And the moon is a sliver of silver
Like a shaving that fell on the floor of a Carpenter’s shop
People say “Why do you write music?” and I always say “Well, how many of Wesley’s sermons do you know?” And I’ve talked to a lot of good Methodists and they don’t know any of them. Then I say, “Well, how many of Wesley’s hymns do you know?” and most church goers know at least a good solid dozen hymns that Wesley wrote. Most pagans know at least a couple. And I kind of go, that is why I write music and not sermons.
I will sing for the meek
For those who pray with their very lives for peace
And we think that information is everything. Information has a higher price on it at this time in our history than life. People will pay huge amounts of money to have information. … Because it is not information that gives us spiritual vitality, it is practice. It is faith, it is the experience of God, not the accumulation of information about God.
Everybody I know says they need just one thing
But they really mean is that they need just one thing more.
These days I need more than just a line about Jesus.
And so, I think courage is the hardest thing to cultivate, you know? The courage to go ahead and do something even though it sounds like it’s gonna be stupid.
And you never know who God is gonna use
A princess or a baby
Or maybe even you or me.
It don’t do to preach on Moses
If you bow down to the golden calf.
If you’re a Christian, that will affect whether you’re a carpenter or a plumber or a housewife or a secretary or whatever. If your faith doesn’t have some impact on your work, it’s probably because you have no faith.
It’s about as useless as a screen door on a submarine
Faith without works, baby, it just ain’t happenin’.
I think that a lot of us think that someday we’re going to become the Van Gogh of Christianity. That we’re going to paint something truly, truly beautiful, and God is going to be so impressed that He’s going to hold us up and say, “Here’s an exemplary Christian.” But you know what, I think God just likes people to scribble, however awful it comes out. And then He goes, “This is my kids’.”
There is such a thing as glory,
And there are hints of it everywhere.
And maybe we’re still hung up about being right and wrong, which was the original sin. Rather than wanting to know God, God said basically, “You can know Me or you can know everything else.”
When He rolls up His sleeves
He ain’t just putting on the ritz.
So many people are distressed by “Jacob and Two Women,” and I respond, “then the Bible must be very distressing to you.”
Jacob, he loved Rachel and Rachel, she loved him
And Leah was just there for dramatic effect
Well it’s right there in the Bible, so it must not be a sin
But it sure does seem like an awful dirty trick.
Well, I think there’s only one thing anybody teaches, and that is character. And I think that whether you are teaching history, math, or biology, or music, what you are really doing is, you are helping to shape the character of that person who is your student.
And if I ever really do grow up
Lord, I want to grow up and be just like You.
You’ll meet the Lord in the furnace
A long time before you meet Him in the sky.
But the most profound impact that I ever felt came from people who just simply loved me, and were really willing to spend time with me. And everything else is kind of icing on the cake.
Save me from any woman
Who would be turned on by the aftershave I use.
And so, I think, many times we are afraid to drop our guard, because we’re afraid that people will think that we are spiritually flakes. Well, the truth is that we are. And so are they. And we’re all trying to fake each other out.
A man can drive as hard as he can drive
And never get as far as his heart was meant to go.
Of course my dad died a couple years ago so he’s no longer as active in the church as he used to be.
And they worked to give faith hands and feet,
And somehow gave it wings.
I know there’s bound to come some trouble to your life
But that ain’t nothing to be afraid of.
There are two very important things you can say to special people in your life – it should be engraved on my tombstone: forgive me, and thank you.
Let mercy lead.
And I think a lot of our energy as Christians, we’re trying to make Christianity more appealing to people when Christianity is the most naturally appealing thing in the world. What is more appealing than the idea that we can be loved? What is more appealing than the idea that we will be given the power to love? What is more appealing than the idea that we can experience peace in the midst of turmoil?
There’s a wideness in God’s mercy I cannot find in my own.
And He keeps His fire burning to melt this heart of stone.
Keeps me aching with a yearning, keeps me glad to have been caught
In the reckless, raging fury that they call the love of God.
My thing is, if you’re going to be wounded by something, it might as well be by love. And if you are too scared of being wounded to love anybody, then you’re worse than wounded. You’re dead.
And when your prayers give flight to your dreams
May the only scars you see on their wings be the wounds of love.
And one of the problems I think we have in the Christian church today, one of the problems I have in my own life anyway, is that we want to do godly things but we want to do them in a worldly way. We want to have God’s will in our terms and you can’t do that.
I’ve seen the very best there ever was,
And I’ll tell you, it ain’t worth what it costs.
I remember what Susan said:
“Love is found in the things we’ve given up
More than in the things that we have kept.”
Those people who did the greatest things for God were the people who weren’t trying to do anything at all. They were just simply being obedient.
Oh Lord, it’s hard to be like Jesus.
You see, mankind has for thousands of years looked inwardly to find out who he is or where he is or what he’s all about or where he’s going. And he has never been able to find the answer within himself. And the entire Bible is a history of God trying to tell us who we are – trying to tell us who we are in Him and who we are without Him.
He will never break His promise
Though the stars should break faith with the sky.
Jesus, write me into Your story.
The Bible is not a book for the faint of heart. It is a book full of all the greed and glory and violence and tenderness and sex and betrayal that benefits mankind. It is not the collection of pretty little anecdotes mouthed by pious little church mice. It does not so much nibble at our shoe as it cuts to the heart and splits the marrow from bone to bone. It does not give us answers fitted to our smaller minded questions but truth that goes beyond what we even know to ask.
The ****s all seem to love Him, and the drunks propose a toast
And they say, “Surely God is with us!”
How would you know if the Spirit was working? ‘Well, I was really moved.’ Well, that is an emotional thing. That’s not a spiritual thing. A spiritual thing is folding your clothes at the end of the day. A spiritual thing is making your bed. A spiritual thing is taking cookies to your neighbor that is shut in or raking their front lawn because they are too old to do it. That’s spirituality. Getting a warm, oozy feeling about God is an emotional thing.
If I sing let me sing for the joy that has born in me these songs
And if I weep let it be as a man who is longing for his home.
I don’t think you read the Bible to know truth.
I think you read the Bible to find God.
Because there ain’t nobody so bad that the Lord can’t save them
Ain’t nobody so good that they don’t need God’s love.
And I think part of holiness is having right relationships with other people.
I love you more than your mask.
My friends ain’t the way I wish they were
They are just the way they are.
And it was just a few years ago that I finally realized that friendship is not a remedy for loneliness. Loneliness is a part of our experience and if we are looking for relief from loneliness in friendship, we are only going to frustrate the friendship. Friendship, camaraderie, intimacy, all those things, and loneliness live together in the same experience.
There’s people been friendly, but they’d never be your friends
Sometimes this has bent me to the ground.
Sept 19, 1997: Rich Mullins, a popular Christian musician, died tonight in a car accident in Illinois. He was thrown from a sports utility vehicle after the car lost control and flipped over. He was then struck by a tractor-trailer as the trucker swerved to avoid the overturned vehicle.
When I leave I want to go out like Elijah.