Our hearts don’t crack open easily. Many of us who believe the gospel still live day-to-day in avoidance, rather than relief, of our pain.
In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C. S. Lewis, Eustace needs Aslan to get through his outward dragon scales: “The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart.” But the lion’s claws only freed Eustace from the prison of his dragon-self.
Like Eustace, we need the gospel to go way down deep. We sing our Christian songs, we hear our gospel sermons, we enjoy honest fellowship – all very sincerely, too. And it’s wonderful. But there are episodes in our past that are so threatening to us, so beyond our capacity for coping, we cannot face them. What we don’t realize is that our most shocking failures are the deep places where Jesus loves us the most tenderly. And he is able to break through our defenses and touch us with his gentleness in ways we have never experienced before.
Music helps. It goes deep. That’s why I love the new live CD from Immanuel Church Nashville, available today on iTunes, Apple Music, Spotify, etc.
The fifth track, “Missing not one,” written by Will Duvall and sung by Jessica Waterman, cracks my own heart open. It draws on Isaiah 40:26-27, Ephesians 3:17-19 and Romans 8:31-39 to help us open up to the perfect love of Christ. I hope you’ll check out all these great songs. Thanks.
This post was originally published on The Gospel Coalition