Wheels of Glory! Blog

Ruins

Posted in Product Reviews, Teaching & Musings | January 13th, 2021 | by

I don’t vividly remember the first time I heard this song.

All I remember was when its message came home to me.

My acclimation to the power of Ruins was actually relatively gradual. I kept hearing it because I kept listening to the EP it is featured on. I had run across Ledger’s music recently, and people kept talking about Ruins being their favorite song on the EP. I vaguely remember being disappointed and thinking that it was about a breakup. I guess I hadn’t really been listening to the lyrics.

Just stay there for a minute

And just don’t move any closer, move closer

I just don’t know if I can take it

It feels like overexposure; move closer

Brick by brick and scar by scar

It’s taken me years to put up these guards

I don’t want to be hurt again

It’s it disaster or destiny

I feel safer now You’re close to me

And fall apart –

Once again, I’m broken; I’m crumbled

I’m in pieces on the floor

Don’t You know the damage You’ve done is just irreparable?

You’ll find me in the wreckage of a love so severe

And it’s clear, I just don’t know what I’m doing

Your love left me in ruins

Won’t You ruin me again?

If you’ve ever experienced a real encounter with the Lord of Love, you will probably resonate with these lyrics to some extent. Every time I come in contact with that much raw love and power mixed together, I become aware all over again that He is capable of ruining me – in the best way possible.

I become aware that He will make me into His image, and that is the complete and utter antithesis of the image that the world will try to fit me into. I will never again fully ‘fit in’ with the world. That’s what it means to be ‘ruined’ for anything but Jesus. Nothing ever will take His place in my life, and everything else pales and vanishes in comparison to His overwhelming presence. But when you’ve looked on the Savior, you can’t ever totally look away.

Ruins certainly can seem like a terrifying prospect. Frankly, we don’t often think of ruins as a good thing. When the word ‘ruins’ is put forth, images of death and destruction come to mind.

And yet, that’s exactly what God is doing to us.

He is putting to death the things that would keep us away from Him. He’s destroying all that would hold us back.

But –

We like to be in control. We want to regulate how much we surrender to His refining fire, and we want to keep our tidy little world in our own hands.

But is to be ruined by such extravagant love really such a bad thing? Is giving up control to the God who created the universe eons ago so that it continues to work in perfect harmony so terrifying? When I really asked myself this question, all of my petty arguments suddenly seemed very weak and, quite frankly, absurd.

To tell the truth, God’s love, though beautiful and extravagant, is power unimaginable.

Violent like a tidal wave

You hit me, blitzed me, shattered in a hurricane

Your love is the frame that holds me through it

I’m perfectly ruined

When the love of God hits you, It is incapable of leaving its target unchanged. And through the shaking and the burning of the Great Refiner’s fire, His love is the frame that keeps us in one piece through it. Through His love, we can lay down our all and allow Him to burn away all of the chaff in our lives that isn’t what He wants to cultivate in us.

“As for me, I baptize you with water for repentance, but He who is coming after me is mightier than I, and I am not fit to remove His sandals; He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in His hand, and He will thoroughly clear His threshing floor; and He will gather His wheat into the barn, but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” ~ Matthew 3:11-12

Frankly, being ruined by God is the best thing that has ever happened to me. I’m so thankful that He came after a filthy wretch and ruined me for anything but Him. I’m more grateful than I can describe, and only one phrase remains in my heart and mind:

Won’t You ruin me again?

Watch my cover of this awesome song right here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rz4VXhAUkS0

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Wheels of Glory! Blog

Practice Makes Perfect

Posted in Teaching & Musings | June 23rd, 2020 | by

I started my career as a novelist when I was thirteen. That’s right – thirteen. One January afternoon, I sat down at the computer, opened a blank document, and started typing. My first impression was that it took forever to fill just one page. But I chipped away at it, and I finished my first book when I was fourteen. Trust me, I was pleased with myself! I felt that I had poured my heart and my soul into it, and I proudly presented it to my siblings – and was rather crestfallen when they weren’t impressed. When they told me it had no plot. When they told me that I desperately needed to develop my characters.

You know, I could have given up. I could have said, “Skip it! I’ll leave the writing to the experts!” But I didn’t. I went ahead and wrote a second book. Actually, it wasn’t that much better than the first. It still lacked a believable plot, and the character development was abysmal. I could have given up again. But I didn’t. Instead, I wrote a third book. And then a fourth. And finally, a fifth.

By this point, I was sixteen, and it had been about three years since I’d first started writing. And I still hadn’t produced a decent book. I crafted words and plots in my head and tried to write them out. Dozens of stories flowed out of my fingertips, but I found that I was best at beginning books. Finishing them was quite another matter. My fifth book had been better than any of the others that I’d finished, so one day, when I was eighteen, I began its first major revision. If you would have told me that that was the first of six revisions that I would put it through, I would have laughed at you – and probably given up on the spot. But – I didn’t.

With fear and trepidation, I handed it over to be read by people with different tastes than me, and their reaction was relatively positive. I could hardly believe it. It had taken seven years, but I’d finally produced something worth reading. Within a couple of months, I’d finished up another book I’d been working on, and it was met with overwhelming positivity. I was ecstatic.

But as I thought back over my journey of learning to write, I knew that though I’d put blood, sweat, and tears into these narratives, it was the practice that had gotten me to where I’d gone. I couldn’t have sat down as a now twenty-year-old and written either book if I’d chosen to give up after my first failure – or even if I’d never tried. While the maturity that I’d gained in those last seven years definitely contributed to those successes, they hadn’t come out of nowhere. They came from practice.

If you would have told me that I was going to be twenty before I turned out a book that I could be proud to read aloud when I first started this crazy journey, I wouldn’t have believed you. And it would have been discouraging to hear.

But the truth is that practice is what makes perfect. Most of us aren’t born with giftings that they are just good at. They have to practice those gifts. I have. Don’t think that I haven’t thrown hours and hours at learning to play the piano and guitar. But practice doesn’t come by sitting around and pretending or imagining that you’re doing something. It comes through doing it. Even if you feel like a failure at first. Even if you need to improve. Because honestly, if God calls you to something, start practicing now so that you’ll be ready when you land in the place where He’s calling you to.

He spoke to me years ago and told me that I was going to lead worship. So I have trained myself in leading worship, selecting setlists, and guiding my awesome band as we play together both in the home and in public. I know that on that day when I land where God has called me to be, I want to be as ready as I can be. So I’ve practiced, because practice is what makes perfect.

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