Music Testimony

Come As You Are to Jesus

“Oh Wanderer Come Home / You’re Not Too Far / Lay Down Your Hurt / Lay Down Your Heart”

Margaret Pope / 1.27.21

I have always felt especially ministered to by music — something about the way that the truths of scripture are set to tunes that get stuck in your head for days after singing them on Sunday morning. I end up unknowingly reminding myself of the ways God loves me, simply because a few lines from a song replay over and over. So when I was in the car on my way to work earlier this week and listened closely enough to really hear what David Crowder was saying in his song “Come As You Are,” I knew I was done for. It has been on repeat since and completely undoes me about 1 out of every 5 times I listen to it.

In this song, Crowder beautifully expounds on Matthew 11:28, where Jesus says, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” Crowder talks about all sorts of pain and suffering and immediately points to the only remedy: “Earth has no sorrow that heaven can’t heal.” The chorus has been especially powerful:

So lay down your burdens
Lay down your shame
All who are broken
Lift up your face
Oh wanderer come home
You’re not too far
So lay down your hurt
Lay down your heart
Come as you are

I imagine myself walking up to Jesus, shoulders hunched, hanging my head, bearing the weight of all my bad decisions — like Christian’s literal burden in The Pilgrim’s Progress — and Jesus lovingly invites me to pour it all out before him, every last bit of it. He reminds me that I am his beloved and tells me to “lift up my face” because I’m a daughter of the King, who welcomes me home with open arms. He asks me to remember him and his work, not my sin and shame. And after all that, after he sees all the mess, he tells me to rest. Not run around and clean up. Not work myself to the bone to be back in his good graces. But to rest.

What hope we have to know that we, as believers, have such a Savior to run to, who offers that kind of respite for our weary, exhausted souls. He invites us to “fall in his arms” and promises “joy for the morning,” no matter how far gone the enemy would have us believe we might be. All of this is possible by his life, death, and resurrection, which open the door for us to approach him in the way the Crowder sings about: “as you are.”