Who I Thought You Were

The next entry for my Blog is Who I Thought You Were, which was written by Olivia Lane, Jacob Stanifer, and Dustin Lolli.  It was first released April 26, 2024.  A link to Olivia Lane singing the song is at the bottom of the Blog. 

Yeah, they told me that you loved me, then they told me to toe the line
They said I should be scared of doing things I know you don’t like
Saying sorry every day
Cuz I was so afraid

That’d you leave me so I left you chasing dreams I never found
But through these tears here on my knees I’m begging you to come around
Then the God I learned to fear
You showed up and made it clear that

You were there in the darkness
You were there in my pain
You saw me in the valleys and still loved me anyways
It’s so nice to finally meet you
Why was I so afraid?
I have so much left to learn
But thank God you’re not who I thought you were

I always thought you’d be so angry, instead you’re patient and you’re kind
You are for me, not against me, for way too long I believed the lie
That there was only so much grace
But now I can finally say that

You were there in the darkness
You were there in my pain
You saw me in the valleys and still loved me anyways
It’s so nice to finally to meet you
Why was I so afraid?
I have so much left to learn
But thank God you’re not

Way too holy to want the broken
Way too proud to love the meek
Cuz now I know that what I fear
Is not having you with me cuz

You were there in the darkness
You were there in my pain
You saw me in the valleys and still loved me anyways
It’s so nice to finally to meet you
Why was I so afraid?
I have so much left to learn
But thank God you’re not who I thought you were

Who is God?  What is God’s personality?  Is God really a being full of wrath who is always threatening the world?  It seems as if we frequently see God depicted as a being looking down on our world with a look of anger on his face and carrying a spear or trident, similar to a Neptune or Zeus image.  Many people strongly believe that God is a vindictive being who has no tolerance for those who do not love him.  In the past, there have been some teachers and preachers who tried to scare people into accepting God and they started to fear God instead of loving him. 

On the other hand, people tell us how God is filled with love and compassion.  So, which personality does God have?  Should we be afraid of his anger, should we try to run and hide from him, or should we open our eyes, ears, and heart to his love?  With all of the dimensions in God’s perceived personality, we get the feeling that we constantly fail God and need to apologize to him continuously since we all fail in some way every day.   It is almost as if we are afraid to love him and also afraid to run away from him.  Once we decide to love him, our greatest fear becomes disappointing God and being abandoned, no matter how scared we may be of him.  We finally realize just how much he loves us.

I realize this is a quite a gloomy perspective to start this song, but I truly believe that many people live in a fear of a powerful God instead of living in the love that only God can give.  This song tells us how people turn from God out of fear instead of running to his love.  Once we begin to realize that God is on our side and stands with arms open wide, we come to him on our knees.  We realize that in the darkest days of our life, God was there.  When we thought we were alone and lost, God was there beside us all the time.  It is almost as if we find that long last friend who we had been around for most of our life; we just never realized what they meant to us.  Once we realize that we were acting all of our lives in poor judgement, we can’t believe how much we were loved and cared for during every day of our life.  We reach a point where we can finally say, “I am so glad I met you and so happy to understand that I could not have lived my life without you.”  In the book of Romans 5:8-9, we are told that God sacrificed his only son so that we could spend eternity with him.  All he asks of us is that we accept the sacrifice he made.  “But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.”  Let this scripture sink in for a moment and think about whether you would be willing to pay this steep of a price for someone else.

Even though it took us so long to realize how we had misjudged God, he was never angry with us, he was never going to desert us; he always stood there beside us with his arms spread wide.  He doesn’t hold our past against us, he wasn’t angry with us, he was not judging us; he was just waiting for us.  This reminds me of a song “He Was There All the Time”, which was released back in 1988.  You can read about this song in my Blog since it was one of my earlier posts.  God started loving us before we were born and he holds no grudges against us.  He loves us all, it doesn’t matter if we once hated him, ignored him, or rejected him.  He even tells us in Psalm 103:12 that our past and our sins are no longer in his sight, “How far has the LORD taken our sins from us? Farther than the distance from east to west!”   Even though God is perfect in every way, he accepts us just as we are.  He goes from someone we fear to someone we love and can’t live without.  Isn’t it amazing that we can have someone in our lives that will always love us and never fail us?  We have no debt to pay to God, we only need to fall into his arms and thank him for not being the God we thought he was.

Click to Hear Olivia Lane Sing Who I Thought You Were

Woman at the Well

The next entry for my Blog is Woman at the Well, which was written Jesse Reeves, Olivia Lane, and Steve Fee.  It was first released in April 9, 2021.  A link to Olivia Lane singing the song is at the bottom of the Blog.   The link also includes a film clip from the TV Series “The Chosen.”

Woman at the Well

I heard a story from the Bible
When I was just a little girl
About a broken-hearted woman
Who met the Savior of the world

Thought it was just another story
One that the preacher man would read
But as I’m sitting here at home
Drinking red wine all alone
I think that woman might be me

‘Cause tonight I feel just like
The woman at the well
Wondering how someone could love me
When I can’t love myself
But You want me as I am and that sounds crazy
I guess maybe that’s why grace is so amazing

Staring at that empty bottle
I swear I caught a glimpse of Him
He met me right there at the bottom
And turned that wine to living water
And taught me how to love again

Yeah, tonight I feel just like
The woman at the well
Wondering how someone could love me
When I can’t love myself
But You want me as I am and that sounds crazy
I guess maybe that’s why grace is so amazing

It’s no longer just a story when I read it (when I read it)
‘Cause I’ve seen Him for myself and I believe it

‘Cause tonight I feel just like
The woman at the well
Wondering how someone could love me
When I can’t love myself
But You want me as I am and that sounds crazy
I guess maybe that’s why grace is so amazing

Just like the story from the Bible
I heard when I was just a girl
I’m the broken-hearted woman
Who met the Savior of the world

This is a song that brought tears of sadness and tears of joy in my heart as I recalled the story in the bible, then listened to the words of this song, and then saw it come to life on TV when I watched an episode of The Chosen.  It is amazing when you read the scripture, feel the pain of the woman at the well, the empathy of Jesus, followed by the great joy he has brought to this woman who has been living a life of hopelessness.

The bible has many passages that describe Jesus, the son of God and savior of the world, interacting with people and explaining who he is and his mission upon coming to earth.  One of these passages, which is in the book of Matthew chapter 9, tells us about Jesus meeting with a woman at the well.  This woman had a life that was in turmoil, she had already been through multiple marriages, and never seemed to find happiness.  When you sit in church and hear these stories, they don’t always seem real because they are not necessarily hitting close to home.  Even though the message is true, maybe it doesn’t seem to apply to us at the time and is someone else’s story, not yours or mine.  We hear the message, perhaps we retain it, and then we go on with our lives.

As we journey down the road in our lives, we perhaps start struggling with seemingly everything going on in our life, and gradually our world starts falling apart.  Maybe we are feeling alone and the deeper in despair we fall, we start believing there is no hope.  In this song, the individual is sitting home all alone, drinking some wine, and dwelling on all of the times she has failed in her life.  The realization comes that perhaps she is just like the woman at the well from the story she heard in church long ago; a totally messed up life with no escape in sight.  Maybe she hasn’t gone through the same type of travails as the woman, but she feels she has failed in her decisions and has lost all hope as her despair rages on.  She has trouble loving herself, so how could anyone else ever love her.  Perhaps she, just as the woman at the well, has gone through multiple relationships, marriages, or failures in life.  She feels as if she will never be loved again and that she is unworthy of love.

At just the right time, this example of Jesus’ love in the bible has finally grabbed the singer’s attention, she finally understands that Jesus accepts us just as we are.  All he asks is that we accept him and the eternal life he offers each of us.  He knows we will change once we accept him, but he doesn’t hold any of our past against us.  We are told about his grace and forgiveness in Romans 4:7. “Oh, what joy for those whose disobedience is forgiven, whose sins are put out of sight.”  

As the singer sits there alone and looks down into the bottom of the empty wine bottle, she suddenly catches a fleeting glimpse of the face of Jesus.  It sounds sort of odd to catch a glimpse of our savior in the bottom of a wine bottle, but it is his way of saying I am with you wherever you go and ready to pull you up when you are ready to leave your misery.  It is so much easier when we finally understand that we don’t look up to find Jesus, we look beside us and to the outreached hand.  He is ready to give us eternal life, that living water, whenever we are ready to accept his hand. We find this passage in John 4:13-14, “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.” 

I believe that all of us, at some point in our lives, have the hopeless feeling felt by the woman at the well.  Some of the mistakes we made were our own fault, and some were probably caused by others.  The woman at the well struggled with marriages and relationships, some of the issues were perhaps hers and some not.  Whatever the situation, Jesus is not concerned about who is at fault.  He doesn’t judge us by our past; his eyes are only focused on eternity.  I hope you have partaken of the holy water.

Click to Hear Olivia Lane Sing Woman at the Well, Includes Film Clip from the TV Series – The Chosen