One week from tomorrow, the 15th, our quartet is singing for our Celebrate Recovery group. I have in the past worked to have a group sing for ours once each year. I’ve always tried to find a group that is already connected to another CR so their message/songs would speak directly to our own folks. I selfishly would overlook our own quartet even though I would periodically be asked why we didn’t ever sing? Well, this time we are and I now have to confess why.

I have said many times in the past that when I started to sing back in high school and then beyond, my hope was that this “never to be clean enough person” would find an avenue for which God would accept him. Singing would be the one thing the sin of me couldn’t touch making it as filthy as I thought I was. Our quartet sang for one of our church’s events a month ago and I was asked again for us to sing for our CR. This time I followed through and put us on our Aug. 15th calendar. But, in so doing the old “feelings/thoughts” returned. The problem is that our own CR folks know the real me story so as they see me singing with the other members, they know who I really am.

It isn’t that I don’t know the lie of what I’ve written, it’s the rawness of evil’s desire to destroy what I now know is true for Christ’s work in me as in everyone who accepts Him. Our quartet practiced last night and I confessed all of this to our group. We are singing to God’s Glory and I will be singing as the redeemed man Christ has made me to be. Yes, I have a past, but now, Christ has given me a new present and a beautiful future!