I’ve been exploring some of the very modern worship songs as an old guy 😀. But now, I’ve decided to alternate between very modern hymns, old hymns, and in-between hymns, namely the worship songs from the 60s to the 90s that feature in hymnbooks such as Mission Praise. Today it’s the turn of the very modern hymns.
Today’s song is Your Love Awakens Me from 2016.
I never heard this one in church, but I’m very impressed with it. Way back in 1980, when I was nearing the end of my spiritual search and unlike U2, was about to find what I was looking for 😀, I wondered if there would every be a Christian rock band that created music that would be of a similar quality to secular music.
The roots of much modern music lie in African American church music of the Southern states of the USA. But as time went on people wondered why the quality of secular music went so far beyond that of Christian music.
Why should the devil have all the good music? Cliff Richard recorded that song. But back in 1979, I think the devil did have all the best pop and rock music.
Nowadays, when I attempt to listen to music from the secular charts and modern Christian music, I don’t see secular music as much better. I’m not big into the modern worship songs from a musical point of view. I’m more interested in the lyrics. But they are more impressive musically than many of the older attempts to make Christian rock music. I liked Bob Dylan’s Christian albums but any time that I attempted to listen to other “Christian” pop or rock music, I was never impressed.
I remember hearing this one – Crazy Mixed Up Generation…Jesus is the great sensation 😀. It goes back to the 1960s.
Maybe I was prejudiced. I just wasn’t used to mixing religion with rock music, though George Harrison did it well. But that was Hinduism. And I used to often laugh at Irish groups trying to do rock music. You just generally didn’t expect them to be any good. I remember seeing U2 doing a medley of their old songs during a concert in the Cork City Hall in 1982 and I thought that Bono seemed a bit pompous acting as if he had a string of hits. Of course at that stage, they had very few hits. But little did I know how successful they’d become in later years. And many of the “cool” English punk groups that I admired are totally forgotten now.
Anyway, today’s hymn is very much like a modern version of Amazing Grace, in that it’s a hymn of personal joy and testimony. Some see it as a resurrection hymn, but the focus is on our spiritual life. We become spiritually alive when we come to Christ, and we’ll be raised physically in the future and be part of the New Heaven and New Earth.
Feel the darkness shaking
All the dead are coming back to life, oh, back to life
Hear the song awaken
All creation singing, "We're alive, 'cause You're alive"
Ephesians 2:2-5
4 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.
Here are some other versions:
Hibernia Gospel 