Click here to download for free I Have A Shelter, a great song from the the lovely people at Sovereign Grace Music. It’s taken from their new album Come Weary Saints, which I can totally recommend. I particularly love the album because…

Uploaded some very basic demos of three songs I recorded with the help of my friends Vicky and Gary last week. You can listen and grab the lyrics to them here – I repeat: very basic stuff, but it was great fun to do. Here’s the words to one of them, From Times Eternal. It’s pretty much the back end of Romans 8, a chapter I’ve grown to take great delight in since we did it at Focus a few months back. I’ve noticed that too often the rock solid assurance God has given us, rooted in God’s faithful character, displayed in his gracious act of predestining his own, and centred on the cross of Christ, is missing from the pulpits, songbooks, and generally, the churches of our land.

It’s no reason for pride, that’s clear. It’s total grace. And yet without it, without being bathed in the plan of God, without taking time to grasp God’s acted-upon will for us (as Romans 8 tells us) we rob ourselves and others of the comfort, security, refuge that the Psalmist loved to sing of. Anyway, here’s the song:

From times eternal you have chosen me
Fixed by your counsel secured by your will
I see your purpose in saving me
I marvel at such undeserved mercy

No condemnation in Christ,
No separation from the love of God,
I can claim assurance tonight,
It is your work; it is your will

Your word tells me of my destiny
Planned long before my first breath
And it’s destined through all history
The king of love; that he should die for me

Neither death nor life, neither depth nor height,
Can separate me from the Love of God in Christ

To know your working through everything,
That is my good, that is your will.
To make me more like Christ
To bring him glory, to be his family

Bob Kauflin, a staff member of Sovereign Grace ministries, helpfully writes here in response to the question often raised about the fact that many of the songs we sing in our churches are bold declaratory statements of commitment to God. Given the reality of our battle to be faithful, and the struggles with the flesh, is it wrong to sing ‘I will worship you alone’? Have we misunderstood the extent of our sinfulness? I have a tendency to be weary of those big statements knowing that tomorrow I’ll be about to make an idol of something else – is this the right attitude? Or am I giving too little time to God’s grace at work in my life teaching me to worship him alone?