Your promise still stands,
Great is Your faithfulness, faithfulness.
I’m still in Your hands.
This is my confidence:
You’ve never failed me yet.
Elevation Worship has a song called “Do It Again” that is high on the CCLI and music app charts for the genre. It’s a strong tune with a driving beat and a lot of room to rock out with the worship band, yet the song also has a heartfelt, universally relatable theme, somewhat like a prayer:
God, this bad situation hasn’t changed yet, but I’m trusting You while I’m in the middle of it.
My wife and I both love the song, and I worked it into a testimony at church, relating a particular instance of God’s goodness to my family in the midst of a crisis (which I’ll share in another post).
However, my wife is not at all a fan of one word in the song: yet.
“God hasn’t failed us at all,” she explains, “and He’s not going to. We may not always get the answers we want, but God doesn’t let us down… and that word ‘yet’ makes it sound like maybe He might.”
I agree.
And yet…
To me, there’s this humanity, this frailty revealed in that wording. There’s a weakness that lurks in the lyrics just like it lurks in my heart, where even though I belt out that “This is my confidence: You’ve never failed me,” a little choked up voice adds a “yet” with a quiver or whimper.
Doubt whispers that maybe this is the one time. This is the exception. “Yeah, God came through before, but how sure are you?”
Maybe what I thought God was going to do isn’t what He has planned. Maybe the storm isn’t going to miraculously clear up and the waves aren’t going to suddenly fall into calm. Maybe He’s not going to say, “Peace, be still” this time.
I do have a testimony to share about how God met me and my family at a point of desperation and need. I have plenty of evidence of His goodness expressed through others and through sudden changes in our circumstances.
But I also see some dark clouds of the unknown looming over me, and the horizon is dimmed by billowing storms of delayed answers to prayers. It feels like as soon as one batch of questions and concerns are resolved, they tag new ones into the ring.
I apologize as I’m vaguebooking a bit here (we’re not on Facebook, so, blankblogging? blurposting?) mainly because I don’t even know all the questions or details of some of what’s on my mind.
One of the memory verses I am reviewing this week is Isaiah 41:10. It feels more appropriate than I would like.
“’Do not fear, for I am with you; Do not anxiously look about you, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, surely I will help you, Surely I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.’”
Isaiah 41:10 NASB
I also relate all too well to the man who–in response to the assurance that with God, all things are possible–cried out, “Lord, I believe! Help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24).
Surely He helps us in times like this. Great is His faithfulness, and His promises still stand. He’s never failed me…
Yet.
Interesting to point out that word “yet.” There are other worship songs that I struggle with a lyric or two. For different reasons, though. I don’t like the line in “Reckless Love” that says, “You leave the ninety-nine.” I know the reference, and I get it, but God never leaves anyone!! He doesn’t have to, because He is everywhere.
Another one is the bridge in “King of My Heart.” Over and over, it says, “You’re never gonna let, You’re never gonna let me down.” But then I think of some words that Dallas Willard once said. “If you follow Jesus long enough, He will disappoint you.” Just something to think about, along the lines of what you wrote about up there.
It’s definitely challenging, and I respect when people care enough about the words to say, “Wait a minute, are we really singing that?”
What sometimes sounds cool makes room for a lot of misunderstandings or questionable beliefs.
My heart is greatly disturbed each time the “yet” song is sung. Because some spiritualize the “yet” as referring to my human failure it does not justify the misunderstanding of syntax. If one uses the same sentence order but replaces the “You’ve” with:
My wife has never failed me yet.
My digestion has never failed me yet.
My shoulder joints have never failed me yet.
These examples imply my anticipation of seeing or performing the action in the future.
The lyrics can and have left some people with: “Could there be a time when God would or might fail me?”
Should any words at any time ever initiate any thought of maybe there could be such an event that God would fail???
No. There is not ever, never any instance of God “failing”.
He loves us with the very shed blood of His Son and if we are partakers of His Grace there is never a possibility of His failure towards us.
There is not ever a “yet”.
Well said. I know my wife would be nodding her head and saying, “Yeah, exactly!”
I compare this with the other comment about Dallas Willard’s statement that “sooner or later, Jesus is going to disappoint you.”
Ok, 1) his statement isn’t Scripture and neither are these songs, but 2) maybe the context of the statements or the implied meaning helps.
God is never going to fail – no “yet” in the equation. But sometimes, what I might think is failing, He thinks is a necessary part of the journey or part of what will eventually lead to His glory.
To a grieving person who lost a loved one that God could have healed, it may feel like “God, You let me down! You could have stopped this.” Mary and Martha in Bethany for example… “you could have healed Lazarus when he was sick, but now…”
God may disappoint me when I am expecting Him to do this or that, to work out situations in such-and-such a way. But the problem isn’t God failing to meet my expectations — it’s me failing to understand His ways.
That’s why the three Hebrew boys standing before the fiery furnace are so exemplary. “Our God is able to save us… but even if He doesn’t, we’re not bowing down to you, o king.”
There have been a lot of persecuted Christians throughout history who suffered the “even if He doesn’t” route. He certainly didn’t let them down, but to the world (and to our minds when doubt holds sway), it can easily look that way.
That rambling aside, yeah, it would have just been easier if they didn’t put that word “yet” into the song. 😂