It’s been about 2 months since the release of my worship EP “Here in the Waiting,” and I have been completely overwhelmed and humbled by the response. Thank you all for the stories of how God has been using the words and songs from the album in your lives. My prayer was that this project would be used to help others connect with the heart of God, through both personal and corporate worship. God is answering that prayer one day at a time, and I am grateful!
I wanted talk a little bit about what inspired the title of the album “Here in the Waiting.” I’ll start by saying my main inspiration for writing often comes out of my own personal journey with God along with situations going on within my own community.
Well, when I started asking God for a vision for this album I was in a pretty dark and difficult season. Many of you don’t know this and most of you probably wouldn’t guess it, but I struggle with fairly significant depression. A little less than a year ago, I was in one of these seasons where everything seems lost, hard, confusing, dark… you know what I’m talking about?
All of those thoughts led me to an intense search for meaning… I was back to asking God questions like, “what do you want me to do with my life?,” which led to deeper questions like “what’s the point of my life?,” which started revealing even deeper pain and struggle that led to some pretty dark days. Some of you know what that feels like. I asked God to take away the cloud that loomed over my life, the dark thoughts that I couldn’t shake, but He didn’t answer right away and I was left in a season of waiting.
Through it all, I slowly realized that as I fixed my eyes on the things before me -- the circumstances that I could see with my own eyes, the feelings of the day -- the struggle worsened, the days got darker. But, the more that I could lift my eyes and fix them on Christ and on a future in heaven that is promised to me, where all pain, loss, and hardship are gone, the more freedom I experienced.
It made me realize how much we are often “here in the waiting” for things to get fixed in our lives -- for the hard things to disappear, when really we are here in the waiting for our Savior to come and fix this messed up world. We are waiting for eternity. And when are eyes are fixed on that, it changes everything in the day to day.
I would guess that every one of us is in some season of waiting -- waiting for that job to come through, waiting to find some purpose in life, waiting for the heartache to heal, for the bad memories to disappear. I want you to know that God hears you. He knows what you’re going through and He will answer in His time. Our God is a god of hope, love, and He promises that one day He will take it all away and give you eternal life with Him. Until then, we remain here in the waiting.