I don't know how I got to where I am All I know is that I want to go back To the moment when I fell in love with grace And I hear you whisper Hang on I know your hope seems gone Hang on sometimes the heartache makes you strong Remember the first time love turned you around I try my best to pray but my heart won't move And all the words the saints say, they just don't help I want to go back to when I first called out your name And I hear you whisper To the moment when I fell in love with grace To the day when I first called out Jesus' name
Song Description: "So this is what it's like to be a typical 25 year-old disillusioned Christian. I am a natural born cynic, and after seeing this much of life, I (like so many people of all ages) have come to the conclusion that the idealized pictures of Christianity, the church, and my walk with God that I had as a new believer when I was young, have been thrown out the window. There is no idealized, perfect ascent up the staircase of holiness, with a gleaming smile on my face as I go straight from Minnesota to Heaven. No, life is much harder and more confusing than we make it out to be as young believers. And yet, from here on the other side with great confusion and skepticism, I have seen that it is so much more simple.
This is a song for everyone who is disillusioned with the church, and by that I mean the church body, whether it be the institution or the people. This is a song for everyone who is clinging to a scrap of faith in a God they believed in when they were young, but who seems increasingly irrelevant to their life now. Remember the first time that love turned you around...remember hearing that there was a way to be forgiven from your sins. Remember the astonishment you had when you first understood the grace of God in making sinners clean. Remember the warmth of the Holy Spirit filling your heart with peace. Let go of all the bitterness and cynicism that keeps you from Jesus.
I felt God saying this to me this last January when writing for this record. Be honest - admit that life is not peachy. Be humbled - I have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Come back to the essentials of what faith is, and who Jesus is. Just because people have messed up what you feel Christianity is, does not mean that God has gone away and isn't sovereign over your life. Just because you have walked or drifted away from Jesus doesn't mean that He is not still the Alpha and Omega - the creator of life itself and sustainer of all atomic structure.
Even if I can't feel the love and peace of God right now, I can remember what it was to walk in the Spirit. Even if I feel distant from the Lord, I can remember burning with love for Jesus. Last January, God shook me from some of the cynicism and bitterness that was keeping me from Him. He called to mind the simple faith in an objective God who is faithful through all of our seasons of life, and who loves us with a love that spreads out it's arms and dies in our place." - Justin Anderson (Mainstay)
