If you read this blog with any regularity you may be asking yourself, didn’t Kyle write a post about how theologically unsound some of the lyrics from this song are? The answer is, why yes I did write a post about that, I also wrote a post about how much I dug the song as a whole and in order to fix the lyric problem I changed them. Simple yet effective solution.

Your love is our reward, that’s why we ask for more of You

became

You set our hearts desires, that all our lives bring glory to You

Now onto the loop. This loop uses a bass sequence on the verses second the second chorus. It allows room for a live bass player to play underneath without muddying up the mix, but you can decide how you’d approach that or you can catch my bass player on twitter and ask him his thoughts. The arrangement follows the Jesus Culture arrangement as far as order of song sections.

You can stream the loop below but you are not able to download the loop. In order to download the loop files you need to send payment through PayPal. The price for this loop is $4.99. Once payment is received I’ll contact you and give you download instructions. The following is what’s delivered upon receipt of payment:

• Loop (high quality stereo mp3 and aif)
• Vocal Cue track (aif)
• Master Reason 4 file (rns)
• Arrangement Details (rtf, shows exactly what parts come in at what time)

As always though please comment and rate the loop to let me know what you think. I had a lot of fun making this loop and I’m pleased that the original customer is very happy with it.

Song: Burning Ones by Jesus Culture, Album “Consumed”
Key: G
Bpm: 152 (4/4)

Note: the free podcast file is lower quality mp3 (128kbps)

 Burning Ones by Jesus Culture (loop) [7:03m]: Download

Earlier I posted a video of a new song from Jesus Culture called “Burning Ones.” I really dug the vibe of the song and thought the melody was really cool. This past week I started evaluating it to see if we’d do it in service and step 1 of evaluation was writing down the lyrics. Verse 1 was kind of innocuous.

Here inside your presence I’m taken by the wonder of You
Here inside your glory we give our lives wholly to You

Moved on to the pre-chorus which was a simple “Holy, Holy are You” which was good and all. But then I hit Verse 2…

Your love it burns inside our hearts are satisfied by You
Your love is our reward it’s why we ask for more of You

What?!?! God’s love is our reward? Let’s look at the definition of reward to make sure we are on the same page here:

reward: “a recompense for worthy acts or retribution for wrongdoing” or “fair return for good or bad behavior”

It seems entirely ridiculous to me we’d have to dive into this much for us not to see the foolishness in this line. This isn’t extra-biblical this is entirely contra-biblical. It violates the core of the gospel. I don’t like to rant, but folks this line is simply not truth, and I’m shocked and saddened that it would be sung. Here’s what the gospel says about our reward for our actions:

Romans 6:23 “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

So our just reward for our actions and fair return for our behavior is death, not God’s love. But the glory of the gospel is the cross, “where sin increased, grace abounded all the more”. We received grace instead of what we deserved, death. Here’s how God’s love really works:

Romans 5:6-10 “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.7 For one will scarcely die for a righteous person–though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die–8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.9 Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.”

We did not and cannot earn God’s love, repeat, we did not and cannot earn God’s love. 1 John 4:19 “We love because he first loved us.” We can keep plowing through scripture, there is no shortage because it’s the entire narrative of the gospel.

I don’t know Chris Quilala, I don’t know Kim Walker, but I believe they are Christians brothers and sisters who love Jesus and I don’t mean to bash them. In fact I bet you if I asked them, “do you think you earned God’s love or did he love you first, while you were a sinner?” That they’d answer, “no, I didn’t earn it.” Which is why I’m so puzzled that they’d sing just the opposite.

I’ve tried to think of any context that line works in and I can’t, I just can’t. Working in the second half of the line only confuses me more, “that’s why we ask for more of You.” I haven’t a clue what this line means. If anyone has an explanation by all means step in here in the comments and let me in on it, I truly feel like I’m missing something.