I’m coming back to the start
Where You found me
I’m coming back to Your heart
Now I surrender
Take me
This is all I can bring

I’m coming back to the start
Our God is freedom
And here we feel Your heart
Your heartbeat for us
Take me
This is all I can bring

You’ll never stop loving us
No matter how far we run
You’ll never give up on us
All of heaven shouts: let the future begin
Let the future begin

Take me
This is all I can bring

I feel alive, I come alive
I am alive on God’s great dance floor

Chris Tomlin
written along with Martin Smith and Nick Herbert

*  ~   ♥   ~   ✞   ~  ♥   ~  *

Last week I kept thinking about starting over and getting back to basics.  I have been trying so many different things to make changes in my life that I lost my focus.  I was doing lots of things…but none of them well.

First of all, in one of my secular FaceBook fitness groups, a girl posted she was wiping out all her accomplishments and starting over.  Then something similar happened in a Christian group.  (This song was mentioned multiple times.) Finally, for the last several days I have had this verse stuck in my head:

“I’m coming back to the start
Where You found me
I’m coming back to Your heart
Now I surrender
Take me
This is all I can bring”

Ok, I may be slow at times, but even I could tell God was trying to make a point with all of this—I need to go back to the start.  So I reread all the material from when I started my current fitness journey and decided to begin again.  To start applying the basics in diet and exercise, and stop trying all the crazy new things or current fads.  But that line from the song kept playing over and over in my head. “I’m going back to the start….”  Then I realized I needed to go back to the start in my relationship with God…back to the foot of the Cross.

I was searching for anything that could help me regain control of my health and wellness but I was looking at worldly solutions.  At the same time I was seeking to deepen my relationship with God by doing multiple studies; and, again, doing none of them well.  I felt tired, weary of the struggle.  Nothing was working.  I was wearing myself out, physically and mentally.  Finally, I realized I needed to surrender.  Thank goodness God never gives up on us.

This song is such a celebration of God’s grace.  We come alive because of the grace He extends to us. Ephesians 2:1 & 5 (NKJV) state:

And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins…
…even when we were dead in trespasses,
made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved)…

Christ wants us to feel alive in Him.  Not tired, not weary, not defeated—ALIVE.  We have something to celebrate.  If I am struggling, I need to stop and ask myself  “Am I living in Christ?”  If I am, then, (as Philippians 4:13 tells us), I can do all things because Christ is my Strength.  2nd Corinthians 12:9 (NKJV) reminds us “…for My strength and power are made perfect (fulfilled and completed) and show themselves most effective in [your] weakness.”

I know this to be true, yet I so easily forget and go back to striving on my own. So, I am going back to the start because God IS my freedom.  I want to feel alive and the only way I can do that  is through God’s {great dance floor of} grace.  Let the future begin!n