Speaking in the Light – Jesus You’re My Firework!

Today is a very special day for me! On April 27, 1975- not in the church itself- but outside in the parking lot of a church- I had a spiritual experience that would alter the course of my entire journey forever.
On a rainy spring Sunday afternoon, back when bellbottoms were actually cool, I looked up to heaven in utter despair and cried out to Jesus to come and rescue me. I think the classic Fontella Bass Motown tune just might have even been playing in the jukebox of my soul at that moment.
I knew that I could not truly reach God in my own efforts and my only hope was humbly asking Him to extend His amazing grace my way to pull me up and save me and I knew on that day He did.
I wanted to shout and knock myself out over this new life that I knew was bubbling over inside of me. I wanted to dance and I wanted to sing because singing is what I have always done when I feel anything. Music has been one of God’s greatest gifts to me and I know has been the very instrument that saved my existence more than once along the way.
I came to discover in 1975 that there wasn’t a plethora of tunes that a 15-year-old kid who grew up listening to the radio could choose from to properly express the happenings going on inside of him. Now don’t get me wrong, I was learning the hymns and I came to respect and delight in them dearly, but they were born in another time, out of others’ contemporary experiences. I needed my own sounds to express my love to the Lord with.
I needed melodies that I could make the message of my soul allowed to be communicated loud and clear. I wanted to move and groove for Jesus.
I don’t know if you know this or not, but It’s a common part of church history to bring contemporary style into worship music. Hymnist Charles Wesley, one the founders of the Methodist movement, took drinking songs that were sung in the local pubs of that era and changed the words to give sanctified lyrics to them.
Martin Luther did the very same with the classic, “A Mighty Fortress is our God.” Thomas Dorsey (not big-band Tommy Dorsey) was credited with starting the modern black gospel movement by blending blues styling rhythms with a biblical message. So changing the lyrics to sing a brand new song because the ones that had been sung had been around too long was not a unique deal at all.
There are only so many notes under the universe and it is not the music intrinsic in itself that makes it holy, but the motives and the message behind it that gives it its true purpose. Whatsoever you do or sing, do it and sing it all to the glory of God and if you can’t, then don’t.
So back in 1975 I was looking for the rock era that I was so much a part of to get sanctified too. And along came the songs of Andre Crouch and Evie and Barry McGuire and Love Song and Phil Keaggy and B.J. Thomas and Keith Green and Larry Norman and Randy Stonehill and The Second Chapter of Acts.
They were teaching me to sing the “sweet, sweet song of salvation to every man in every nation” in my very own tongue. I was hearing songs on the radio like “Spirit in the Sky,” and “Day by Day” and “Put Your Hand in the Hand” and even ‘Amazing Grace,” and “The Lord’s Prayer.”
We were gathered around campfires with our eyes closed vocalizing to “Pass it On,” and “Wishing We’d All Been Ready.” I loved the new sounds of my generation’s opportunities to put their feelings for their faith in music that mattered to them. And ever since then I have always looked for new creative ways to use the music of the day to communicate the matters of the heart.
As a matter of fact, just last Easter weekend, I took the Katy Perry song “Firework,” and gave it a tweak and a twist and a whole new reason to blaze across the sky.
Some loved it and others not so much but the message is true no matter how anyone might critique it. And it has been true for me ever since that special April day back in 1975.
“Cause Jesus You’re my Firework… And Your love comes and gives me worth… It makes me go, “Oh, Oh, Oh!” As You shoot across the sky-y-y! Jesus You’re my Firework…And Your love makes my colors burst… It makes me go, “Oh, Oh, Oh!” As you lift me up so high-high-high! -Boom-Boom… Jesus took away the gloom-gloom-gloom… When He rose up from the tomb-tomb-tomb… And now He’s coming soon-soon-soon… You gotta ignite the light… and let Him shine… and make bright the night… like the Fourth of July!
“Jesus you’re my firework!”
Write Pastor Rudy pastorrudytlc@comcast.net
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