I have always loved Christmas music, but this Advent season my playlist looks a little less traditional than usual. Over the past year, my heart has been drawn toward battle songs—anthems through which the Holy Spirit ministers to the deepest parts of me and stirs me to stay in the fight, to rebuke the enemy, and to remember who holds me.

Last winter when Tess was hospitalized, and I would drive home from the children’s hospital late at night, I would often sing “This Thing is Not Going to Break You,” a beautiful song by Christa Wells that a friend from my Bible study had sent to me. Tears would literally pour down my face as I sang the chorus over and over:

“This thing is going to try to break you

But it doesn’t have to

You’re showing us how

This thing is going to bend and shape you

But He won’t let it take you/You know it somehow

This thing is not going to break you”

My voice would often choke on the title lyrics because I so desperately wanted them to be true, but inside I just felt shattered.

Months later as I saw the deliverance I wrote about yesterday, it was “No Longer Slaves” by Bethel Music that stirred my soul. I began singing with a new confidence, boldly claiming what the lyrics promised:

“I’m no longer a slave to fear

I am a child of God

 

I am surrounded

By the arms of the father

I am surrounded

By songs of deliverance

We’ve been liberated

From our bondage

We’re the sons and the daughters

Let us sing our freedom

 

You split the sea

So I could walk right through it

My fears were drowned in perfect love

You rescued me

And I will stand and sing

I am the child of God”

Our church worship team often leads us in a song called “Surrounded” by Michael W. Smith. It is the simplest of songs really but oh so powerful. Its lyrics are few—literally less than 25 words in the entire song—but their power is mighty. Earlier this fall I faced a new and unexpected battle, one that I have come to realize the enemy strategically designed to take me out. When I was breathless from the shock of it, all I could gasp out were the lines of this song—over and over and over again:

“This is how I fight my battles

This is how I fight my battles…

It may look like I’m surrounded but I’m surrounded by You

It may look like I’m surrounded but I’m surrounded by You”

I don’t have a musical bone in my body. I wish I did, but either through lack of nature or lack of nurture, that talent eluded me. But slowly over the past ten years, I have learned the power of unabandoned worship. That has been a gradual work God has done in me—moving me from a two-hands on the hymnal, stand up-sit down girl to a face on the floor, crying out to God worshipper.

Two summers ago, someone saw me worshipping in the midst of a major trial. With disdain, this individual chastised me: “How can you stand there and worship like that?” All I knew to say was, “How can I not?”  When I worship, I proclaim truth with words penned by others–words I desperately want to believe.  And by proclaiming them, the Holy Spirit in me rises above feelings and circumstances and pours strength in my weakened self until the words I sing soak into my soul and bring healing.

My counselor recently shared a song with me that has become my Advent season battle song. It is by one of my favorite worship artists, Lauren Daigle, and its lyrics minister to the very deepest parts of my heart:

“You are not hidden

There’s never been a moment

You were forgotten

You are not hopeless

Though you have been broken

Your innocence stolen

I hear you whisper underneath your breath

I hear your SOS, your SOS

I will send out an army to find you

In the middle of the darkest night

It’s true, I will rescue you

There is no distance

That cannot be covered

Over and over

You’re not defenseless

I’ll be your shelter

I’ll be your armor

I hear you whisper underneath your breath

I hear your SOS, your SOS”

The more I sing this hauntingly powerful song, appropriately called “Rescue,” the more I realize that it actually IS a Christmas song. God saw our hidden, hopeless, forgotten, broken selves and sent out an army in the middle of the darkest night. He incarnated Himself and forever voided the distance between us and Him.

And because He came and lived and died and lived again, this girl who cannot carry a tune can fight her battles in song, whisper her SOS underneath her breath, choke out lyrics between sobs until she starts to believe them, and joyfully proclaim that she is a child of God.

Amidst the beautiful songs of the season, she will continue singing her battle songs, knowing that either way she is celebrating the greatest rescue mission ever conducted—all to reach little old me and little old you. 

 

“I will sing a new song to you, O God; upon a ten-stringed harp I will play to you, who gives victory to kings, who rescues David his servant from the cruel sword. Rescue and deliver me from the hand of foreigners, whose mouths speak lies and whose right hand is a right hand of falsehood…Blessed are the people whose God is the Lord!” (Psalm 144:9-11, 14b, ESV)