Christian Review Magazine Issue 4 - April 2015 | Page 34

it’s not still hard at times. It also
doesn’t mean that I can just sit
back, do nothing and wait for
healing to take over. I had to
make steps and put in the effort,
while walking through it with the
Healer...the Maker.”
Those very deliberate steps led
him inside the Word of God like he
had never been before.
“I spent hours every day digging
deeper,” he shares, “learning
more about who God is and who I
can be. I wanted it to be on my
mind all the time.”
He didn’t stop there. His prayer
life began to shift. It became a
conversation instead of just
supplication; a necessity rather
than an accessory.
“There’s a moment in the Bible
when Jesus prayed over someone
who wasn’t fully healed, so He
prayed for him again,” says Chris.
“If Jesus had to pray twice for
someone, I’m going to pray 2,000
times and keep asking and
walking, knowing that He is
healing me.”
Step by step, Chris faithfully
stayed the course, documenting
his journey in the best way he
knows how – in song. 90 of them,
give or take. With each new
encounter he had with his Maker,
a new lyric or melody would often

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penetrate his heart and end up on
a scratch tape. One of the new
songs from the upcoming project
emerged from Chris’s healing
experience,
“So many people think that God
healing people was for 2,000 years
ago when Jesus was here, but
that’s the point of the birth, cross
and resurrection,” he says. “He’s
still here. He didn’t leave. He’s not
still in the grave. He’s still moving
and healing and restoring. The
first step of that for me is
believing it. You can’t receive it if
you don’t believe it. I said, ‘Lord, I
believe that you are still here and
that you are still healing, and I
want you to heal me.’”
That same sense of forthrightness
comes through on the song,
“Drop Your Stone,” which deals
with mistakes people have made
and how easy it is for others to
assume a posture of judgment
over grace. In the song, August
tells the story of a single mother
on welfare, a man dealing with
drug addiction and others often
pushed to the perimeter of
society. Asking the question,
“Why are we so quick to judge?”
he chooses not to dismiss what he
says is still sin but reflects instead
with lyrics like, I see their eyes lost
and lonely looking back ... I
remember when I used to look like