Casting Crowns is an award-winning Christian band and youth ministry team whose music has inspired and encouraged me greatly over the past ten years. Their authenticity and ability to marry biblical values and stories with contemporary issues are both examples and spurs to me. Songs like ‘Who Am I?’ and ‘Voice of Truth’ tackle basic questions of our identity in God; others like ‘Lifesong‘ call us to wholehearted discipleship in every area of our lives. Many of their songs tackle the difficulties of life (‘Slow Fade’, ‘Broken Together’, ‘East To West’) and even more question how to bring together zeal and everyday living (‘Somewhere In the Middle’, ‘The Altar and the Door’), reminding us that discipleship is not always the ‘easy ride’ we would like it to be whilst also reminding us there is ‘joy unspeakable, faith unsinkable, love unstoppable, anything is possible’ in God. (‘Thrive‘)
A new Casting Crowns’ album is always eagerly anticipated by me, and this one (‘The Very Next Thing’) all the more so, since lead singer Mark Hall had had a serious operation to remove a cancerous kidney last year, and I wanted to know how that experience would be reflected in song (as he says, writing a song is what he does when faced with hard situations!) The song ‘Oh My Soul’, based on Psalm 42, continues his ongoing acknowledgment that we have to speak to ourselves as we wobble between faith and fear, allowing God to work in us so that we can lay our burdens down at the cross and not take them up again!
The album contains songs which bring Bible stories to life (‘When The God-Man Passes By’ tells us the stories of Zacchaeus and the woman taken in adultery and ‘Hallelujah’ tackles, with profound simplicity, the three sunrises of creation, Easter Sunday and the Second Coming) as well as songs that tackle our fears (‘What If I Gave Everything’ being described as the prequel to ‘Voice of Truth’ and looking at our tendency to say in safe, shallow waters instead of plunging into all God has for us) and sense of shame (‘One Step Away’ is a fantastic call to repentance and return to God.) ‘Loving My Jesus’ is a very personal call to be real in our discipleship (‘loving my Jesus, showing my scars, telling my story of how mercy can reach you where you are‘), not believing the enemy’s whisper to ‘keep all your pain inside, ’cause no one will understand‘). Other songs sing of the divine exchange we can receive (‘For All You Are‘) and how God is able to restore and heal (‘God of All My Days’) and of the awesome gift of salvation God gives us (‘Song That The Angels Can’t Sing’) and of the need for us to be a river, not a stagnant sea (‘Make Me A River’).
For me, Casting Crowns bring life issues to light and then shine God’s light onto those situations (‘The Very Next Thing’ looks at our tendency to spend our lives always looking at the future instead of walking with God right now, for example.) Their insistence, however, that all we face in life can be brought to God (including our guilt, shame, fear and brokenness) and is woven by Him into a beautiful tapestry is refreshing in its honesty and lack of pretence. These are not necessarily songs you would sing in a church service (though ‘No Other Name’ certainly could be!), but they are, indeed, ‘life songs’, identifiable by all who walk with Jesus through the valley of dry bones to find resurrection follows death. It’s easier to listen to them than to read my descriptions, but in listening, I find the relief of discovering my own experiences and emotions articulated in music which can then become part of my offering to God.
[Click on highlighted song titles to hear the song.]