“Don’t Wait”
16For His Spirit joins with our spirit to affirm that we are God’s children. 17And since we are His children, we are His heirs. In fact, together with Christ we are heirs of God’s glory. But if we are to share His glory, we must also share His suffering. (Romans 8:16-17)
Blessed Monday all you Children of God. As all of you that follow this blog know, I am a huge fan of Christian Music. I always try to embed my favorite new songs at the end of each post. And every so often, one of my favorite artists drops a full album that really blows me away. Well, last Friday, Forrest Frank released his sequel to the brilliant album “Child of God”(C.O.G.). Simply called, “Child of God II”, Forrest’s new collection of 18 catchy, up-beat, faith-based songs is so good, I have left it on repeat all weekend. When I say I left it on repeat, I mean that after previewing all the new singles from Spotify’s New Music Christian playlist, I threw Forrest’s new album in the queue and just let the album loop for the next 20+ hours I was working over the weekend. Before you spend any more time reading this tribute to the album, click here to throw these bouncy beats on in the background.
Forrest opens his new album just as he did for the first C.O.G., with a recording of words of faith and wisdom from Frank’s grandfather, Dr. Neil Frank. In the first C.O.G., Forrest opened with a recording of Dr. Frank speaking at a Billy Graham event. Watching this short clip from a Billy Graham evangelist event from 1985, I thought for sure Dr. Frank was some sort of famous theologian. Turns out, he was a famous meteorologist, who was unashamed to share his testimony with the world. If you have not been privy to hearing this moving word from the C.O.G. intro, make sure you click Dr. Frank’s image below and find out “what living is all about”.
Well, in C.O.G.II, Forrest opens with a very special conversation between his 93-year-old grandfather and himself. In that conversation, Dr. Frank jokes with Forrest about the new social media dance craze that has erupted from Forrest’s track “YOUR WAY’S BETTER“. Then the Dr. Frank prays over Forrest, a beautiful prayer where Dr. Frank prays that Forrest “experience the Book of Acts”, a prayer that is definitely working. God is using this young man to reach an entire generation with feel-good, faith-filled lyrics that has everyone from the Party Animals (from The Savannah Bananas franchise) making viral TikTok videos, to selling out the entire C.O.G.II tour. Forrest’s music is spreading around the world just like the early Christian church, preaching a message of love and a strong reminder to all that listen: You are a Child of God.
I could easily sit here and write a quick remark about each of the 18 songs and what I love most from all of them, but I am confident once you listen, you will have your own reason you love each distinctly unique track. But I think, by now, you have gotten the point. This album is one-of-a-kind. I can already foresee that it will be the House of Z sound of summer. What I want to close with today is sharing the most important track on this collection, and that is Forrest’s personal testimony. Forrest opens with “the Bible says there is power in testimony” and his testimony is powerful, and one I easily relate to. He speaks about chasing after worldly desires while in high school and through his freshman year of college, saying he “watered a seed of sin that grew, and grew, and grew”. Let me tell you, that is the story of my life. However, unlike Forrest, it took me a lot longer to crawl out of the shade that my tree of sin had grown to. Like I mentioned earlier, I have had this album on constant loop. I have heard Forrest’s testimony, honestly, I do not even know how many times I have listened to his words over the last weekend. What I can tell you is that every time I find myself actually listening to his words, they rock me to my core. The part that really gets me (although I feel like for all eight minutes of the testimony Forrest is speaking directly to me) the part that really speaks to my soul is when Forrest mentions speaking to his granddad and asking Dr. Frank what the meaning of life is. Dr. Frank tells Forrest the meaning of life is to spend as much time with Jesus, on this side of eternity, as possible. Forrest then tells his audience that if he can summarize all his grandfather says in “two words” those words would be “don’t wait”.
Don’t wait until your life is almost over to start spending more time with Jesus. Don’t wait until your backed in a corner, with nowhere else to go, to give your life to Jesus. Don’t wait until you’ve got everything figured out and you feel like you’ve gotten enough out of the world to surrender to Jesus alone. Don’t wait until the fourth watch of night to prepare for the return of Jesus. And don’t wait another minute without clicking on the image below.
Common Sense Reborn 