Sojourn worship leader/ songwriter Rebecca Dennison writes the story behind her song “Crippled Soul.” Hear the mp3 at Last FM and view the chord sheet from the These Things I Remember page here at sojournmusic.com, before or after reading Rebecca’s engrossing story:
“What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God-through Jesus Christ our Lord!” Romans 7:24-25
I wrote the words and melody to “Crippled Soul” (recorded on Sojourn’s These Things I Remember) back in 2001. I was struggling through a time of feeling distant from God (the same season mentioned in the discussion of “My Rock and My Redeemer”) and was frustrated with the fact that nothing I did seemed to make things any better. I had tried study after study, counseling, etc. It didn’t seem to get better. “Crippled Soul” became the expression of those frustrations.
“If I bring it up again, if you really look again, will you change your mind and never let me in?”
I couldn’t really look at my own sinfulness. I still have trouble with that. Even though I believe that God already sees my sin - past, present, and future - much more clearly than I do, part of me was afraid that if He saw the real me He would refuse to let me into His kingdom.
I grew up believing that Christians were supposed to have it all together - or at least do everything they could to appear that way - because if you didn’t have it all together it would turn people away from God. How does that fit with the passage in Corinthians: “…we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.” (II Corinthians 4:7)?
I thank God for bringing me into a community of believers who modeled being honest about their sin, gracious with one another, and zealous in their pursuit of God. That community, that haven of grace, was part of God’s process of healing me from the harmful lies that left me so afraid of His condemnation that I was afraid to be honest with Him. After all, since I am in Christ, I stand under the promise in Romans 8:1 - “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”
“Let me pretend I’m someone else, someone with a pure and holy heart”
This line again speaks of how hard it is for me to look at my own sinfulness. Quite apart from my fear of what God will think of me, it is incredibly hard for me to swallow the truth of how depraved I am apart from Christ. I can’t look my sin “in the eye” as it were.
It’s like watching a movie that is incredibly violent and gory, where the bad guys are winning and the good guys are being decimated. At some point you have to look away. It begins to make you sick. It’s like that with my sin. I thank God that in His mercy He only shows me pieces at a time. And I can only stand that because I stand in Christ. Apart from Him my sin would utterly overwhelm me.
“Is it any wonder then that I should love to fly, those moments when I touch you and escape all that I am”
This speaks to my love of “mountain top” experiences - those moments when you feel clean and pure and close to God. Of course I want to chase those moments. When I feel like I am wallowing in my own sin and believe that God’s grace can’t possibly be big enough for all that I have done, of course I long for moments when I can feel like I’m really much better, really not so bad — when I can feel like I’m superior.
“Is it any wonder then that I should do all that I can to make it seem like I am whole and worthy.”
This brings us back to the beginning. I was in a place of believing that my sin was bigger than God’s grace. I felt like I had pulled the wool over God’s eyes and at some point He was going to wake up a realize I didn’t belong in His kingdom. So of course I was trying to fake it as best I could. I was trying to hide the truth from myself as much as from anyone else.
“Do you plan to make me whole, or leave me broken and bring glory through your grace”
At the end of the day I knew I couldn’t demand that God release me from this incredibly painful season. It had been going on for several years and lasted for several more months after this song was written. I knew that it might be God’s will to keep me in that place a while longer and that I needed to surrender to that. But I also knew that I could cry out honestly to God:
“O Lord, please do anything but leave me here
Let me run again, or help me fly
Or somehow make it right
But Lord, please don’t leave me here.”
When we have used this song at Sojourn it is always followed by a song of assurance: a song that proclaims the complete and effective work of redemption God performed through Christ. I remember one Sunday several months ago I got to lead this song followed by “In Christ Alone” (Words and Music by Keith Getty & Stuart Townend, Copyright © 2001 Kingsway Thankyou Music). Those two songs were exactly what I needed that morning. It was an incredible blessing to mourn with the community through “Crippled Soul” and then to proclaim over them:
“No guilt in life, no fear in death- this is the pow’r of Christ in me;
From life’s first cry to final breath, Jesus commands my destiny.
No pow’r of hell, no scheme of man, can ever pluck me from His hand;
Till He returns or calls me home-here in the pow’r of Christ I’ll stand.”
I am a wretched sinner. God is unfathomably holy. But through the sacrifice of His Son God has made a way for me to be made wholly right with Him.
{ 1 trackback }
{ 0 comments… add one now }