Sermon Central
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Steven Curtis Chapman: Still Blessing His Name
Contributed by Sermon Central on Sep 19, 2011 (message contributor)
STEVEN CURTIS CHAPMAN: STILL BLESSING HIS NAME
On May 17, 2008, Christian recording artist Steven Curtis Chapman and his family suffered a devastating loss. Their five-year-old adopted daughter, Maria Sue, was struck and killed when Chapman's seventeen-year-old son was backing his SUV out of the family's driveway.
Then just two months later, Chapman returned to his concert ministry continuing to lead people in worship. It was not easy, but the words from Job as expressed in Matt Redman's song, "Blessed Be Your Name," kept him going. It was the first song Chapman sang the day Maria died when he wasn't sure he'd ever be able to sing again:
Blessed be Your name
When the sun's shining down on me,
When the world's all as it should be.
Blessed be Your name.
Blessed be Your name
On the road marked with suffering,
Though there's pain in the offering.
Blessed be Your name.
You give and take away.
You give and take away.
My heart will choose to say,
"Lord, blessed be Your name."
Chapman says, "As I sang this song ... it wasn't a song, it was a cry, a scream, a prayer, [but] I found an amazing comfort and peace that surpasses all understanding."
Chapman says he also reconsidered the words to all his songs and whether he could still sing -- and believe -- them. Instead, he found that losing his little girl brought the meaning of those songs into sharper focus. In fact, he added a new verse to his song, "Yours," which he had just written a year previously:
I've walked the valley of death's shadow
so deep and dark that I could barely breathe.
I've had to let go of more than I could bear and
I've questioned everything that I believe.
Still even here in this great darkness
a comfort and a hope comes breaking through
as I can say in life or death, God we belong to you.
(Elizabeth Diffin, Still Blessing His Name, Today's-Christian.com, 2008. From a sermon by C. Philp Green, The Way to Glory, 8/13/2011)
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