Lord, Take My Life -- Debbie Dorman and Paul

I am not my own. Said first in a paraphrase by an apostle almost 2000 years ago, and this phrase still echoes today. This writer, a virulent opponent of these very words, had to first have his own life broken down so that God could use him. And these five words apparently rang true for Debbie Dorman in 2001. They were words originally intended for a mixed-up, frankly dysfunctional church in the ancient world, but they still spoke to this 21st Century woman; in fact, it’s the one line in her song that she repeats. “Lord, Take My Life”, Debbie also said, perhaps because she looked at the surrounding world and surmised that maybe us 21st Century folks still need what that old apostle (Paul) admonished his 1st Century world to rethink. Do depravity and apathy, and the human proclivity for wrongdoing, especially in the most sordid ways, even bother us? Does it seem like illicit thoughts and behavior travel as fast as the internet can carry them? If Debbie asked herself similar questions, that wouldn’t be surprising, coming from a songwriter who ministers at a church in Austin (see the Austin flag here) that communicates a different way forward for us who have been stained, even just a little bit, by dissolution. HOPE. That’s what Debbie wants to say to you and me; it’s a word that comes straight from Him, the only real source for it.

Debbie and her husband (Jack) minister at Hope Chapel in Austin, and the compact disc on which ‘Take My Life’ appears is called Songs of Hope. Those are good signposts for what Debbie would have the searcher find, this spring of hope that Debbie’s official site settles on for her message. She zeroes in on what Paul wrote a group of Corinthian believers (1 Corinthians 6:19-20) for her song’s inspiration and theme. This paragraph from Paul, in which these few verses are contained, is pretty blunt. Sexual immorality was menacing and compromising the Corinthians’ relationship with God  -- the same God who was supposed to be inside each of them. How dare you degrade your own body with these debased practices! ‘…you are not your own’…’bought with a price’, Paul says, and which Debbie reiterates for us some 20 centuries later. And, then she adds words that help sum up what Paul most certainly would have also said in the same breath. ‘Make (my body) your home’, ‘reign in me’, ‘live through me’, and ‘take my heart’  – words that indeed Paul was living out, ever since his encounter with Him on the Damascus road and the aftermath of that life-altering episode. The ‘blood of Your Son’ was the price, one that Debbie recognized should compel others toward a Savior, and not just an intellectual exercise, but a step – a commitment – to make Him Lord. ‘Make (my heart) your throne’ no doubt describes what the Dormans have been doing for a long time at Hope Chapel, to the point at which they see others (like Andy Combs…read what he says about Debbie on her site), who they coaxed toward Hope, now living out and helping to point others in the same direction. That’s not unlike what Paul himself would have dreamed could happen when he wrote to a group of baby Christians. I’m still his child, and so are we all, in need of fellow seekers to whom we link arms, to keep each other moving toward the light of hope.

I am not my own…a declaration that really runs counter to my high school Civics class, my undergraduate and graduate degrees, and my everyday interaction with the culture in which I live. ‘I have rights!’, someone says. True enough, but what really is best for me? Tunnel vision and egotism can hound and mislead me, as they do you, too. I have to realize that He knows me better than I know myself. The same can probably be said of the Tempter, too, and does that give me pause? That Ensnarer surely wants me in his trap, and I can so easily find myself there. Can’t you? With two spiritual beings at work who know me so well, am I helpless and hopeless? With one I am, and the other actually gives me what is best. Have you figured out which one is which? 

 

See the songwriter’s official site here, and the biblical reference she makes there for the song: http://www.debdorman.com/songs-of-hope/lord-take-my-life/ , and read about her here:  http://www.debdorman.com/about/

 

Read about the church where the songwriter and her husband minister here: Hope Chapel - Ministries

 

See information about the image of the Austin, TX flag here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_of_Austin,_Texas.svg . The image’s public domain status is as follows: This work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 70 years or fewer; and also, because it was published (or registered with the U.S. Copyright Office) before January 1, 1929.

Had It Not Been – Debbie Dorman

“If the LORD had not been on our side…” (Psalm 124)

Debbie Dorman learned something from some street kids at a youth retreat in 1991. (See her website link below.) She saw in them the Lord’s word come to life, when they related how they had been rescued by Him – from certain death to a spiritual life. Being from tough neighborhoods, many of today’s inner-city kids are probably not strangers to seeing someone, maybe even themselves or some of their friends, in handcuffs. Physical danger for these kids is perhaps not new, much as it hadn’t been for the Psalmist David who fled from enemies and friends, and even family members at times. But Dorman says Psalm 124 was brand new when she thought about what those children had said, and it spawned the song “Had It Not Been”.

From her home in Austin, Texas, Dorman ministers to the Hope Chapel, producing music on an album that promotes the same theme as the church - hope. The songs, like the one based on Psalm 124, are evidently inspired by real-life events within the lives of the church’s members. What events in yours or my life might inspire songs, making hope not just a concept but a reality? King David, if indeed he did author Psalm 124, knew physical danger – from his predecessor Saul, from the Philistines, and from Absalom, his own son. Spiritual danger also leapt at him from his own idleness and the resulting sin with Bathsheba. Alternatively, many scholars believe that Psalm 124 may have come from the hand of a writer experiencing the return from exile, long after King David. Those Israelites would have had reason to sing about ‘escaping from the snare’ too. Come forward two or three millennia, and think about the street kids Dorman met. While physical danger – from gangs and drugs – are obvious in the ‘hood’s blighted culture, its inhabitants also face boredom and poverty, an insidious combination. What ones do you and I face?

I had to think about this one, frankly. My physical life has never been threatened by someone else, and I’ve never even encountered a violent criminal act in my presence, as I recall. So, has God been shielding me with a hedge, ala Job, as Satan once challenged the Lord? I was a farm kid from Ohio, so physical danger for me was working around lots of machinery and large animals as a teenager and coming away with few scars, despite driving a tractor with bad brakes and getting a hand caught in a machine when I was 18. I’ve also been in three car accidents in the last 20 years, two of which either totaled or nearly totaled the car I was in, yet I walked away from these unharmed. From these I surmise that God must have been on my side, although someone else might say I was just lucky. Airplane trips for me have also been relatively uneventful. A routine fact of 20th and 21st Century life, you say? Yes, but I still pray for His protection every time I’m on the jet screaming down the airstrip. I also see His hand in my inner life too. Where would I be without His body, and the many friends I can depend on to keep me pointed heavenward? I could think of my personal physical and spiritual fortunes as just that – fortunes, without a source. It’s really a question of who gets the credit. Who gets it in your life – luck or God?

See Debbie Dorman’s site at : http://www.debdorman.com/songs-of-hope/had-it-not-been-psalm-124/