Oh, How He Loves...

So, I have found myself struggling to be able to find ways for me to connect to God on a daily basis, so I told a few friends that I would start posting "food for thought" three times a week online. I would love feedback whether on here or through my facebook page.

A couple of friends and I met weekly over the summer for a Bible study. They all went back to college, and left on my own, I took a month off from doing anything really like this (unintentionally). One morning this week, I woke up with the song How He Loves by David Crowder in my head. I don't have a radio in my car, so I sang it to myself all day. With it in my head all day, I started looking up some scriptures and then did a little internet research. When looking for the lyrics, I found a blog that criticized them and included a page of comments arguing for or against the absurdity of the song. When reading through those comments I found this:


"I actually heard this song for the first time tonight at a culminating music festival on my campus and was looking up the lyrics/artist when I came across your page. While reading the lyrics, the following discussion about them, and then looking back at the night, I was definitely able to laugh at how poeticly cheesy they are, but I can honestly say that this song moved me more than any other from tonight. 

Granted, we had a fantastic group of guys/girls from campus to lead us through the night, which gave it an extremely powerful atmosphere, but even the most mockable lyrics ("...heaven meets earth like a sloppy wet kiss") have a tremendous amount of power when you're actually in the mindset of worship. Being able to imagine God's gift as something that is as personal as an embarrassing kiss from a loved one is a gorgeously connected feeling. It doesn't come off as something dirty or "teenage love-y" to me at all, but instead brings up the imagery of a kiss from someone you're so close to that it doesn't really matter how it "lands," it's just a kiss to show a level of love, not any value of lust. It drives home a very important facet of Christianity as well, which is that God's love is personal and *real*; we're not just worshiping an emotionless, omnipotent, "man-behind-the-curtain" creator, we're in a relationship based on true love from a God who can easily match our passion for Him.

It's really amazing how the simple line "Oh, how He loves us" can provide such a rich palette of emotions, too. The build up from the poetic lyrics only help lead up to the driven, single-line-repitition chorus, as excessively metaphorical as the verses are. Even though the descriptions of God's love being like a hurricane, while we are a tree are over-the-top, it's powerfully accurate. Each verse is just trying to restate how unimportant the trials and difficulties of life are with God's love at your back. It's not meant to be something we sing placidly about, it's a tremendous weight that should entirely depict our life, in the same way that a hurricane has the ability to apply ridiculous force to a tree or the vastness of an "ocean of grace"; seemingly unending (or in a non-metaphorical sense, God's love really *is* unending). The things the artist used to describe His love were intentionally powerful, albeit destructive, because God's love has some intensely powerful implications. The artist/author used the descriptions of things that are physically powerful to describe something that is emotionally very powerful. Having just lost a close friend, God remained as his inspiration for praise. I especially like the line leading into the final chorus[es]: "I don't have time to maintain these regrets when I think about the way [that He loves us...]"

Again, this is really just my interpretation of the song. :) It was a wonderfully happy feeling to be yelling out the words to this simple chorus with hundreds of other Christians going through much more hardship than I was, knowing there's still a God in control through life's crap."



And I believe that it does an awesome job of describing the song, and what worship songs can really do when a heart is open to the Lord. 
He is Jealous for Me. He is a Hurricane, I am a tree bending beneath the weight of his wind and mercy.
I only had the first few lines of lyrics running through my head, so those were the ones that I concentrated on when I began looking up scriptures (NIV).
-1 John 4:16: "And so we know and rely on the Love God has for us. GOD IS LOVE. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him."
-Deuterony 4:24 "For the Lord you God is a consuming fire, a jealous God."
- 2 Samuel 24:14 "I am in great distress, let us fall into the Hands of the Lord, for his mercy is great."
- Titus 3:5 "He saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy."
- Ephesians 2:4 "But because of his Great Love, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive in Christ."
-In 1 Kings 19, Elijah cries out to the Lord to feel his presence. God is not found in the fire, or the earthquake. But in the stillness and strength of the wind.