I love music. Singing and listening to music fills my soul with a unique joy and satisfaction. There are very few songs I don’t like and many that I absolutely love.
And then there’s a select group of songs that resonate on an even deeper level. These are the songs I sing directly to God. When I sing the lyrics to these songs everything within me clicks into place and I’m sharing 100% of my heart with God. These are “Our Songs” (me and God’s songs that is).
One of my favorite of this particular group of songs is “Everything Good” by Ashes Remain.
It’s also a part of a very small list of songs that made it on my Ipod for the Race. I didn’t quite manage to transfer most of my music to my new-to-me Ipod. The playlists that did manage to transfer are Jesus Culture, Shawn McDonald, Rend Collective, Air 1 (a random assortment of Christian music from a station that used to give away free music), Stacey’s Mix Home (mostly country songs), and last but not least My Fair Lady.
Needless to say, for the most part I’ve been listening to the same 50ish songs for the past 2 months. There are times when this gets old. But every time I play “Everything Good” I feel that old familiar rush of peace and love and just His presence.
Here’s a chunk of the lyrics. I encourage you to sing these. They ring true every time. “You are all I have and all I need. And all I am is what you’ve made of me… You’re everything good to me. You’re everything that I need. And this is why, you’re everything good, everything true. When all the world is fading you’re everything new. You’re my eyes when I can’t see. When all the world is broken you will always be everything good.”
There’s always a lot going on every day. I wrote the first 300 words of this over a week ago and then it just slipped through my fingers. The World Race is incredibly unpredictable and the need to be flexible is increasingly present. (Plans change all day long and nothing is ever what you expect it to be. A normal person would’ve gone crazy by now. haha) But through it all God has shown to be everything that we need and brings about good things. He is always here and He is always good so it naturally makes sense that we are always surrounded by a good thing, no matter what’s going on.
I just felt like this would be a good thing to share.
There’s always something in our lives that’s a challenge to work through. The key is to not push it off or ignore it but to push through it. Don’t minimalize it. Don’t try to walk around it. Let God take you through the mess so that He can make a beautiful story out of your brokenness. (Yes, that’s a play on our team name. It’s not even funny how prophetic our name, “Beautifully Broken” is.)
And seriously, go listen to that song. It’s ministered to me at some very critical moments in my life, on the Race and otherwise. Maybe it won’t be your song but I think you’ll like it. J
