Mercy Me at Riverbend

Last night my wife and I attended the “Faith and Family” night at Riverbend. My wife is just awesome, she would venture anywhere to just hang out with me. What a blessing she is! Anyway, Mercy Me was the headliners of the night and they were incredible. I couldn't’t believe how good these guys sound live. You can tell they really love the Lord and they pour that into their music. One thing I have found now that I listen to a lot of Christian contemporary music is that if a group is sound in their theology their music will reflect that. The lead singer of Mercy Me spoke for about 10 minutes last night as he made a Gospel presentation. He didn’t speak of judgment or wrath, but what I did like is that He didn’t make God out to be something like a cosmic butler or a soft cuddly teddy bear. No, he spoke of God’s holiness and His righteousness. How God created everything, how He is above everything, how He alone is worthy of adoration and praise. He elevated God to His right place – on His throne reigning and ruling!

So much of what I hear from contemporary Christian music paints this picture of God that He is some sort of lost little puppy dog without us, that He has nothing better to do than mope and chase after us. I’m willing to bet that if you listen to a lot of Christian music you will not be able to tell the difference between a song about God and song about someone who is singing about this boyfriend or girlfriend. This is ridiculous to me! Are we talking about and worshipping the same God? I don’t know about you, but my God is bigger than that. My God is one who calls me to serve Him only, to worship Him only. My God is one who parts the sea, who created the universe out of nothing, the One that all of Heaven worships, the One who rose from the dead!

I think Mark Driscoll made a great point when he said “Our picture of Jesus needs to be more than a humble marginalized Galilean peasant, in a dress, with feathered hair, who got beat up while wearing sandals, driving a Cabriolet, rocking out to pop chic teenage music, drinking decaf, talking about his feelings. We need to have a bigger Jesus than that guy.”

In closing, Mercy Me was phenomenal. The quality of the live music was clear as a bell and the Gospel was clearly proclaimed. I don’t know if it gets any better than that…