attention towards God together at set times. See my series of articles about family worship for more information.

Private worship refers to individual devotional time with God. While many call this time a “quiet time” or “devotions,” we feel that it’s more helpful to call it private worship. The goal of our alone time with God should be to worship Him, not merely get through our daily readings, prayer lists, and other “spiritual” tasks. We should strive and ask to truly encounter God in a life-changing way, which God makes possible through the work of His Spirit within us. The same kind of passionate and life-sustaining private worship that Jesus had with His heavenly Father is possible in us because we have His Spirit.

Conversational worship refers to the spontaneous response to God believers are commanded to offer throughout their day on a moment-by-moment basis. Sometimes this is called “all-of-life worship,” but we’ve chosen to use the term all-of-life to refer to all of the ways worship manifests itself outwardly. “Conversational” is meant to depict having such a close relationship with God that we regularly offer up to him responses of thankfulness, gratitude, neediness, praise, etc. silently and in the midst of our normal daily activities. An example of this kind of worship is one entailment of 1 Thessalonians 5:17, “pray without ceasing.” As we continually see both the hand of God and our own neediness, we should turn to God countless times throughout each day to seek Him in faith.

May we be an organization that seeks to cultivate worship in all of these forms – not simply publishing songs for public worship, but teaching, leading, and writing in such a way that believers will be moved into a healthy and transformative life full of ceaseless worship to the true and living God.

A friend and fellow member of my local church runs a music and video production studio, but I wasn’t able to work with him on our last album, Merciful to Me. After the album was finished, I was approached by another member of our church, who asked me if I had any work I could give to the studio. Since I didn’t have any music recording projects lined up, I couldn’t envision anything in particular. But the Lord reminded me of his skills making videos, and the idea for a music video was born. With the funds in hand and the producer chosen, all that was needed was to choose a song and storyline.

Choosing the Song
We ended up choosing There Is No Sin because of its musical simplicity, the fact that all of the musicians were local to Minneapolis, and the fact that the lyrics vividly depict someone walking through an experience of the gospel and seemed to fit a graphic storyline well. This song is one of my favorites on the album. Steve Cook did a masterful job in the editing room pulling all of the pieces together to make something really special.

Choosing the Story
I sent the song and asked for storyline ideas from several creatively-minded friends, and most of the ideas were similar: depict someone caught in a particularly shame-filled sin pattern who hears the message of the gospel and responds, having been transformed by the grace of God. Since we couldn’t use dialog, we had to choose a situation where the shame, guilt, brokenness, and loneliness were painfully obvious. Waking up in a hotel room, surrounded by visual reminders of inner defilement, seemed a natural choice.

The original plan was to feature a young woman caught in a life of prostitution (or simply adultery/fornication), who finds a gospel tract and follows it to church, where she is welcomed by someone who walks her through Scripture, then prays with her. She would then be led into a worship service where she would sing God’s praises with a transformed countenance, perhaps even the song There Is No Sin. But plan A turned into plan B and plan C, since we couldn’t muster enough extras to film a worship service. The producer decided to film the main character sitting alone in a sanctuary during off-hours – depicting a place of struggle, then rest. Instead of a pastor greeting her as she came in, we were able to find an older woman who took notice of the main character’s sobbing and brought a comforting embrace as she listened to me singing the lyrics of the song.

How the Storyline Should Help You Engage with the Lyrics
My first reaction to the music video was to become frustrated with how long the main character stays in brokenness and loneliness. But as I watched it several times, I began to see the masterful intentionality that went into the timing of the storyline. As the song moves past forgiveness to walking in grace (second half of verse 2) and then love for Jesus and longing for future intimacy (verse 3), the main character remains largely still lost in sin and without the comfort of the gospel. But notice how she is living the opposite of what the song speaks of. When she lashes out in grief, the song speaks of Jesus bearing our grief. When she turns her face away from the scene of her sin, the lyrics speak of “no cause to hide my face.” When she stands before her crimes, the song speaks of no work needed to “stand before His throne.” And most powerfully, when she walks to the bus stop, completely alone physically and spiritually, the song speaks of knowing Jesus’ love by faith and longing for an experience of his love.

In the final moments of the video, we are depicting the comfort of the gospel beginning to come into her life as she sits in a church building listening to me sing the song, and receives the loving advances of a believer reaching out to her with the love and warmth of Jesus through a careful and tender touch. The final scene is meant to hint at a transformation that has only just begun in her life.

Any More Videos to Come?
We don’t have any concrete plans to make any more videos, but the Lord likes to surprise us. If you have any ideas or would like to help sponsor one, we’d love to hear from you!

On Sunday, October 9th, 2011, we’ll be traveling out to Tonkawa, OK to support our good friend Nathan Copeland (who played bass and drum kit on a couple of our albums) as he is installed as the pastor of First Baptist Church. David will be leading First Baptist in congregational singing, teaching a Sunday school class, and preaching at the evening service. If you live in the Tonkawa area, feel free to drop by and show your support for Nathan and the Lord’s church there, or pray for safe travel and that God’s people would be edified in the gospel through sermon and song.