Ever have a song that has stuck with you through years of your life? It seems like every time you are walking through a hard time in life God just brings it back into your heart and presses repeat?

Gosh, there is this one song that God just brings back into my life over and over and over again.

In my senior year of high school, I went and heard the University Choir and Orchestra of California Baptist University perform. It was at a church and the experience was unreal. Unlike any choir performance I had ever been apart of. Each note carefully selected and played with such delicacy. The risers swayed back and forth as the choir members swayed to the song and sang with such passion and care – almost like waves at the ocean. The director was passionate and interactive. During the performance, the choir members gathered around the audience and sang an acapella song, and my musical heart just about beat out of its’ chest. I knew I had to be apart of this choir…

They sang a song – I think it was the last song or the encore – that I could sing along to for the rest of my life, never get tired of it. It started out with a beautiful soprano soloist…”My faithful father, enduring friend, your tender mercy’s like a river with no end…” she sang, like an angel.

The tenor came in…”it overwhelms me, covers my sin, each time I come into your presence, I stand in wonder once again.”

Perfectly harmonizing, they sang together, “Your grace still amazes me. Your love is a mystery. Each day, I fall on my knees. Because your grace amazes me. Your grace still amazes me…”

And that chorus, to this day, rings in my ear, in the good times and in the hard times: “Your grace STILL amazes me.” And tears flood my eyes and spill over onto my cheek.

After that choir performance I went to as many performances as I could. One performance, I went up to meet the conductor and tried out to be in that same choir the following year. By his grace, I got to sing and sway with those fellow musicians singing that same song (watch the video here…I’m behind the orchestra so you can’t see me but I’m one of those many voices in the choir).

As that song echos in my heart, I think, “How can God who has been rejected over and over again still offer me grace? How could God who I have spit on with my actions countless times offer me grace?” It still amazes me.

James 1:22-25 says, “But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.”

I read the second verse and I think, how silly! How could someone forget what they look like?! Well, thats the point. God, who gives us the perfect law of liberty, lavishes grace on us. It is now apart of our identity if we have accepted Jesus into our lives to be our Lord and Savior. Yet, so often we live our lives as if that is not who we are, under a different facade, wearing a mask almost. It is like looking into the mirror and forgetting what you look like. Foolishness.

Yet, he is great in mercy and rich in grace!

Later, the choir and orchestra come in full voice and full volume…they sing, “It’s deeper, it’s wider, it’s stronger, it’s higher than anything my eyes can see! Your grace still amazes me! Your love, still a mystery. Each day I fall on my knees. Because your grace still amazes me, yes, your grace still amazes me.”

The choir and orchestra coming together so powerfully parallels my own life; in community, living life with others, I realize all to often how God’s grace amazes me. I realize how we are all given so much grace and so much love. It is truly overwhelming to be reminded that Jesus died not just for me, but for the world. I cannot praise him more. And when I remember my identity and become a doer of the word and not just a hearer, I am blessed.

As I sit here on the floor, folding the laundry that has been sitting here since Monday, and getting ready to do the dishes that have been in the sink for who knows how long, thinking back on my day yesterday that didn’t turn out how I would have liked it to (or lots of expectations I had for life that didn’t turn out, for that matter), I can think back to this song playing on repeat in my heart and stand in wonder once again…HIS GRACE STILL AMAZES ME!

When people have failed me or when I have failed, he is still constant; he is still here. God has protected me, provided for me, lavished me with gifts and goodness and faithfulness and grace. He has given me today, a new day, to bask in his grace and choose to remember what my identity is. My identity is not yesterday and my past and my mistakes; it is today and His grace. Praise God.

Bask in his grace today!

“My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” – Psalm 73:26