[NeitherFirstnorLast]

Happy New Year, to all! May Christ draw each of us to Himself in 2014. May He bind up the wounded, may He heal the broken hearted, may He give sight to the blind and joy to the mirthless. May His will be done unhindered. Lord Jesus, we love you; have Your way in us I pray!

With all the talk of the need of repentance on this board of late (and "repenting" is a necessary part of the gospel), I felt we must also not lose balance (or the hope of the faith which lies within us), and remember that a repentant heart is a gift of God, and not something we work up in ourselves. Indeed, we can't work ourselves into repentance; for those without Christ are dead in their trespasses and sins (Ephesians 2:1-10, Colossians 2:13) and have hard hearts of stone which God must first replace with a softened heart of flesh (Ezekiel 36:26).

To that need of balance, I was of a mind to share this beautiful song of God's grace by Matt Maher. My wife and I enjoyed his testimony and his music in person. This brother in Christ is a gifted evangelist whom our sovereign God has kept in the Roman Catholic Church; although Matt believes it is 'high time all God's children come together to serve the Lord and to love one another as Christ loves us'. Some revile Matt for his association with the RCC, I am not one who will do that.

Matt's song shared here is "Alive Again", and it is about the grace of God rescuing the sinner and giving Him a new life in Christ.

Listen to "Alive Again" <-- Link Here.

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About the song:

Matt says the genesis of this song came from Saint Augustine of Hippo’s writing entitled “Jesus is the Only Way to God.” After searching for God through Eastern Cults and Greco-Roman Philosophy, he finally found Him through the same Christianity that he had rejected as a teen. He came to the conclusion that everlasting life can only be found through Christ! Here is the exerpt from the Confessions of Saint Augustine.

Urged to reflect upon myself, I entered under your guidance the innermost places of my being; but only because you had become my helper was I able to do so. I entered, then, and with the vision of my spirit, such as it was, I saw the incommutable light far above my spiritual ken and transcending my mind: not this common light which every carnal eye can see, nor any light of the same order; but greater, as though this common light were shining much more powerfully, far more brightly, and so extensively as to fill the universe. The light I saw was not the common light at all, but something different, utterly different, from all those things. Nor was it higher than my mind in the sense that oil floats on water or the sky is above the earth; it was exalted because this very light made me, and I was below it because by it I was made. Anyone who knows truth knows this light.

O eternal Truth, true Love, and beloved Eternity, you are my God, and for you I sigh day and night. As I first began to know you, you lifted me up and showed me that, while that which I might see exists indeed, I was not yet capable of seeing it. Your rays beamed intensely on me, beating back my feeble gaze, and I trembled with love and dread. I knew myself to be far away from you in a region of unlikeness, and I seemed to hear your voice from on high: “I am the food of the mature: grow, then, and you shall eat me. You will not change me into yourself like bodily food; but you will be changed into me”.

Accordingly I looked for a way to gain the strength I needed to enjoy you, but I did not find it until I embraced the mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, who is also God, supreme over all things and blessed for ever. He called out, proclaiming I am the Way and Truth and the Life, nor had I known him as the food which, though I was not yet strong enough to eat it, he had mingled with our flesh, for the Word became flesh so that your Wisdom, through whom you created all things, might become for us the milk adapted to our infancy.
Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you! You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you. In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created. You were with me, but I was not with you. Created things kept me from you; yet if they had not been in you they would not have been at all. You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness. You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness. You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for you. I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and I burned for your peace.

Here’s what Matt had to say about the song:

Alive Again is about waking up to the kingdom of God. It started with a moment, driving north toward San Antonio. It was dark. Then it got light outside, but the Sun hadn’t broken the horizon. Yet I could see. It spoke to me of the pre-imminence of Christ – shining around us, helping us see “the light before we see the sunrise” (Colossians 1) – I think one of the main themes of the whole record, really – that He is at the head, and in Him, “all things are held together”.

- See more at: http://www.csworshiparts.com/behind-....5Z0aqxu8.dpuf