Secular Songs Brought Me Closer to God

Music seems to be in every fiber of my being. I wake up in the morning and go to sleep at night with a melody humming in my heart.

I get lost in your eyes, and I feel my spirits rise

And soar like the wind, is it love that I am in?

Music could lift my spirit high, but it also made me plunge to the dark bottom when I got depressed. I experienced many nights of sleeplessness haunted by a sad melody, it was actually a morbid tempo of emotional wounds reverberating underneath the surface of my consciousness.

Que sera sera, whatever will be will be

The future’s not ours to see

Que sera sera

Songs are my source of inspiration, but also an intensifier of emotions such as loneliness, sadness or anger. Music was like water in the ocean, there were times that it would splash me playfully, and even moved my entire body to the rhythms of the melody.

You’re just too good to be true

Can’t take my eyes off of you

You’d be like heaven to touch

Yet there were times when music was formed by bitterness, it would create havoc like a storm and would wipe out all hope inside, leaving me totally devastated.

Why does the sun go on shining?

Why does the sea rush to shore?

Don’t they know it’s the end of the world?

Some songs could lift us up when we were down. Only when it is directed to God that its meaning could provide a source of strength.

When you’re weary, feeling small

When tears are in your eyes

I will dry them all

There are songs with lyrics that are so meaningful to me, songs that provide me bright insights

Sadness had been closed as my next of kin

Then Happy came one day

Chased my blues away

My life began when Happy smiled

Most secular songs provide me a deep sense of nostalgia. I am blessed by God with an abundance of good happy memories.

Old photographs and places I remember

Just like a dying ember that’s burned into my soul

After my conversion that feeling of nostalgia is now replaced with a sense of eternity. Instead of longing for the good things in the past, I long to re-experience those good things in the context of eternity in heaven for all the good happy experiences here on earth are just fleeting shadows of the real happiness in God’s Kingdom.

I’m on the top of the world lookin’

Down on creation and the only explanation I can find

Is the love that I’ve found ever since you’ve been around

Your love’s put me at the top of the world

I got my spiritual conversion in a highly musical Pentecostal church in 2012. I had been to a lot of Life in the Spirit Seminars, to a lot of spiritual retreats, heard a lot of religious talks. But it was music that cracked my skull to let God’s Word pass through it. No formal liturgies, there was preaching but the worship was filled with almost non-stop music.

After that conversion, I decided to leave secular songs behind. I turned to religious songs – Don Moen, John Michael Talbot, and many Christian music bands. But secular songs were in the air, I inhaled them in the house when my kids would sing and their cousins would play their instruments, when I go to a party, in my work, when I am in a jeepney; it’s everywhere. But God still found ways to invade me through those secular songs.

I was riding in a jeepney one day, and the music was so loud. I was listening to its lyrics:

Swaying rooms as the music starts

Strangers making the most of the dark…

When the tune went to the chorus, it stabbed me, it was Christ speaking to me through the song:

Is that I’m crazy for you

Touch me once and you’ll know it’s true

I never wanted anyone like this

It’s all brand new, you’ll feel it in my kiss

I’m crazy for you

I felt God’s love like a sword piercing to the depths of my being, and I burst into tears like a child and spoke in tongues amidst the loud music. I covered my tear-wet face with a scarf pretending as if I was sleeping.

At other time, it was Thursday, I was praying the rosary while attending to my two-year-old girl who watched Barney. It was the third Luminous mystery when that song was played:

Just imagine, just imagine

Just imagine all the things that we can be

Imagine all the places we could go and see

Imagination’s fun for you and me

Praying the rosary is imagining on the mysteries, and in a flash of light God seemed to give me a glimpse of eternity – it was a mind-blowing ecstatic experience. Eternity, eternity, eternity!

From then on, every time that song was played, my little girl would look at me because I could not help but be overcome with tears. Now that our girl is already seven years old, that song was played, and she ran to me to see if tears would flow from my eyes. It still did. That experience was so intense, that even recalling them now as I type on this article it revives a strong feeling that could best be described in the Book of Ecclesiastes “Vanity of vanities, says Qoheleth, vanity of vanities! All things are vanity!”

Last November 10, we celebrated the 50^th birthday of my younger sister. During video key singing, I sang What a difference you’ve made in my life with all my heart fully focused on Christ.

One time I was staying overnight in the mountain with friends. Early in the morning, with a guitar, we went to a cliff. I said a few words about God’s goodness evident in creation; then I sang

Morning has broken, like the first morning

Blackbird has spoken, like the first bird

There was silence, as everyone contemplated the sun rising. At that moment we seemed to be in a prayer meeting. I believe anyone can feel the sacredness of life in creation.

I was on leave from work in those early days of my conversion, and I was washing many clothes with loud music from the neighborhood. Songs from Cat Stevens, John Denver, James Taylor, Jim Croce, Seals and Crofts, Simon and Garfunkel, and many songs in the 80s and 90s.

Sunshine on my shoulders makes me happy

Sunshine in my eyes can make me cry

You fill up my senses, like a night in a forest

Like the mountains in springtime

Like a walk in the rain

That laundry work was like a Life in the Spirit seminar, my whole being was deeply immersed in God’s goodness. I was alone in the house, and I did not restrain myself when I spoke in tongues while washing the clothes.

His gentle means of sculpting souls

Took me years to understand

The leader of the band is tired

And his eyes are growing old

But his blood runs through my instrument

And his song is in my soul

My life has been a poor attempt

To imitate the man

I’m just a living legacy

To the leader of the band

Perhaps love is like a resting place

A shelter from the storm

When a person is in love, he tries to put some meaning to everything that would connect to that love. Also in our journey to God’s love, when His love is felt in our depths, we give meaning to everything to connect to that love.

And even though we ain’t got money

I’m so in love with ya honey

And everything will bring a chain of love

Even if the lyrics of the song are far from the possibility to be given a religious meaning, but the essence of human secular love and all its existential expressions is to me all about God’s love. There is always a reason to be grateful, to praise Him, to worship Him, and to grow in our love for Him. All my experiences good or bad, happy or pleasant, even my moral failures will always turn out to be taken into the context of God’s infinite love.

And you decorated my life

Created a world where dreams are apart

There are songs with lyrics that I slightly changed to be redirected to God – My way to God’s Way, I’ll play for you to I’ll pray for you. Any love song can be a form of religious expression, the lyrics don’t matter much to me. When my heart is attuned to God, and lyrics of a song, or any object of beauty – songs, paintings, secular movies, sports – everything could be a ground for God’s love to us.

I am aware of the limitations of music. Undeniably, music could also be a medium of dark ideas. A spiritually uninformed and misinformed individual could be a victim of bad influence not only in music but also in many forms of art and any forms of ideology that are available in all human endeavors. But we cannot also deny the fact that music, even the secular ones as I had experienced, could trigger a profound experience of God’s love.

There were moments that God’s revelation was so intense and once nurtured with daily prayer, the intensity may subside but its impact leaves a thirst for a deeper experience into God’s love.

And if I can’t find my way

If salvation seems worlds away

Oh, I’ll be found

When I am lost in your eyes