Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Songs of Recovery - Let it Fade by Jeremy Camp

February 1st, 2009 was the first day of my walk with Christ. I had the transformation that you can read about in my About Me page at about 2 A.M. on February 1st. Since then it has all been different. I used to go to secular concerts, which were always as much about the alcohol and drugs as they were about the music. That may not be your take on them, but they were in my world.

Due to this, I had not been to a concert in the first couple of months after I got saved, which was weird for me. I attended at least 10 concerts a year at the time, but with no longer drinking and wanting to change my life I had simply stopped going to them. I had some friends from New Life who invited me to a concert with them. It was called the Rock and Worship Roadshow, and it was in April of 2009.

It was a worship concerts with a couple of great acts, among them Mercy Me, Tenth Avenue North and Jeremy Camp . I will discuss the concert in a future blog that will be about the concert and the impact that it had on me. This is how much the entire concert affected me, I could easily write several thousand words on the experience. That said, there was one song that I had never heard before. I did not really know who Jeremy Camp was at the time, but I recognized a song or two from listening to 88.3 The Wind (WKND). He stepped up and played his first few songs. I liked all of the songs he played, but when he began to sing one...........WOW! That is the only word that comes to my mind, wow!! It started with:

Have you been walking on a surface that's uncertain?
Have you helped yourself to everything that's empty?
You can't live this way too long.
There's more than this, more than this.
Have you been standing on your own feet too long?
Have you been looking for a place where you belong?
You can rest, you will find rest.
You can rest, you will find rest.
I remember sitting in the crowd and thinking, "Why yes, I have been walking on an uncertain surface and filling my life with empty things." I walked on my own, and I can tell you that is very uncertain. I have first thought wrong. My brain is a scary place to be all by myself, and I was there a lot. And as for helping myself to empty things, everything that I did was an empty act. If I was doing something nice, it was probably for show. I wanted people to think that I was not a bad person, so I did things and made sure that people knew about it.

As for my lifestyle, you get no more empty than numbing with drugs and alcohol and erecting walls to keep everyone out so that you can feel safe and not put your heart out there. He was right, I could not live my life that way too long. I had quite a few friends who were dead from their addictions. It had been me against the world for too long. Living without anyone to depend on but me (and my sister) was frustrating and tiring. I definitely needed some rest.

The cool thing was that I had finally been found by Christ, and I was actually feeling by this time that I did belong in church. For the first year that I went to New Life, I did not feel that I did belong, though. I did not feel judged by others, but I am my own worst critic. I deemed me unworthy. All of that changed February 1st. Now I had a place that I belonged. Then Jeremy came with the chorus:

Let this old life crumble, let it fade.
Let this new life offered be your saving grace.
Let this old life crumble, let it fade, let it fade.

I knew as soon as I heard that chorus that this was exactly what I had done. I had let my old life crumble away when I had accepted Christ into my life. This new life was my saving grace, as now I no longer had to do everything on my own. I now had the Holy Spirit living inside of me. I knew that I would never be alone again, because Christ was always with me. With God walking with me and the Spirit residing in me I would never again be alone.

Now I had the drive to do what was right. I had surrounded myself with positive people. I was letting my old life crumble and fade away. Like 2 Corinthians 5:17 says, "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!" That old life had crumbled when I accepted Christ into my life, and it was fading away more and more each day. His next verse also reminded me of my old life:

Have you been holding on to what this world has offered?
Have you been giving in to all these masquerades?
It will be gone, forever gone.
It will be gone, it will be gone
I had held onto this old world for so long that it had almost killed me. I had lost everything, including my self-respect. I gave into the false belief that numbing would make everything including myself better. If someone wanted to sleep with me, then I was a good person. If I could numb it due to the drugs or alcohol, then it did not exist. If I could beat people up, then they would listen to me so they must respect me. This was all a big masquerade. Perception is reality, but that does not make it true. 

Every time thata I tricked myself, it was fleeting. I would feel better until I sobered up, or until I was alone again. Then I would feel worthless all over again. I would always have to repeat the cycle in order to have the illusion of normality. And it was an illusion! What I considered normal most people would consider insane. That, and it was only temporary. It was gone and I would have to do it again immediately in order to feel better. Whether it was sex, food, drugs, alcohol or violence. My life was a laundry cycle, rinse and repeat! But I had found a new way to live. The new way was truly the chorus of the Jeremy Camp song:

Let this old life crumble, let it fade.
Let this new life offered be your saving grace.
Let this old life crumble, let it fade, let it fade.

This song simply reinforced what I already knew. Life with Christ was the new life that offered me hope. Only by the grace of God was I able to step out of my addiction into a life that was worth while. I was no longer angry, I was no longer full of self-loathing. I actually liked who I was and had faith that I could be a good example and an inspiration. I was no longer running from my calling, I was running towards it. I was built from the ground up, from my infancy up to be a teacher, a motivator and an inspiration. 

Thanks Jeremy! This song reinforced what I already knew. The first thing that I did after your set was go and buy your CD's and a T-Shirt that said Let This Old Life Crumble on the front and Let it Fade on the back. Then I came back, sat down and listened to Mercy Me. Great song, and a great way of telling us that there is so much more than this old life that we are currently living. I found it to be inspirational, and it has always been one of the songs that I listen to that help me realize how much better my life is now than it once was!


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