Tuesday 11 October 2005

Christian Music Lyrics

* Christian Lyrics Online lists authors, songs, and lets you search for words and phrases in songs.

This is the site that the song list at The Gospel Unplugged uses.

The Gospel Unplugged is a book that is partially on-line. If you worship the Lord with music, you may find this fascinating.

From the book...

"Of the thousands of Contemporary Christian Music songs written over the years, there are a few ground-breaking songs that stand apart from the rest, offering something more beyond the ordinary. I believe each of the 25 songs covered in the The Gospel Unplugged fall into that category. These "great songs" should never be consumed like fast-food burgers — eaten on the run as you move on to the next thing. Instead, great songs are meant to be experienced, mined for all their worth, listened to again and again, and discussed to the wee hours with others.

WHAT MAKES A SONG GREAT?

A great song can teach you truth, express who you are, or reveal part of God’s nature to you:

* Great Christian music teaches you. You can discover God’s truth through the imagery, word pictures, and emotion contained in a song in ways you may not always be able to through a book or a sermon. Jars of Clay’s “Worlds Apart,” for example, gets to the heart of what true discipleship is in a way so piercing that you would have a hard time matching it even if you read a 500-page theological tome. And by living out the truth packed inside Sixpence None the Richer’s “We Have Forgotten,” you can transform an otherwise meaningless existence into a life of eternal significance.

* Great Christian music helps you express yourself to God in new ways. Once in a while a song comes along that rocks your world; it taps into something that is already inside of you, just bursting to come out. Not only do you identify with the song but the song acts as something more powerful. It actually helps give you an identity, the perfect way to express to Jesus what's going on inside your heart.

* Great Christian music gives you a taste of the infinite. A song can also reach deep into your soul and awaken you to who God is. I think the rarest of songs can even give us a foretaste of God’s glory. For example, whenever I hear “Agnus Dei,” performed originally by Michael W. Smith and now also by Third Day, my heart is immediately transported to another place. The beauty of this worship song offers me a sort of musical window into heaven, a glimpse of the glory that is to come.

Read The Gospel Unplugged and allow music’s creative power to make you feel alive and free you to experience the presence of Jesus Christ in ways that are rare in this practical, commonsense world."

(Based on the Introduction from The Gospel Unplugged)