Messy People, Messy Songs

A lot of the songs I write are prophetic. By prophetic I don't mean that they predict the future; I mean simply that they express the heart of God. I can say this confidently not because I spend hours basking in the glory, but simply because I am in Christ and Christ is in me. And from this place of right relationship with Jesus, I, as well as all the children of God, have access to the heart of the Father. Plain and simple. And my response to the heart of the Father is often to write a song. "The Bride" for instance, or "That They May Be One," are both expressive of God's heart for His body. A new song called "The Lion Is Moving" is about what the Lord has planned for Springfield, Ohio and what He is doing there now. 

I can say confidently that these songs are the heart of God, but that does not mean that every single line is from the Spirit. Some lines might just be me. But that's okay, because God isn't after perfection. He's not even after right theology. He's after our hearts. And he takes us in all our messiness. He takes my songs in all their messiness. Because Christ Himself is the answer to God's pursuit of perfection. Jesus is perfection for us. As I sing in a new song called "Blood," "There's a father before whom we'll always look pretty because his son went into and his son came out of the ground." That's it. Nothing we do or can do can make us acceptable before God. Jesus is our righteousness, our perfection, our reason for being acceptable to the Father. And so, clothed in Jesus, we can come to the Father in our messiness. I can come to the Father with my messy songs. And that's just beautiful. 

Perfection is boring anyways. How many "perfect" Christian songs do we hear all day long on the radio? Too many for my ears. I wanna hear the messiness. I wanna hear the heart of God expressed through people, through human beings relating to God. That's why I love John Mark McMillan and Kevin Prosch. They're real. They write from their hearts, as well as the heart of the Father. It's a mixture, I guess. When I write a song, a prophetic song, there's a mixture of my heart and His. And I think He's okay with that. 

- Jesse