You Lead, I'll follow, Your hands hold my tomorrow
Your grip, your grace, you know the way'
You guide me tenderly,
When You lead, I'll follow,
Just light the way and I'll go,
Cause I know what You've got for me is more than I can see,
So lead me on, on, on, and on,
Just lead me on, on, on, and on.
That's the chorus to Jamie Grace's song, "You Lead." If you've never heard it, well, it's a keeper! We love it--and of course, we doubly love it since OneVoice (a wonderful singing group Janie is in) sings it and made a recording of it this summer. Janie sang the solo for it, and when we listened to the recording of the song after the accident, we couldn't believe how the words ministered to and encouraged us. As Janie lay unconscious, we listened to her singing, "I know You got me, I know You got me, Lead me on and on" and "Cause I know what You've got for me is more than I can see." And listen to the words just in the first verse:
I've got waves that are tossing me,
Crashing all over my beliefs,
And in all sincerity, Lord,
I wanna be Yours,
So pull me out of this mess I'm in,
Cause I know I'm wanderin'
Lead my soul back home again,
I've always been yours.
Isn't it funny the things God will use? The wondrous "God-incidences" that He continually brings into our lives to remind us that He is there and active and moving even when we can see no obvious, visible evidence of Him. Sometimes I think He just likes to go undercover. God could just blow our socks off everyday! It would be nothing to Him to paint across the sky or wow us with some supernatural, splashy evidence of His power. But He usually chooses simpler, stealth means of interjecting Himself into our lives--these understated interjections of the Divinity might be quieter, but they are nonetheless miraculous evidences of a sovereign, omnipotent God who cares for each of us individually and personally.
He knows and cares when life weighs us down, and He sends a friend's encouragement or an email or a beautiful bird or a soaring song or a "God-incidence" that often hides as coincidence. One of my favorite examples of this occurred at the wedding at Cana--Jesus' first miracle. Jesus and a couple of His disciples went to a wedding, and His mother tells him they had run out of wine. Now, if I had been the Savior of the world, my attitude might have been, "Seriously?! Are you kidding? I'm thinking about the eternal souls of people and salvation and sanctification and really important stuff, and you're telling me about the wine running out at a party?! Get a life!" (Well, actually, He would be the One giving them Life).
But praise God, that's not our Savior. He cares about the smallest details of our lives. He knows when we cry and when we're crushed. He understands when we're exhausted and when we're exasperated. He helps us whether we're discouraged or disillusioned. He loves the humblest to the noblest to the greatest to the littlest. And nothing is too small or menial or unimportant to take to Him.
Jesus tells the servants at the party to fill the large stone jars used for purification with water. After they filled them to the brim, He tells them "Now draw some out and take it to the master of the feast." (John 2:8) And when they did, the water had not only been miraculously transformed into wine, it was the finest of wines. Jesus doesn't do things halfway or halfheartedly!
At the time, however, no one except the servants and Mary knew of what Jesus had done. He quietly, stealthily, but miraculously transformed water into wine as well as potential humiliation by the hosts into perfect hospitality. That's just how He works... then and now.
So, this is all to say, that is how He has worked over and over again the past few weeks. Only now we have eyes wide open and looking for His God-incidences, His quiet but powerful interjections into our lives. And when you are on the look-out, you see evidence of His beautiful nail-scarred fingerprints all over your life. Everywhere you look.
And this song was just one more example. Janie's singing group recorded this song at the very end of a recording session. They hadn't planned to do it. Hadn't rehearsed it. Just did it in the last 20 minutes for fun. No big deal. I'm sure they figured nothing would ever come of it.
Or so they thought. But God would use their little song to encourage and strengthen many of us throughout the long days and weeks when Janie lay unconscious in the hospital. Many of her friends have listened to it multiple times. And the words have just sung even in Janie's silence of a sovereign God who never lets us go, who is in control, and who will lead us even in the darkest places of our lives.
Thank you, Jamie Grace, for singing to the glory of God. Thank you for this little song, You Lead. Thank you OneVoice for singing it so well. But most of all, thank You Lord for never letting us go, for always leading us, and for continually interjecting Your loving, perfect, gracious, glorious self in our lives... even in the dark, even in the God-incidences of our daily lives. Thank You that we are never apart from Your loving heart and Your all-knowing mind. Help us to have eyes to see all the ways You enter into our world every single day. Give us not just eyes to see but hearts to praise.
Lord, You lead, we'll follow... all the way to the finish line. To our sovereign God be all the glory.
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