Don't Stop the Madness

Happy Sunday Night all! I hope you all had amazing weekends! I know I did, and I am so blessed by what I was able to do. On Friday, I had the opportunity to go to a Tenth Avenue North concert in Rochester with some of my favorite people. It was glorious. I recommend going to one of their concerts if you want a great show that really is just "worship on steroids" as one of my friends put it. I felt God move in that room on Friday night, and I knew he was working through what Mike (the lead singer) and the rest of the band to bring glory to Him. This post is going to be about a concept and a topic that was brought up by Mike while he was talking about the song "Don't Stop the Madness," which is on Tenth Ave. North's newest record. This post is just going to branch off of that topic and expound a little more into it. So enjoy!

Let me first just give you some of the lyrics of the song, and then I will explain afterwards. Deal? Good. Here are the lyrics:

"All I hear is what they're selling me
That God is love, he isn't suffering
And what you need's a little faith and prosperity
But, oh my God, I know there's more than this
If you promise pain it can't be meaningless
So make me poor if that's the price for freedom
Don't stop the madness
Don't stop the chaos
Don't stop the pain surrounding me
Don't be afraid, love, to break my heart
If it brings me down to my knees, yeah"

Okay, so now what I want you all to do is think about what those lyrics are trying to say. What is this song trying to convey to us?

Well, when I first heard this song and when I looked at the lyrics for the first time I was really put off by the fact that they wrote a song about how we are not supposed to pray for the Lord to make our sufferings stop, and that the band's intentions was to tell us to just get over all the pain and madness. Those were my first impressions, but as I looked more into the song and more into the lyrics I also saw that it never says there that we are not supposed to pray for the Lord to make our situation better, but instead it says that we praise God for our trials because it will bring us closer to Him.

I was reading in James the other day because it is the book of the bible my study is working through at this moment, and I came across this set of verses: "Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything." That was James 1:2-4.

I just think that that hits home for me because it is calling us not to revel in our own self-pity and get down on ourselves when we face times of challenge and opportunities for us to grow as believers, but instead to be encouraged, to have joy knowing that because we are going through this madness and this heartache that it is developing us into better people. It is developing us to be more like Christ.

So go back to the song real quick, and look at where it talks God being love and not in suffering. That is so much of a lie that we hear everyday. We hear that God is love, which is absolutely correct, that he is there with me during the great times and when I am at the high-points of my faith that that is when he is there, but that isn't the only place he is either. He is there in the suffering, the pain, the heartache, the shortcomings, and the falls from grace that we have every once in awhile. He is there through it all and he is working it all for your good! He is transforming your trials into your victories and is continually shaping you through them to become more reliant on Him. God never has told us that our lives were gonna be easy, but instead he said that when we do encounter those struggles that he will use them to his glory.

Papa. You are utterly amazing. You literally are the best dad in the whole world. I mean honestly you just do so much in our lives in order to make us into who you want us to be. You mold us and shape us into perfection because you are not done with us yet. We are your masterpiece Lord, and I just pray tonight that we recognize that these trials and tribulations that we go through are put into our life for a purpose. That we are not mistakes, that theses challenges are not just there to keep us occupied in our life, but to guide us and to bring us closer to you Father. I just pray that we can all see that even though you are love Papa that you are also in the sufferings that we experience. You watch us and love us no matter what happens in our lives, and I claim all of these things as victories in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.