“Can I get a hallelujah?
Can I get an amen?
Feels like the Holy Ghost runnin’ through ya
When I play the highway FM.”
So begins the chorus of country singer Maren Morris’ new song “My Church.”
It’s a confession really – the confession of a young woman whose very deliberate, unapologetically wayward life cuts her off (she feels) from regular “Church.” And so, she gets in her car, rolls the windows down, cranks up the radio and, with the wind blowing in her hair, finds “holy redemption” in a Church (her car) where “Hank brings the sermon and Cash leads the choir.”
Please don’t think me critical of Ms. Morris. She just sings the song (really well I might add) and I presume it is not autobiographical. But far too many have bought the sentiment. Unwilling to yield our lives to the guidance and discipline of the Holy Spirit, we settle for something we think “feels like the Holy Spirit” and convince ourselves we’ve found redemption on our own terms.
We haven’t. The feeling is deceiving.
Redemption comes but one way – through the sacrifice of Christ experienced not alone on a highway racing to elude a heavy heart with the wind in our hair, but in the fellowship of other redeemed people known as the “body of Christ.” Not even Saul of Tarsus experienced salvation until in the company of another redeemed sinner. The songs and pop spirituality of modern culture may comfort us slightly with notions of finding God on our own terms, but it’s a deception. God is found truly and only on His terms. All else is a lie. A toe-tappin’ lie perhaps, but a lie none-the-less.
Mike