ChristianDance

What if help is one honest word away? Josh Orange, a folk-rock group from Sydney, Australia, wrote “Send Me an Angel” in about thirty minutes. Structure, lyric, the whole thing arrived at once and became the spark for the band’s sixth studio album. Some prayers work that way. They don’t wait for polish. The song opens at 5 am. A man puts his feet on the floor and asks Jesus, “for the strength to begin.” He doesn’t ask for much. He works for his living, and he isn’t proud of his sins. Then comes the plea: “Come help me Jesus. Send me an angel.” Sound familiar? You’ve tried hard, opened the door, and done it again. Gordon Burke, the lead singer of Josh Orange, sings about running all the way to Nova Scotia, and the further he went, the darker he got. Distance never fixed it. Ask yourself, where have you been running? Listen closely and notice what he never does. He never cleans himself up first. He prays with “blood on my boots,” and he prays honestly. Scripture says that’s the right w...

Are you ready to raise your hand? Some questions stay with us for years. David asked one in Psalm 15, “Who shall sojourn in your tent?”. Jordan West and Red Letter Society created a song around that question, “Psalm 15 (Let It Be Me)”, a song that a congregation can sing. “Who will sojourn into your presence? Who will worship face to face? Who may dwell in your sanctuary? Who will live a blameless life?” The answer doesn’t point to the polished or the famous. The chorus offers one bold line instead: “Let it be me!” It sounds like a raised hand in a crowded room. Words that require a huge leap of faith and surrender.  That hand carries a prayer. “Break my heart for what breaks yours. Fill me with the fear of the Lord.” Nobody asks for a broken heart lightly. Yet the singer asks, then promises to stay, knowing that God’s help is desperately needed to make this promise reality: “No matter what the pain, I shall still remain.” Going back to David in Psalm 15:1–2, where it says, “O L...

What anchors your heart and mind when storms hit? Tom Mottershead lives in Australia. Maria Segerholm lives in Sweden. They wrote “Anchored” over a Facebook video call, half a world apart, sharing one conviction: Christ holds steady when nothing else does. Have you ever felt too tired to pray? The song starts right there. “Lord, I feel heavy. It is hard to find the words to say.” Tom and Maria have both known that kind of weariness, and they don’t hide it. Neither should you. While the lyrics start with weariness, they quickly point us to what God does. “Even in the silence, You steady me.” God doesn’t wait for polished words. He meets you right where you are and in whatever shape you may be. Two images inspired the song. The first image is that of Peter stepping out of the boat. He walked on water until he stared at the wind, and then he sank. The song answers him: “I will look to You and not the waves.” The second image is an anchor. Hebrews 6:19 calls our hope in Christ “a sure an...

What dead places in your life need breath? “Spirit of God” by Joel Lane is written as a plea for the Holy Spirit to move among us, and shows us that our best response to spiritual dryness is surrender. It is the first release from his debut EP “Have Your Way,” recorded with Zac Carpenter of the worship collective Coming Kingdom. The song opens with a bold claim: “You make dry bones come alive.” Maybe you’re familiar with that kind of spiritual dryness. A marriage gone quiet. A prayer life that is running on habit, with routine words that sometimes make you wonder if they go up any higher than your ceiling. A heart that stopped feeling much of anything. Joel doesn’t ask God to just patch things up. He asks God for more: “Take our hearts of stone, breathe on us.” That’s a pretty brave prayer. Will you pray it? Ezekiel stood in more or less the same place (read Ezekiel 37:1–11). God sent him into a valley of scattered, bleached bones and asked a question that sounds impossible: “Can the...

Who told you that God wouldn’t want you back? “Exile left its mark on me.” Dave Langdon wrote that line in his song “Exile” from experience. In high school, he rebelled against God. After he saw the wreckage that he had created, he believed that he had strayed too far away from God, and that He would never want him back in the condition he was in. Dave shares: “My life was going downhill fast, and there seemed to be no way out of that place of exile.” Long story short, God got ahold of Dave after a serious car accident. God miraculously spared his life. Langdon braced for punishment and blame for all of the bad things he had done. Instead, he found a Father with open arms. God gave Dave his identity back and showed him that he was valuable.  Jesus told that same story. A young man squandered everything and limped home with a rehearsed apology. Luke 15:20 says, “But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him.” ...