Art Direction by Tim Parker & Beth Lee. Photo by Jeremy Cowart
Recently, I was listening to Healing Begins by Tenth Avenue North for the first time in years. It's funny how a song you haven't heard in a long time can suddenly speak into exactly what God has been teaching you.
As I listened, I was reminded of a phrase I've heard many times over the years and again in a sermon recently:
The older I get, the more I realise how difficult that truth can be to fully believe.
Like many people, I've spent much of my life measuring things by performance. Work harder, achieve more, do better. It's easy to carry that same mindset into our relationship with God without even realising it. We can begin to think that God loves us a little more when we're reading our Bible consistently, praying regularly, serving faithfully and generally getting things right.
Then there are the other days. The days when we struggle. When we fail. When we feel distant from God. When we become painfully aware of our own weaknesses and shortcomings. I've had plenty of days like that myself!
Perhaps you're having one of those days right now. You love God, but you feel far from Him. You're aware of your failures and shortcomings. Maybe you've even begun to wonder whether you've disappointed Him one too many times.
If that's where you find yourself, I want to gently remind you that God's love for you has not changed. That's why the opening lines of Healing Begins struck me so deeply:
"So you thought you had to keep this up..."
How often do we do exactly that? We try to keep it together. We build walls around the places where we're struggling. We hide the doubts, fears and disappointments that we'd rather nobody see. Yet the gospel tells a completely different story. Romans 5:8 says:
"But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us."
Not after we had sorted ourselves out. Not after we had become mature Christians. Not after we had proven ourselves worthy. While we were still sinners.
Sometimes I think we know that verse intellectually, but struggle to live as though it's actually true. We accept that God saved us by grace, but then spend years trying to earn His approval. Grace is God's undeserved favour towards us, His love and acceptance freely given through Christ, not something we can earn through our good behaviour or spiritual performance.
One of the most beautiful lines in the song says:
"When you come to where you're broken within, the light meets the dark."
That's where healing begins. Not when we've fixed ourselves. Not when we've finally conquered every weakness. Not when we've become the person we think we should be. Healing begins when we stop pretending.
As I reflected on those lyrics, I realised that so much of spiritual growth is simply learning to be honest with God. Not because He doesn't already know what's going on in our hearts, but because we often spend so much energy trying to hide from the very One who loves us most.
As I sat thinking about these lyrics, I was reminded of Chris Llewellyn's song Honest. At the heart of that song is the question many of us quietly ask: Will You love me if I'm honest? I think that's often what keeps us hiding. We fear what God will think if we bring Him our doubts, struggles and failures. Yet Scripture continually points us to a God who welcomes honest hearts. The more I grow in faith, the more I'm learning that God is not intimidated by our questions or disappointed by our weakness. He simply invites us to come to Him truthfully.
The cross reminds us that God already knows the worst about us. Every failure, every selfish motive, every hidden struggle and every regret. None of it surprises Him. And yet He chose to love us anyway.
That doesn't minimise sin. In fact, the cross shows us just how serious sin is. But it also shows us something even greater: God's grace is bigger than our failures. Where sin reveals our need, grace reveals God's willingness to meet that need through Christ.
Paul writes in Romans 8:38-39 that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.
Nothing. Not our past. Not our present struggles. Not our doubts. Not our disappointments. Not even the things about ourselves that we'd rather keep hidden.
Back to Healing Begins, the song later speaks of grace colliding with the darkness inside us. I love that image because that's exactly what the Christian life often feels like. God's grace shines into areas we'd rather leave untouched. It exposes things, not to shame us, but to heal us.
Light doesn't enter a room to condemn the darkness.
Light enters a room to overcome it.
Perhaps that's why this song resonated with me so strongly when I heard it again. It reminded me that God isn't asking me to impress Him. He's not waiting for me to become a better version of myself before He draws near.
He's inviting me to bring my whole self to Him right now.
The good parts and the broken parts. The confident parts and the fearful parts. The light and the dark.
And perhaps He's inviting you to do the same. To stop hiding. To stop carrying the weight of trying to prove yourself. To bring your whole self to Him and trust that His grace is enough.
If you're weary from trying to earn what God has already freely given through Christ, perhaps today is an invitation to rest. To step into the light. To bring your burdens, your fears and your failures to the One who already knows them all.
The more I understand God's grace, the more I realise that healing doesn't begin when I finally have everything together. Healing begins when I stop pretending that I do. And perhaps that's where healing begins for you, too.
Because the truth is this:
There is nothing we can do to make God love us more, and there is nothing we can do to make Him love us less. He loves us.
Acknowledgement
This article was inspired by listening to Healing Begins by Tenth Avenue North. The song's themes of grace, honesty, healing and bringing our brokenness into God's light helped shape it. I was also reminded of Chris Llewellyn's (Rend Collective) Honest, which captures the deeply human desire to be fully known and fully loved by God. I'm grateful for the way God can use music to remind us of timeless truths from Scripture.