As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve been asked to do a “Story Behind the Song” post for a website called Singers Club. In addition to “He Is Greater”, which I posted about yesterday, the are also featuring “It’s By Faith” from “Response” in the months to come. Here is another sneak peak.
Blessings,
Erik
I still remember hearing the news that my friend and youth leader John had been diagnosed with cancer. I had just returned home from a difficult semester in college. I was exhausted, not only physically but also spiritually. My integrity had not held up as well as I had hoped it would and my heart was full of doubt and questions. Oddly, news of John’s cancer stirred a deep sense of peace in me. I had been here before, twice, with my own mother’s cancer. I knew God in this dimension and I knew I could trust Him. In fact, trusting Him with the big stuff was just a part of life in my family growing up… our story has been pretty dramatic at times.
Why was I such a contradiction? Why is it/had it been so easy to trust God in the big things, in the mountaintop’s and the Red Sea’s, and not with the day-to-day and mundane? Why is it I could stand firm in the face of cancer and cower at the thought of writing a paper or sometimes even getting out of bed? All of these thoughts came raining down on me one afternoon at the piano.
“It’s By Faith”… that was my problem. Faith. Difficult circumstances required faith in order to get through them because I knew I could never make it on my own, but the daily grind was so simple I thought I could handle it alone. The Lord was using this opportunity to teach me that the faith I needed to climb the mountain was the same faith I needed to pour my coffee, that faith is not a switch you turn on and off but that “the just LIVE by faith” (Romans 1:17, Gal 3:11, Heb 10:38).
Is there any area of your life where you have been going it alone? Where maybe intentionally or unintentionally you have postured yourself to not need God?
“Through storms and trials of my own devise He’s never given up. And the farther I go the more I no I can’t escape His love. It’s by faith.”


Sometimes we can overcomplicate things, this happens to me all the time. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been working on a project that I have constructed a huge elaborate plan for and my wife will walk in and turn on the proverbial light switch with a comment like “why don’t you just do this…”, suddenly my whole afternoon is free. Has that ever happened to you? You go to all this trouble and then realize it was a simple solution? 







