Healer: A 7-Day Devotional With Casting CrownsSampel

At the end of Psalm 23, God shows up with a table. Right there, in the presence of our enemies, God wants us to draw up a chair and sit a spell. He isn’t frightened in the least. He wants to be our peace in the middle of it all.

But sometimes we’d prefer for God to show up with sword. If we decide for God how he’s going to show up, what success or healing is supposed to look like, and he doesn’t come through the way we expected, we’re in danger of believing that he didn’t show up at all.

This scenario is the reason many people reject God and run away from their profession of faith. I didn’t plan for much of the album Healer to dwell on the theme of healing. I’m not very calculated. I tend to look back and see themes, and what I saw after I wrote the lyrics is that we need to open our eyes to see where our help is coming from.

One of our most popular songs “Praise You in the Storm” contains a line that may be the most misunderstood lyric in any of our records. In the bridge I sing, “Where does my help come from?” Because I’m from the deep south, people have actually heard, “Where does my hip come from?”

The answer in either case is God, of course.

But the lyric is misunderstood not because of my accent, but because a lot of people don’t believe it fits. I’m quoting from Psalm 121:1-2. The psalmist asks where his help comes from, and then he answers his own question: “My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.”

People have told me they were confused because the song is about those times when God’s help didn’t seem to come.

“And that is why it’s in the song,” I tell them. “Because God is the helper, and the helper is always helping.”

We may not always see his hand at work. We may not like his answer. We certainly do not always understand his ways. But God is always at work. He’s a wonderful counselor, and a counselor always counsels. He’s always counseling, always moving, always reaching.

That Scripture in the middle of Praise You in the Storm is repentance for feeling like God didn’t show up. It’s a reversal of my spirit and attitude to say, “God, open the eyes of my heart to see what you’re doing, because I believe, I trust, I know you are doing something.”