Given Up For Lost

I sat down to write a song Monday night. I was thinking about and even feeling some of the things that I have felt in the past, especially during the latter stages of my marriage. I also had a line stuck in my head from the "Prodigal" video I may have emailed you recently, specifically, "Given up for lost." I've felt that way as far back as I can remember. Whether it's from things people have said to me or about me, things I've done which have left me with nothing but embarrassment or even shame, my self image has never been a positive one.

I can still fall into that trap, but over the past few years I've learned to see myself how God sees me rather than trusting my own perception. It wasn't easy, I'm not someone that moves away from a conviction like that very easily. The more I've read my Bible though, the more I've trusted Him, and the more I've realized that He is worthy of that trust. I don't know why He loves me the way He loves me, for as Martin Luther put it, I am but snow covered dung. No, I don't know why, but I do know He loves me, and that's all that really matters.

So I sat down to write this song on Monday night with those things in mind. I wanted to somehow use what I had been through in my life to show people that no matter what anybody thinks about you, including yourself, God loves you so much that even in your darkest hour, He will be there, He will hear your cry. I wanted people to know that no matter what anybody thinks of you, including you, the God that created you, the God that thought you up in the first place, will never stop loving you. He came to earth, left Heaven itself to live as a man, and died on a cross to prove it to us. To prove it to you.

I also wanted people to know that if they had a child or a loved one that had become wayward, that God is a faithful God. I put my mother through a lot of trauma when I was younger, but she never stopped telling me that God had a plan for my life, that He had given me my gifts for His glory. I'm sure that at the time she thought I wasn't hearing her, that I wasn't listening. Well, the truth is, I was listening, but I didn't believe I was worth very much back then, so as much as I would have liked to have believed she was telling me the truth, I just couldn't. Truth is, now I know I'm not worth very much, but I know that God loves me in spite of my sinful nature. So I wanted to tell people that there is no amount of sinful years that cannot be redeemed, and even though someone might not seem to be hearing what you say, your words do not really fall on deaf ears.

I've been blessed to have God put some wonderful musicians around me in the past year. Tuesday night, not even 24 hours later, we got together to practice. We practiced this song for about an hour before I felt like I wanted to get what we had recorded. It's still very rough, but I have uploaded the file to the web, and if you would like to hear the song God gave me this week, you can download it here.

I realize that the actual music itself may not be "your style", but I've included a text file of the words in the download.

Also, if I didn't send you that Prodigal video which was forwarded to me, you can see that here.

God bless