by Gayle Swenson

Since my elementary school days when I was addicted to Nancy Drew and Sherlock Holmes, to my job first as a copyeditor and then as a writer for the federal government, and the songs I’ve written for almost 50 years, I’ve been a lover of words.

Even now, I never leave home without a book, and if I’m home with time on my hands, my nose is usually in the pages; just ask Kris! I started a monthly book club almost 10 years ago to discuss books with fellow bookworms. I love the smell and feel of hardcover books, and enjoy the many chats I have with my librarian.

But the book I can’t live without is the Bible. The truths in that book—written by men of God who allowed the Holy Spirit to pen God’s infallible words through them—tell us all we need to know about living the God kind of life. And that word instructs us to be cautious about what we allow to enter our hearts via words because our very lives depend on it. Words we hear or read, whether from the pulpit or the world, must be tested against God’s word so we can cling to life-giving truth and discard what isn’t.

Which is why when I recently heard the character in a popular movie claim that man never had dominion over the animals, it caught my attention. Hey, dude, your character may think he’s a man of wisdom, but this is only a movie based on a book by a well-known author, and that information is incorrect! Here’s proof:

“Then God said, “Let Us make mankind in Our image … and let them have complete authority over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the beasts, over all the earth and over everything that creeps upon the earth.” (Genesis 1:26 AMP)

This isn’t an expose’ of the Genesis scripture, I’m just pointing out the importance of recognizing an untruth, and these days, it’s not difficult to find a lot of those untruths spoken by folks we might look up to. Our own words may also be suspect at times! This was just a movie, but I needed to reject that thought. Why?

“We can demolish every deceptive fantasy that opposes God and break through every arrogant attitude that is raised up in defiance of the true knowledge of God. We capture, like prisoners of war, every thought and insist that it bow in obedience to the Anointed One.” (II Corinthians 10:5 TPT)

I wrote a song entitled The Book that admonishes all of us:

You’ve got to go to the book
You’ve got to study the book
You’ve got to believe the book
You’ve got to live the book

If you want to overcome
If you want to be set free
If you want to have eternal hope
You’ve got to go to the book

Interestingly, in the end of the movie, a statement is made expressing the hope that one day every living thing on the planet will live together in peace, and it occurred to me that before sin entered Adam and Eve’s perfect garden, that is exactly what God had in mind. The Bible account indicates that God paraded every living creature past Adam and he gave them their name. (It also opened his eyes to his need for a wife!) If whoever wrote those final thoughts in the movie had read the Bible, maybe it could have had a different ending altogether.

Speaking of experiencing peace—God’s kind in this case—at our next concert, we will perform a song recently written by Jess about a struggle that taught her a valuable lesson about God’s marvelous peace. We hope you can join us:

By Gayle Swenson and Scott Day

Being musicians all our lives, and Christians for the majority of that time, the two of us alone have written more worship tunes than we can count, including the ones that never went beyond our own personal times of worship.

During one of those times recently, Scott was inspired to write a song based on Zephaniah, Chapter 3, verses 16 and 17.

Zephaniah spends several chapters speaking about a judgment coming for Judah and Israel, then he begins painting a picture of what it will be like if they repent and turn to God. Verse 17, reads:

The Lord your God is in the midst of you, a Mighty One, a Savior [who saves]! He will rejoice over you with joy; He will rest [in silent satisfaction] and in His love He will be silent and make no mention [of past sins, or even recall them]; He will exult over you with singing. (AMP)

The Message Bible writes that last phrase as: “He’ll calm you with his love and delight you with his songs,” and the New Living Translation writes: “He will rejoice over you with joyful songs.” The Tree of Life version adds that he dances over us! Can you imagine God singing and dancing – over US? Over YOU?

Here’s what Scott has to say about his new song, “Mighty Warrior”:

“The imagery Zephaniah uses in these verses really blows me away. In the New Revised Standard Version that I use for my daily reading, verse 16 says, “On that day it shall be said to Jerusalem: Do not fear, O Zion; do not let your hands grow weak.” So He starts off by telling us not to be afraid and not to let ourselves get weak. But why?

Because our God, our Mighty Warrior, is in our midst.

This is a pretty strange looking warrior. Nothing about weapons, or blood, or wars or just general gore. This warrior is rejoicing and actually singing over us. I personally believe He’s singing over us because of the victory He knows He has won for us. He’s excited about our victory. I liken this to Luke 10:21 where it says, “At that time Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said, ‘I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure.’” If you pull out your concordance, you’ll find the Greek words translated “full of joy,” or in the King James Version “rejoiced,” actually mean to jump for joy. Jesus was excitedly rejoicing because of what His disciples were learning about Him and His Father.

God is excited about all the things He’s doing in our lives, and He’s probably extra excited because He sees clearly the victory He has won and is winning on our behalf better than we do. We may see our current problems, but He sees our ultimate victory, and He’s rejoicing and singing over us about it! I almost hear Him singing, “I know you think things are really challenging for you right now, but I am so excited to see your reaction when you see the outcome of what I’m doing just around the corner.”

It’s not a day for shrinking
It's not a time for fear
Now is the time for shouting
For the victor's song is here
Now let us lift our voices
Let it be heard far and wide
Because our God is with us
Mighty Warrior splits the sky
    From Mighty Warrior
    Words and music by Scott Day
    Copyright 2021 Mizelli Music

To be one of the first to hear the Scott Day Band perform Mighty Warrior and other new songs, along with some older favorites, join us in Hagerstown, Maryland, at 7:00pm on June 16, 2021, for an Encounter City Park (Encounter City Park | Facebook) event sponsored by Valor Ministries (www.thevalorcenter.org). Or check our Events listing (Concerts – Scott Day Band) for other SDB performances in upcoming months.

Masks

I do not like to wear a mask
I find I cannot breathe
I cannot see when wearing one
Because my glasses steam
I do not like that when I smile
No one else can see
I hope someday to go without
And set my smiler free!

Gayle Swenson, May 20, 2020

Wearing a mask may help protect me from COVID-19, but it has lessened my ability to spread joy in the world because smiling is a way to spread it. Nowadays, for someone to know I’m smiling, they have to see it in my eyes or hear it in my voice under the cloth.

A simple smile can change someone’s day. It takes less effort to smile than to frown, I’m told, and smiling makes even the smiler feel better. It costs me nothing to smile, making it just about the free-est gift I can easily and quickly give to someone as we pass along life’s way. I do not like to cover my smile with a mask.

There’s a popular movie in which a family seated around the table is discussing how they see Jesus, and an adult says he likes to think of his Jesus as someone who is serious, but also likes to party. First of all, Jesus is who He is regardless of your ideas, dude, but in fact, Jesus is the party, because in His presence is fullness of joy!

Jesus embodied joy and spoke about it regularly. He experienced it in purity with the Father before becoming the Son of Man, and it gave Him strength to endure a fallen world for more than 33 years as well as the cross at the end of His mission on Earth. His joy wasn’t based on feelings of happiness, which come and go. Jesus’ joy was based on a trust that the Father who sent Him here knew what He was doing.

I define a smile as joy showing up on our face, and because of that, I think Jesus smiled – a lot. And because we also trust our lives to God, we can reflect joy from our faces to a fearful world through a smile. Face it, the world desperately needs to see those smiles!

One day, our smiles will again be free to spread the joy. And one day, we will see the perfect smile of Jesus.

And before you go…

If fighting the good fight against the coronavirus has robbed you of your smile, hang on, because The Scott Day Band will soon release a few new songs that could help you get it back! Stay tuned…