Red Mountain Music

I would like to share with you an album I discovered that I really love. It is called Help My Unbelief by Red Mountain Music. The album is full of hymns from Gadsby's Hymns, a collection of hymns from the mid-1800's. The musicians are from a church community in Birmingham, AL and the album is available for free (and completely legal) here.

The reason for my love is summed up beautifully in this description:  "Many of the texts in these particular songs carry themes of doubt and longing. We believe that the Christian life is a complexity of emotions, a marriage of sorrow and joy. Valleys and mountaintops. Light and darkness. The hymn writers of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries seem to have captured these tensions with more honesty and depth than many contemporary writers."

This Sunday I will be sharing with Grace Church, "My Raptured Soul." It is a a joyful song of longing for being called home to Christ. It brings me to tears often because I am so hardened by sin and this world. There is such great suffering and perseverance is hard and sometimes I forget that Heaven is REAL! Jesus is truly preparing a place for me and I will someday soon (very soon, in light of eternity) be with Him. Too often I do not live in the hope of this reality.

Pastor Martin is preaching through Revelation right now and it is helping me to see what an awesome and glorious God I serve. Too often I am consumed with the view that is 6 feet and under and I am weighed by heavy burdens. I long to say with Paul, "My desire is to depart and be with Christ..." and actually mean it. How quickly I jump to the "but" and dwell only there, only in the trials of today.

I pray that my fear of man and my fear of imperfection will not harden my heart to the joyfulness that comes from desiring to be with Him and KNOWING it will happen one day:

If Jesus kindly say,
And with a whispering word,
“Arise my love and come away,”
I run to meet my Lord.

My soul is in my ears;
My heart is all on flame;
My eyes are sweetly drowned in tears,
And melted is my frame.

My raptured soul will rise up,
And give a cheerful spring,
And dart through all the lofty skies,
To visit Zion’s King.
To visit Zion’s King.

He meets me with a kiss,
And with a smiling face;
I taste the dear, enchanting bliss,
And wonder at his grace.

A soft and tender sigh,
Now heaves my hollowed breast;
I long to lay me down and die,
And find eternal rest.

Words by: John Berridge

"They shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore;
     the sun shall not strike them,
    nor any scorching heat. 

 For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd,
    and he will guide them to springs of living water,
and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”   
                          -Revelation 7:16-17