Before being called into the pastoral ministry, I spent 17 years in the radio broadcasting business. My career began quite by accident. My pastor called me one day to tell me the station in which he had been doing a 15 minute Saturday broadcast had been sold. "They are hiring all new staff. I'll bet that if you apply, they will hire you." I was attending ASU at the time, majoring in Broadcasting. I had made an audition tape so I hauled it down to the radio station and they hired me on the spot!
I thought to myself, "Man! Radio is going to be so easy!" My dream was to be an announcer at a Rock or Pop station. I thought that this job would lead to where I wanted to be in the radio broadcast industry. God had a different idea.
I started working at the station on the weekends. The practical education was very good. I engineered live programs, produced recorded programs, cut commercials and promotional announcements, read the news and played records.
And it was through those records that I came to know Andrae Crouch.
Crouch was one of Gospel music's superstars. He wrote and performed music with his group, The Disciples. It was soul Gospel music with rhythm and blues influences thrown in for good measure. Having had no exposure to this form of music, I came to admire the way Crouch connected with his listeners. The music was great to listen to. But the lyrics had substance and pointed to Jesus as "the way and the truth and the life."
I'm reading a biography of Billy Graham, written by his son, Franklin. At many of his crusades, Graham had John 14:6 - "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me," on a large banner behind the platform. Franklin writes, "Billy Graham never wavered from this singular message..." Then Franklin quotes lyrics from a famous Andrea Crouch song:
I thank God for the mountains
And I thank Him for the valleys;
I thank Him for the storms He brought me through;
For if I'd never had a problem,
I wouldn't know that He could solve them,
I'd never know what faith in God could do.
Through it all, through it all,
Oh, I've learned to trust in Jesus,
I've learned to trust in God.
Through it all, through it all,
Oh, I've learned to depend upon His Word.
Whose word do you depend on? Your spouse? Your friend? Your boss? Your life coach?
The apostle Paul, in his final epistle, reminds Timothy that God is behind every word of Scripture and that the Scriptures can provide the foundation for everyone who reads, hears and obeys His Word:
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteous, so that the man of God may be equipped for every good work.
Advice from spouse, friend, boss or life coach can be very helpful at times. But God's Word is completely reliable, full of truth, and is "the power of God for the salvation of the world." (Romans 1:16). May each of us learn to depend on God's Word... just like Andrae Crouch.
