My Life In Song

My whole life can be defined by songs. I can take you back to almost any season in my life and tell you what song was significant. Three summers ago, the song was, “God is great, beer is good, people are crazy.” (That wasn’t a good season).

I suppose I should explain a bit. My name is Brian Beattie and I am a music junky. I am a husband, a father, a leader, a Pastor and a music junky. For the record, I’m not writing to advocate for alcohol or against crazy people – but FOR music.

Jeff Foxworthy says you may be a Red-neck if the directions to your house includes the words “turn off the paved road.” Now, I wouldn’t define my family as Red-necks, but people who have visited our family home have made the case for how perhaps we were. We definitely lived “off the paved road”.

Let’s go back 50 years.

As a kid in a family of seven, we were raised on heavy doses of country music. I mean heavy doses. Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton, Loretta Lynn and Tom T Hall. Even today I may not be able to remember someone’s name that I met yesterday, but I can’t forget words to obscure old songs like “A Boy named Sue” or “The Year that Clayton Delaney Died“.

My teenage years were filled with the music of Andre Crouche. I had never heard Christian Music before, but the guy who picked us up for the church youth group I had joined played an old eight-track of Andre Crouch and the Disciples: Live from Carnegie Hall, every week. Songs like, “Jesus is the Answer,” “He looked Beyond My Faults (and saw my needs)” and “Can’t Nobody Do Me Like Jesus,” still have powerful, emotional connection for me.

In my late teen years, a friend and I memorized the entire album of The Statler Brothers, The Holy Bible and dreamed of becoming singers and travelling the world.

I can take you to the Christian Camp where I heard the Couriers for the first time and decided for real that I wanted to do this for the rest of my life.

Then there was that one summer during my Bible College training where a buddy and I worked as lumber-jacks in Northern Ontario to help his brother-in-law plant a church. I still laugh when I tell the story of how I was threatened with death from drunken lumberjack (true story!). Phil Enloe‘s music helped me get through this summer alive.

The Gaither Vocal Band got me through more issues than I can even remember and to this day if I hear one of their songs that I used to sing, it will take me back to places and faces that have a significant impact on my life.

Why am I telling you all this? Why do you want to hear my trip down memory lane?

Let me make a couple quick easy applications.

Firstly, there will be those reading this post that are in the middle of a journey that seems like it will never end. If that is you, let me remind of the words of the Martins, “It Didn’t Come To Stay It Came To Pass”. Others are wondering when God is going to answer that prayer that you have brought to Him more times than you care to remember. To you I submit the words of The Gaither Vocal Band song, Give Up:

Now if you got burdens too hard to bear

Oh, and if your load is more than your share

Kneel, kneel down, talk to Jesus because I, I know and I know He cares

And He’ll, He’ll make a way, make a way for us somehow¹

Whatever you are facing, try this: find the truth in a song that God has brought into your life and allow Him to bring the words to life.

Also, my guess is that there are a few people reading this post who have been serving God in obscurity or maybe even in relative notoriety, but still wonder every now and then if your music ministry or “travelling horse and pony show” make any difference at all. And I want to tell you that it really does matter and so do you. There are people that you may never talk to on this side of eternity that are hanging on the words of your songs. People that live in big cities or maybe “off the paved road” that listen to your songs over and over and over again and rely on them for inspiration, motivation and sometimes sanity.

So, sing on, sing loud, let people everywhere know that God is good, all the time (with or without the beer and crazy people).

Brian Beattie

1. “Give Up” Words and Music by Howard Goodman. 1951.

Throughout 2013, SGMRadio is posting guest blogs from Christian writers across the nation and across the world. Some of these writers are musicians, some are photographers, some are philosophers. We hope that you embrace each one as they give a part of themselves to our world.

For this blog, SGMRadio hopes you will welcome with us, guest blogger Brian Beattie of Freedom House who gives us another reason to keep singing and keep walking the road of faith. We hope you take the time to read and consider Brian’s encouragement to you today. Please access Freedom House’s website and don’t forget to read Brian’s blog. Drop him a note to thank him for his contribution to SGMRadio and our world.

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Brian Beattie Bio

Brian is a husband, father and leader. He is a BIG THINKER who loves challenging people to think for themselves and then live out their conclusions with passion and compassion. He is still working on ways to shut off his brain (at least for a few hours every night). Brian and his wife Sharlyss are Lead Pastors of Freedom House in Brantford, Ontario.

Email: brian@freedomhouse.ca
Brian’s Blog: Brian’s Blog “Think Big”

http://freedomhousebrantford.blogspot.ca/