Day 28

Welcome Back!

I am wrapping up my 30 days of listening to nothing but Christian music, and if you would like to hear about why I decided to take this 30 day challenge, or if you just want to see why you should take it too, then I suggest that you go and read the very first day from this challenge, my first blog post. And if you are wondering as to whether or not this challenge has had any effects on my life, then I suggest that you read any other blog post I have made. And spoiler alert: IT HAS! Anyways, let’s get into the blog post for today.

As I mentioned in my last post, I am going to be trying to spotlight songs for the remaining days that I have left that have had a huge impact on me, and that were made by some of the biggest names in Christian Music. There are a lot of huge names in this genre that I have not gotten to yet, so I want to try and make sure that I get the biggest ones left! So that means that I am going to spotlight a guy named Steven Curtis Chapmen today. If you have never heard of him, then I would say that you are lying, and that you have you just don’t know it was him. That is how big this guy is! He is up there with Amy Grant and Michael W. Smith as some of the biggest names in Christian music EVER, as well as being one of the first people to make Christian music super popular. Steven has had a very long and successful career in the business, and he has made hundreds of songs that have had untold impact on people’s lives. And although I don’t have time to go through them all, I do want to point out a couple. One of his biggest songs, and a song that I am sure that any father who has a daughter has heard, the song Cinderella is a must listen to for everyone. Another one of his biggest hits is called be still and know and I highly highly suggest that everyone listen to this song because you can instantly feel the power of God on that song! However, for as great as both of those songs are, they are not the song that I am spotlighting today, and that is because the song that I am going to spotlight is probably his best work ever, and it is the song that has had the biggest impact on my life of all the songs that I have heard from him. The song that I am highlighting today is called “Dive”.

Now, for those of you who have heard this song before, or who know how amazing this song is, then you understand why I chose it. But for those of you who have never heard the song before, and who have no idea why, I invite you to listen to the song as you read this blog. The song starts off with what I think is a drum line? But it only lasts for 3 seconds, and then after that, you just get hit in the face by this musical blast. Now if you have been reading all of my blogs, you will know that I LOVE when a song does that. And that is because I think that is a really fun way of GRABBING the listeners attention, and getting them to buy in to the song right away. The music in this song is a heavenly mix of drums, guitars, and a sound that I have no way of describing other than it sounds like it came straight from heaven itself. After a couple seconds, a nice soft “ooo” comes in, and I REALLY love how this compliments this song. We finally start to approach the lyrics when the guitar comes in and plays it’s hard notes. (I understand that I am not doing a good job of explaining the way it sounds, and that is because I am not trained in this. I am a P.E. teacher after all. I just know that it sounds really cool ok. Which is another reason why you should be listening to this yourself.)

Once the lyrics come in, they paint a pretty interesting metaphor for what we can expect. The lyrics go like this: “The long awaited rains have fallen hard upon the thirsty ground. And carved their way to where the wild and rushing river can be found. And like the rains, I have been carried here to where the river flows, yeah. My heart is racing and my knees are weak as I walk to the edge, I know there is no turning back once my feet have left the ledge, but in the rush, I hear of voice that’s telling me it’s time to take the leap of faith, SO HERE I GO!” From reading those lyrics, you can tell that the song is painting a picture of a mighty river that is created by the heavy rains that haven fallen upon the thirsty ground. Think something like the Mississippi River or the Colorado River that makes it’s way through the Grand Canyon. These rivers are both massive, and can be very intimidating. No one in their right mind would, or SHOULD, want to jump into the rivers. Yet that is what Steven is about to do. He is about to jump into this mighty river, and he knows full well that he is going to have ZERO control over where his life goes after he jumps in, because when you are stuck in a the riptide of a river current, you don’t have any control of where you are going. In fact, you are going to be fighting just to survive till you can get carried away to somewhere in the river where you can swim to shore. So it makes no sense why Steven would be saying that he is about to jump into the river, yet he does it anyways. Well the answer for why Steven would do such a thing comes in the main chorus.

Now, before we can get into the lyrics of the main chorus, I quickly want to switch back to talking about the music. Because the entire time that Steven is singing the first verse, you can feel the beat of the song pick up, kind of like his heart in his chest as he gets to the river. And by the time that he gets to the edge and his feet are hanging off the edge, you can hear in Steven’s voice the adrenaline that he would be feeling in this situation, and that manifests itself in how he sings that last line “SO HERE I GO” He is basically shouting that, because that is what he is saying as he is flying through the air into the river. So if he says that as he is falling into the river, then you should listen to the tempo of which he sings the main chorus as if he is being swept away by the river, because that is exactly what is happening! Anyways, now that is out of the way, let’s get back into the lyrics!

The main chorus goes like this: “I’m diving in, I’m going deep, in over my head I want to be, caught in the rush, lost in the flow, in over my head I want to go, the river’s deep, the river’s wide, the river’s water is alive so sink or swim I’m diving in!” Talk about being all in! Steven shows us in this main chorus that he had no second thoughts about diving in to the river! Not only is he all in, he wants to be overwhelmed by the river, and fully engulfed in it’s waters! He is not halfway in this thing, he is ALL the way in. Now this does beg the question, why is he so committed to diving into this river?? Is he suicidal or something? Or is the river a metaphor for something else? Well I think the answer for this is quite obvious, and it is that the river is a metaphor for something else. And that metaphor is that the river is actually the Holy Spirt of God, and Steven is saying that he wants to be all in on the Holy Spirit of God. He want’s to drown the waters of the Holy Spirit, because he knows that once he goes all in on this, he might not have control of his life anymore, but he is going to get everything that is best for him. Later in the song, Steven says this: “There is a supernatural power, in this mighty river’s flow, it can bring the dead to life, and it can fill an empty soul. And give our heart, the only thing worth living, and worth dying for.” So as you can see, this river that Steven is jumping into, it isn’t going to take his life, it’s going to GIVE him a new life, and that is the powerful message of this song! There is a mighty river flowing right in front of our own eyes, every single day of our lives! And we are all faced with the same choice that Steven was faced with. We can either jump in, and give ourselves over to the mighty powers of the river’s flow, or we can stand on edge to scared to jump. I know the feeling of this situation though, and I understand how hard it can be to take that leap and jump in! It is 100% a leap of faith, and leap of faiths are scary! That’s the whole point of the word “faith” in the term “leap of faith”! You don’t know how it is going to turn out, and you just have to trust that things are going to work out like they have been said that they would, and you are going to have to trust that everything is going to be okay. And that is scary and hard to do sometimes. But I will also tell you this, you have to take the leap of faith in order to experience the wonders of everything that God has promised you, and you have to take a leap of faith in everything else in life, because if you try and live your life by playing it safe, you are going to end up losing it. So please, step forward. Take that leap of faith, and trust that God has a plan worked out for you that will be for your good. And you CAN trust that because he has said it before! In Jeremiah 29:11, God says “For I know the plans I have for you. Plans to prosper you and not to harm you. Plans to give you hope and a future.” So be like Steven, and take that leap of faith! Don’t be afraid because you know full well that God has your back. All you have to do, is Dive in! Thank you for reading, and God bless you.