Well, Hello Hurricane

A couple of days ago (the day of my rant post actually), I was driving home from work and listening to Switchfoot's Hello Hurricane album again, naturally. "Hello Hurricane" came on and I started singing it out loud. As I was singing it, I started just getting super joyful and praising God. It hit me how applicable the words were with what I was going through and where a lot of my friends were/are. It was a cool little culmination for me of what God had been teaching me for a few days. He's cool like that. Listen to the song and read the lyrics before I go on:

I've been watching the skies

They've been turning blood red

Not a doubt in my mind anymore

There's a storm up ahead

Hello hurricane, you're not enough

Hello hurricane, you can't silence my love

I've got doors and windows boarded up

All your dead end fury is not enough

You can't silence my love, my love

Every thing I have I count as loss

Everything I have is stripped away

Before I started building I counted up these costs

There's nothing left for you to take away

Hello hurricane, you're not enough

Hello hurricane, you can't silence my love

I've got doors and windows boarded up

All your dead end fury is not enough

You can't silence my love, yeah my love

I'm a fighter fighting for control

I'm a fighter fighting for my soul

Everything inside of me surrenders

You can't silence my love

You can't silence my love, yeah

Hello hurricane, you're not enough

Hello hurricane, you can't silence my love

I've got doors and windows boarded up

All your dead end fury is not enough

You can't silence my love

So yeah, it's a pretty sweet song. He starts out by acknowledging a storm coming. As followers of Jesus Christ, we should all expect storms to come. Paul says in 1 Timothy 3:12:

In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evil men and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.

That's pretty clear. Jon Foreman admits the storm is coming; he can see all the signs of it. However, like "Free", he doesn't dwell on the problem or the storm. He turns the glory to Jesus Christ. Hello Hurricane, you're not enough--Hello Hurricane, you can't silence my love. He's saying nothing that is thrown at him can separate him from the love of God. That's a cool thought. Imagine seeing a hurricane plow towards your house, and you sit there saying "hello hurricane, you're not enough. There's nothing that you can do that can ruin me. Try and tear down my house. I still have Jesus. Take the life of my family. Still have Jesus. Take MY life. Still have Jesus." I know that would be really difficult to say, but the fact is we STILL have Jesus. He's never going to leave us.

Also, I like how he says "hello hurricane." It's like he's just chatting with a neighbor. "Well hello there hurricane, nice to see you coming. Oh, I'm not scared of you." It's almost as if he's trivializing the danger, but in fact he's just relying on Christ. Sorry I'm kind of mixing metaphors and stuff. Whatever.

In another sidenote, for those of us in California where hurricanes aren't quite as frequent, the metaphor may be better suited to be "hello fire" or "hello mudslide." I know those don't quite mesh with the rhythm of the song, but think about it in light of the metaphor.

I think the next stanza in the song its the coolest to me. Everything I have I count as loss--Everything I have is stripped away-- Before I started building I counted up these costs--There's nothing left for you to take away. Nothing here matters except Christ, and nothing can take that away. It's like he's telling the hurricane to bring it on because it means he'll have to rely on God more. I was talking to a friend recently about how suffering sucks, but it brings us closer to Christ, which makes us wonder if we should want suffering. Trust me, I never thought I would be thinking about wanting suffering, but I was/am. I mean it does bring us closer to the Father. It's a weird thing to think about. What do you think?

Another cool part of that stanza is counting the cost. When we accept Christ, we must count the cost of following Him. That relationship isn't a one time, easy trip thing. It's a lifelong commitment where we give everything up for Him. You better count the cost. If we count the cost of buying some random thing at the mall, why don't we count the cost of a life transformation in Christ. Not counting the cost is just plain stupid.

Finally, he says I'm a fighter fighting for control--I'm a fighter fighting for my soul. This isn't an easy battle. It's not like our sin nature is just going to up and quit when we give our lives to Christ. We must fight for control and fight for our souls. Thank the Lord we have Him on our side so we can't lose, but we still have to fight. It may feel like you may lose battles, and you may lose battles with sin. But that doesn't mean the war is lost. Everything inside of my surrenders. The great thing is that we are fighting our own sin nature, so we can, in essence, force our sin natures to surrender. Force it to give up. Let it get beat down and killed by the awesome power of the Lord. It needs to die so that we can be fully reborn in Christ.

I know I'm a nerd, but I love Harry Potter books, and so I'm going to make an analogy. Our life is like that of a phoenix. Think of Fawkes. We must blow up and die in a fire, turn in to ash, and let our new souls rise out of the ashes. It's also cool how Fawkes does work and saves Harry and others many times throughout the books (Jesus reference anyone? Dies for us? Boom. Harry Potter isn't satanic!)

Yeah, I really like this song now too. It's amazing how once God reveals Himself in something I experience, I like it a lot more. It's probably because He is that AWESOME. So when the storms come, just say "hello _(problem here)____, you're not enough. You can't silence my love." I can't remember for the life of me where I heard this (I think Gen actually. Fantastic man of God) but someone once said "Live like Jesus is the only thing that matters." That is so true, especially because He is the only thing that matters.

I'm leaving for Texas in about 20 minutes (Woo 22 hour car ride!...) so I may or may not be writing many posts for the next week or so. It'll be a good time for me to focus on my relationship with Him and not so much how I can share it with people (no offense). Maybe I'll do a post on Texas. Perchance. I encourage you to spend time with God so that you can honestly say to the storms "you can't silence my love."