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

Nobody

The next entry for my Blog is Nobody, which was written by Bernhard Herms, Douglas Williams, John Mark Hall, Leonard Williams, Matthew West, and Melvin Williams.  It was first released August 13, 2019.  A link to Casting Crowns singing the song is at the bottom of the Blog.


Why You ever chose me
Has always been a mystery
All my life, I’ve been told I belong
At the end of a line
With all the other Not-Quites
With all the Never-Get-It-Rights
But it turns out they are the ones You were looking for
All this time

‘Cause I’m just a nobody trying to tell everybody
All about Somebody who saved my soul
Ever since You rescued me, You gave my heart a song to sing
I’m living for the world to see nobody but Jesus
I’m living for the world to see nobody but Jesus

Moses had stage fright
And David brought a rock to a sword fight
You picked twelve outsiders nobody would’ve chosen
And You changed the world
Well, the moral of the story is
Everybody’s got a purpose
So when I hear that devil start talking to me, saying
“Who do you think you are?” I say

I’m just a nobody trying to tell everybody
All about Somebody who saved my soul
Ever since You rescued me, You gave my heart a song to sing
I’m living for the world to see nobody but Jesus
I’m living for the world to see nobody but Jesus

So let me go down, down, down in history
As another blood-bought faithful member of the family
And if they all forget my name, well, that’s fine with me
I’m living for the world to see nobody but Jesus
So let me go down, down, down in history (go down in history)
As another blood-bought faithful member of the family
(It’s all I ever wanna be) And if they all forget my name, well, that’s fine with me
I’m living for the world to see nobody but Jesus, yeah

I’m just a nobody (nobody)
Trying to tell everybody
All about Somebody
Who saved my soul (oh, saved my, saved my soul)
Ever since You rescued me
You gave my heart a song to sing (you gave me a song to sing)
I’m living for the world to see
Nobody but Jesus (nobody but You, Lord)
I’m living for the world to see nobody but Jesus

I’m living for the world to see nobody but Jesus

I believe perhaps that the majority of us are described in the first verse of this song.  How many times have you just felt completely invisible when you were trying so hard to be seen?  We dreaded the times when it was time to choose teams.  The biggest, strongest, and most handsome guys were always chosen first, unfortunately I did not meet the criteria I mentioned for guys.  It seemed as if the most beautiful and popular girls were always selected first.  Once the cream of the crop was selected, then people like me were finally picked.  Sometimes I may have been picked in the middle of the group and sometimes I was last.  Of course there were other times when maybe I didn’t get selected at all.  The above could apply to sports, plays, choirs, other group activities such as groups getting together just to socialize, or to life in general.  Every year in the Christmas holiday season, the animated movie Rudolph comes on TV, and of course there is the song about Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.  One verse in the song states,

All of the other reindeer
Used to laugh and call him names
They never let poor Rudolph
Join in any reindeer games.

I realize it may be somewhat juvenile to use this song in my example, but doesn’t it seem to fit the scenarios I described above?  Probably all of us end up in this situation at sometime in our lives, we become a member of the Not Quites and Never Get it Right Club.  As I shared the above, I hope I didn’t cause you to recall any painful memories.

The heart of this song is the fact that we are the ones that Jesus was looking for when he came to be with us so long ago.  We are the reasons God sent his only son to die for us.  Maybe most of us have been lifetime members of this “nobody” class and Jesus came to offer us one gift, the gift of eternal life and his acceptance forever.  He wanted to bring this eternal joy to all who were willing to accept him.  The song asked the question, why did Jesus ever choose us and be willing to die for us; after all; we are the ones who were never first.  Think about where Jesus taught, he taught in the fields and along the coasts more than he taught in the towns and cities.  He wanted people from all walks of life to hear of his promise and let them know that his arms reached out to everyone, not just the select few who didn’t feel as if they needed him.  He really asks us to do two things.  First, the absolute was to accept him as our personal Lord and savior, the second was to spread his word throughout the world.  He wants everyone to feel loved and wants each of us to feel as if we are at the front of the line; we are no longer the ones at the end of the line.  Jesus sees us as a circle where everyone is equal, no one is above another.

Jesus wants to let everyone know there is no such person as a “nobody” in his eyes.  His love goes to everyone all the time, the lines with beginning and end are gone, we are part of the circle that has no beginning and no end and can expand every minute of every day.  Jesus is always in the middle within reach of every single soul.  As we learn what life should be all about, we no longer care who is physically first or last, we are just glad they are here and listening to the teaching of God’s word. As we step into the ever growing circle of the followers of Jesus, our burdens become lighter.  We find this in the book of Matthew 11:28-30. “Then Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.”

Some of the greatest heroes in the bible were just normal people like you and I.  Moses, the shepherd, was scared to speak in front of the Egyptian Pharoah, so God sent Aaron to go with him and speak for him when he was trying to lead the Israelites out of bondage.  David was just a very young shepherd and God chose him to battle the giant and guided him to only take his sling, while the giant carried a spear that was probably bigger than David. God chose Noah to build an ark and save his family.  Although others were invited to join, they just laughed at Noah and his family.  Their laughter stopped once the floods came and Noah was setting sail.  God chose the lowly shepherds to be some of the first to see the baby Jesus lying in a manger.  Jesus chose twelve disciples from all walks of life, none were famous and most were fishermen just living from day to day.  Some were unliked, some were hot headed, but Jesus took them regardless of their background.  Take a second to think about how these disciples carried forward his message and helped change the world.  All of these people were people like you and I, all nobodies, it is just that they dedicated their lives to Jesus and spreading his love to everyone they came in contact with. 

It is also important to note that God used many people who were people we may have never chosen based on their background.  God knew their strengths and did not hold their weaknesses against them when he accepted them as one of his own.

  • David had an affair
  • Peter, a disciple, had a temper
  • Noah got drunk
  • The apostle Paul was a murderer
  • Sara was impatient and had Abraham father a child with another woman
  • Jonah ran from God and was swallowed by a whale
  • Thomas was a doubter.

In the book of Romans 5:8, we are told that God loves us even though we continue to do the wrong things.  “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”  He does not judge us on our past, he accepts us for our future.  All we have to do is accept him and the sacrifice of his son.

As you take time to digest the words to this song, you should begin to realize that there is no one more important than you in the eyes of God.  We are all equal and what we physically own or what we have accomplished in our lives doesn’t really mean a lot to him.  What is important to him is that we start reaching out to everyone around us to make sure they do not feel like a nobody with no hope.  Our mission is to make sure everyone understands there is no such person as a nobody, that Jesus loves us all and we are all equal.  For those of you who are used to being the best, the brightest, the most talented, and the most beautiful; realize that God gave you these qualities.  Many people with these qualities have already accepted Christ, but I surmise there are a lot who still have more faith in themselves than they have in God.  If you have not accepted Jesus as your personal savior, then the time for that is now, tomorrow could be too late since tomorrow is never promised to any of us. 

Doesn’t it feel great to be a nobody?

Click to Hear Casting Crowns Sing Nobody