Testimony about Songwriting

Ever since I came back to Hong Kong in Oct 2010, God has been doing new things in my life. Today I shall share with you one of the new things I have been doing: songwriting.

My college years was the period of time when I thought I had finally explored my potentials and learned about myself, what I like to do (e.g. cooking, baking, ultimate frisbee, counseling and psychology...) and what I do not like to do (e.g. dishes, writing papers, being late for things, turning off all appliances when I leave a room). I thought that was it, I now know what are the things I would like to do or avoid in the future, but God had given me so many surprises with new abilities and dreams after I came back to Hong Kong.

When I was in college, I was labelled as a fob (they couldn't tell the difference between fobs and international students). To my understanding, fobs are bad at english. So I assumed that I am bad at english and shouldn't touch anything writing-related. It turns out that having an accent and making grammatical mistakes when you speak here and there doesn't mean you can't be a good writer.

Don't get me wrong, I am not saying I am now a good writer, but God uses the weak to shame the strong and he has definitely been using my weaknesses to bless me and others around me. Sometimes he just downloads lyrics to me, other times he would give me an idea and I would have to toy with it for days, weeks or even months to make the lyrics "how they are supposed to be".

Around 2-3 months ago, my senior pastor mentioned in a sermon how there are very limited songs out there about the unity of the church, and that someone should write a song about that so we don't have to sing One Voice all the time. And so I did. It took me weeks after weeks of revising, both the lyrics and the melody, but when it was finally done, I realized that the lyrics were so good that I couldn't have written it myself. But I did. What a paradox.

Even though I knew that God was using me to write a powerful song, I was still somehow caught up in my own insecurities and I didn't want to show the song to people, fearing that they might criticize my song, or think that I am not gifted in this area so why am I doing this, or that people might think that I am a boastful not-talented fool. It took awhile until God kicked my butt and forced me to finally show the song to my worship pastor, and even though he gave me both encouragement and positive criticisms, I chose to only listen to the "criticisms" part. I felt like the job that God had assigned to me was done, so after that I didn't even touch the keyboard for a whole week. My worship pastor said he would try to present that song to the congregation at a right time, maybe during the upcoming retreat, so I thought to myself "ok I am done. My hands are off this song."

I don't know how I fell into listening Satan's lies, but he kept attacking me and making me doubt whether that song was good enough, whether I should be spending time writing songs, and it took a lot of strength and discipline to not fall into my fearful thinking during the days preceding the retreat.

At the retreat, I was even more distressed about my songwriting abilities as I figured that they probably wouldn't sing my song at the retreat. However, on the second night of the retreat, God gave a word of knowledge to a brother who was praying for me, and that really blew my mind and convinced me that God had given me that song, straight from Himself. After praying through it, I realized that God was asking me, "Why are you ashamed of your songs if you know that they are from me? If you trust that I, not the devil, am the source of that song, and that song was written for the church, you should present it to the church."

"But... what, now at this retreat? That's so last minute! I have to ask the pastors for permission, and I don't even know if they would have the time for me to do this. Maybe they'd think that I'm a trouble maker? And I don't even have a band that could play for me... I've only done this song with just piano....AND I DIDN'T EVEN BRING MY LYRICS AND CHORD SHEETS! This makes absolutely NO sense! "

But the sermon that night was on Launching out into the Deep, from Luke 5. Jesus told Simon Peter to "Launch out into the deep and let down the nets for a catch."

Jesus, a carpenter, was trying to tell Simon and his friends, a bunch of seasoned fishermen what to do when it comes to catching fish. It was early in the morning, not the right time for fish-catching, Simon had toiled all night and didn't catch a thing, the were already washing their nets... nothing made sense. But Simon said " We have worked all night and haven't caught anything. Nevertheless, at your words, I will let down the nets"

"Nevertheless, at your words..." I will do what you want me to do. It was a step of faith, and I didn't even understand the fullness of what I was trying to do, but that night, I somehow decided that I would present my song during this retreat. And as God's children started doing God's work, so did Satan's minions start working against it.

I caught my worship pastor the next day to ask about the possibility of presenting the song, and he said "Yes you can probably do that during offering time on Sunday. Let me talk to [our senior pastor] and I'll get back to you." By that time it was already right before the evening service on Saturday. Aka T-18hrs. I know if I am going to do this, I can't wait for the confirmation but I have to start preparing right away, whether I can end up having that time or not. I asked four of my friends to play the song with me in the band, but only two of them owned the recording and the bassist has never actually heard the song. Despite all the good stuff that was going on during the evening service, I was worrying about it at the back of my mind the whole night. I was STRESSED OUT. I felt my spirit crying out "I'm under attack and I need prayer support"

So purely out of God's grace, I got an opportunity to pray with those in my House Church that night after the service. After we prayed for a couple of people, I shared what was going on and I asked them to pray for me. I didn't expect much at first, but I was blown away by the love and support from every single member in the group. During the long prayer, which I try really hard not to forget the details, my brothers and sisters prayed for joy, strength and courage, gave me confirmation on the calling in songwriting that I was hearing from God and encouraged me to take heart as I go through this trial that would make my heart pure as gold.

The next day the devil's work continued. Because of various reasons we couldn't get together and practice until maybe 10 minutes before the service was supposed to start, and as soon as we started, one of the monitors started giving a loud and obnoxious buzz that we tried to ignore throughout the practice. I also felt like I couldn't sing out loud because I was so self-conscious and I didn't eat breakfast. We ran through the song twice and that was it. We had to start the service.

Long story short, we did the song during offering time. It seems like people liked it because they started clapping along half-way through and afterwards. I was just "in the zone" with the HS and I didn't really care what was going on, but I did hear myself singing quite loud and the band playing wonderfully. As they were playing the outro, I stepped away from the mic stand and people started cheering and clapping. I was blown away because 1. I didn't expect people to be cheering 2. I know it was totally God's doing and it had nothing to do with me AND 3. I felt overwhelmed by the presence of the Holy Spirit.

Even though I had gone through such a hard time before this moment of victory, I can definitely count so many blessings God gave me that still seem unbelievable to me: starting from the words of knowledge from a brother when he was praying for me on the first night of the retreat that motivated me to step out in faith, to my sister who kept praying for me and allowed me to share every little detail of my struggles with her, to my brother who was willing to stay up late listening to my song and figuring out the chords even though he was tired and hungry, to the prayers and encouragement from the House Church, to the brother who kept trying to convince me it'll be okay even if we don't get to practice, to the brother who hugged me and prayed for me when I was shaking with fear, to the amazing band + sound peepz who played the song awesomely even though all they had was the hand-written lyrics sheet that only had 8 chords on them. Yeah, now I'm convinced that God made this possible - I only had to take a small step of faith, and he took care of everything else for me.

This turned out to be a much longer blog post than I had expected. I was supposed to sleep two hours ago. Anyway, here are the lyrics to this song I have been babbling about. I will spare you from the live recording though. Even though the band played awesomely and I go back to the recording from time to time for kicks, I still cringe when I hear myself. I was quite pitchy. I don't understand how I can be so pitchy. I must really have been "in the zone" and not listening.

Title: Make You Known

Verse 1:
You are the Cornerstone
With our lives you’ve built your throne
Now as we gather
Let your presence be known

Verse 2:
You freely give us grace
On the cross you took our place
You bore our shame
It’s in Your name we are saved

Pre-chorus:
Seal Your words into our minds
Bind Your love here in our hearts

Chorus:
We will witness Your grace
As we walk in Your way
Make You known To the world each day
See You in quiet whispers
Feel Your transforming power
Lift Your name up high
Among the nations


Bridge:
Through our lives Your will be done
Through our prayers Your battles be won
We stand as we proclaim, “Your Kingdom come”
Let Your Kingdom come

Come use our hands and feet
Bring hope to the weary and weak
You gave authority
So the greater things
Now we will see

Tag:
We are called to one hope
We are one by Your love
We are one Only by Your grace