His music is famous, but most Christians don't know his journey of following Jesus.
February 24, 2009
Praising the Lord with Steve Green, Part 2
Born to parents who became missionaries to South America, drifting away in his teens then finding new life in Christ, Steve Green has been singing for a long time yet through those years he keeps singing about his Lord, his Savior, Jesus Christ.
Welcome to Haven Today telling the great story that’s all about Jesus. I’m Charles Morris and in the next few minutes you’ll get to hear more of the life story of Steve Green. If you missed the first program we had on yesterday we’ve put that up on our homepage, haventoday.org, under the “Going Deeper” section. Maybe you’ve heard Steve sing many times but you’d like to see what he looks like in concert. Well, we’ve posted a couple of music videos there on the “Going Deeper” section of our homepage, haventoday.org. And when you’re there be sure to check out his latest CD called “Always: Songs of Worship” or the DVD that we have as well of a live concert “A Journey of Faith with Steve Green” there on our homepage and you can get the CD or the DVD as a thank you for your gift to Haven Today. You can call us if you’d like and our toll free number in North America is 1-800-654-2836, 1-800-654-2836. One more thing before we get started, we have had so many people in the last 2 weeks contact us for that special sermon from a pastor at 4th Presbyterian Church in Washington D.C. Was Abraham Lincoln really a Christian? If you heard it and you want to get a copy or you are intrigued and want to get a copy we still have it available. Dr. Willard Davis who went home to be with the Lord last year but before he died uncovered amazing evidence about the faith of Abraham Lincoln. It’s there on our homepage, havenotoday.org or call us at 1-800-654-2836. From his new praise and worship album Steve Green opens this Haven Today with a song I think you know and you’ve heard it before.
Song: In Christ Alone
Performed by: Steve Green
Welcome again to Haven Today and I’m Charles Morris in Nashville, Tennessee and that was “In Christ Alone” with, I think an Irish whistle and with me in a church basement is Steve Green and Steve welcome back to the program.
SG: Thank you Charles.
CM: Hey, we are really enjoying this new album you put out, praise and worship music and one song from one track is pretty lively. We didn’t open with that one. We’ll tell people how to get a copy of this new album and of course, having you on the air I want to share some of what maybe people know you’ve done in prior years. But on our last time together we talked about your life story and you shared with just, you know, how you were trying so hard to please the Lord and you couldn’t. It was so hard. And people can go to our website, they can listen to that first day but yes, you’d professed faith in Christ. You knelt by your bed in a missionary kid’s boarding school. You were an “MK”. But in your teen years and maybe your 20 years it was tough wasn’t it? Pre internet days but you know we all are tempted today by so many, many things. Someone once told me though that one of the ways you found the Lord to help you when you just dig yourself into sin patterns that you’re so disgusted with and you can’t get out of, that the Word of the Lord helps and,
SG: Yeah, you know I look back on kind of a 10 year period of wandering. And that is, OK, leaving,
CM: Even as a Christian musician?
SG: Well this is leaving South America, coming back, beginning college. Now I’m completely out from – free but not, not quite so free.
CM: Not quite, yeah.
SG: And I think it was a real testing of now all these things that I’ve been doing, why have I been doing them? And the convictions that my parents passed on to me, OK I know that they’re theirs. They belong to them but are they mine?
Cm: Are they internalized in you?
SG: And I realized that I did a lot of the right things for the wrong reasons and there wasn’t a real personal motivation and a faith that was rooted in something deeper than that performance that we talked about. And then add to that that I have left a pretty strict environment. And of course my folks are both deceased now and I honor them and love them,
CM: And rules aren’t bad.
SG: No, they’re not bad, not at all. But the rules they had set for themselves, you know, no movies, no playing cards, secular music, there was really no place for that, so it was a pretty rigid system. So now I’ve come back to the states, I’m in college and I’m in a Christian environment that is way different than anything I’d ever experienced. Now these are people who do all the stuff that I was told Christians are not supposed to do. It was like you can have your cake and eat it too.
CM: You’re studying the Bible in this free spirit and that can lead in the wrong direction just like the rules can lead in the wrong direction.
SG: Sure, sure. Exactly. So the pendulum swung and I was discovering, “OK, you can do some of these things.” So the 10 year wandering was really part of the journey that God allowed me on to come to the end of myself. And at the end of that period there was a genuine awakening that came about as a result of my older brother’s confrontation.
CM: Explain.
SG: He had been to Bible College. He’d been to seminary. But God-
CM: He’d done it all “right”.
SG: he’d done it all right, but then God did a significant work in his life and as a result of that he was just a confrontive, on fire, in your face person wanting to set the whole world straight. Now, was he right in everything he did? Not necessarily. But when he confronted me it actually was right.
CM: The Lord was with him probably that day.
SG: He was! And you know, we had a bit of a clash where he was exhorting us all in the Lord and I was kind of tired of hearing all that. So I reacted against it and we had some words and finally he looked at me and he said, “Steve I don’t know what’s wrong with you but there’s something wrong with you. There is something in your life that isn’t right.” And I denied it of course but later that night I couldn’t sleep. God was pulling at the layers of my heart and I knew that my brother was right. I mean there was many things in my life that wasn’t right. So as the night wore on I grew more restless and really under deep conviction. I ended up getting out of bed and getting on my knees and saying, “OK God. I’ve said no to you for a long time. I’ve compromised in so many areas. I know you’ve done something in my brother. I mean, he’s different. And whatever that is, I want you to do something like that in me. I want to say yes to you. I want to follow you. I guess for the first time I’m sensing that I want something genuine with you.” And it was a simple –
CM: The Lord has his way with you, this getting you out of bed in the middle of the night,
SG: Yeah
CM: you get on your knees when you’re 8 years old and now you’re 20-whatever years old and it was a new moment for you. And you may have already been a believer
SG: Yes
CM: you probably were, you’d professed faith in Christ already. How do you think that relates to all of us because most of our listeners are Christians?
SG: Right, well I think that, as I look back on it now. Ok this was in 1983 that all this happened. I look back on it now and I realize that part of what I wanted was a fix. Meaning, I had grown accustom to the stories, the testimonies, “This is what I was. This is what Jesus is and this is what I am today! All better and you can be better too!”
CM: It’s a neat formula. It doesn’t work that way.
SG: It doesn’t work! And so, you know my, if people would have asked me back then, “What has God done?” it was a fix. He fixed me. And now 20 something years later I realize he is still fixing me. It’s not over yet.
CM: The Greek present tense for continuing works so well in so many of these things. You know, it doesn’t just start it in there. It keeps on going.
SG: No, no. Exactly.
CM: And we keep on growing in Christ.
SG: and you know Charles my musical history, OK, I’ve been an artist in Christian music and I’ve recorded a lot of songs and I’ve wanted to get it all right and I’ve come to the conclusion that what I really wanted was to have an impressive spiritual record. And I don’t have one. I don’t have one. And so that’s why I need the record of another, of Jesus. God just over time has let me see more and more of my brokenness, as Francis Schaffer said, “our fractured lives, because of the fall,” all the abnormalities.
CM: The idols that come into our hearts.
SG: The idols, yes, all of it yes! All of it. I mean even in Christian service, even in Christian music just the mixture of it all so that by the time we’re done we’ll see that the only true hero of our story is Jesus. How he has rescued and continues to, how he allows us to come to the end of ourselves again and again and how we want to be self sufficient and be impressive and we’re just not. We’re just not.
CM: You know, anyone who’s listened to your music for 20 years has heard you do some pretty big songs but in the quietness of whatever kind of Sunday School classroom we’re in right now the Lord is at work still in our hearts. But praise God he’s still ministering the grace of Jesus Christ through us. However we define grace – and it’s hard to define – but I need it. I needed it this morning. You needed it this morning. And we need it more tomorrow. We never get enough of it. If I could just keep not forgetting that. And I do forget that.
SG: Absolutely, every day.
CM: Steve Green is with us here on Haven Today. Steve we opened the program with a song from your new praise and worship album but interestingly enough, you in a way have been preaching to us the last few minutes but you’ve also preached in music as well and I’m thinking of a song that a lot of people who’ve followed you will know where you actually took the Apostle’s Creed, a great document that dates back to the earliest centuries of the church of Jesus Christ and then you put it into music and ministered pure doctrine. But it works doesn’t it?
SG: Well, I must say I didn’t do it myself. I had 2 good friends and writers help put this together but it is, it’s a song called “We Believe” and it’s become a hallmark. And I love it because it’s another opportunity to rehearse the Gospel, to remember again what God has done for us in Christ. The hope, the –
CM: You sound like Scotty Smith, your pastor here in Franklin, Tennessee at one point.
SG: the hope that we have in Christ that is living and that it’s a finished work so we can rest in the Gospel which I call the great sigh of relief, that I am not accepted based on my performance or my effort or my achievement or anything else but simply what Christ has accomplished for us.
Song: We Believe
Performed by: Steve Green
Set to music a very ancient document, a statement of faith. The song is called “We Believe” based on the Apostles’ Creed, Steve Green. And Steve just, thank you for joining us here on this Haven Today but perhaps the Lord has used you to convict someone besides me. Would you pray at least for me but also pray for other people who are listening right now who need just, we need our cups filled today with grace, not on the outside but on the inside? Would you pray?
SG: Lord, just rehearsing again the story of your redemption, it causes me to be amazed! Who would have thought up such a thing? And Lord if it was left up to me Lord, I would have written myself a better part. I would have wanted to have something to do with it. I would have wanted to have at least preserved some shred of dignity in all those things but Lord you completely undo us and then at the moment of our desperation reveal that Christ is our all, fully sufficient. And so Lord I pray again today that the Gospel would be real to us, that we would see Jesus as the one who fulfilled all the necessary requirements on our behalf and that simply by collapsing before him and looking at him we are forgiven, accepted, adopted and then standing before you without blemish, free from accusation. Lord what, what a gift that is! And our hearts just overflow with gratitude for it. Thank you in Jesus’ name, amen.
CM: Amen, thank you Steve Green for leading us in prayer. Thank you for leading us in that wonderful song of yours, we believe which is also on the “Journey of Faith: Live in Concert” DVD as well as CD. Now we mentioned this when we went on the air today, we’ve got Steve Green’s live in concert audio/video set and we’ve also got his brand new album in CD called “Always: Songs of Worship” and we have those available as our thanks for your financial support of Haven Today, to help us keep on telling the great story of Jesus. Just go online at haventoday.org, h.a.v.e.n.t.o.d.a.y, haventoday.org. Let us know the station you’re listening to our call us at 1-800-654-2836, 1-800-654-2836. Before we go, maybe you are someone who needs prayer. Well, we would like to pray for you so let me give you our mailing address. You can write us and tell us how we can pray for you by writing to:
Haven Today
P.O. Box 79997
Riverside, CA 92513
And in Canada:
Haven Today
Box 6800
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We’d love to hear from you. We’d love to pray for you. I’m Charles Morris. Thanks for being with me and Steve Green. Come back again tomorrow when again we’ll be sharing the great story. It’s all about Jesus here on Haven Today.
