Lyrics Jimmy Needham

Jimmy Needham

The Story (A Spoken Word)

This is a story

A story about a Hero and a damsel

A villain and a scandal

Bend down, untie your sandals

Cause where we're going is holy ground

Starts like this:

In the beginning there was the Hero.

And the Hero was the Father.

And the Hero was the Spirit.

And the Hero was the Son.

And if this hurts your head already,

Welcome to the kingdom

Immutable, inscrutable, infinitely

Glad-hearted, triune perfection

His ancient love reverberated off each

Member with no hint of dissension

Perfect in unity

Perfect in diversity

Holy trinity

And even before the rocks could cry out His name

He was singing his own praises

How could he not?

You know anyone else who goes by

"The Rock of Ages"?

He needed nothing from no one,

As if something made could improve

Upon His majesty

His majesty's amp was already at 11

And if this was the end of our story

That'd be enough for us to

Glory for a thousand eternities at Him,

But our story isn't over cause one day

The Hero started speaking

And when He started speaking,

Things started being

Light, night, wind, water, mud, moons,

Seas and spiders, swimmers

And flyers, gallopers and gliders,

Stars and seasons, rhyme and reason to all

Of it and all of it was good

And suddenly all the commotion came to a standstill, when our Hero

Bent down fashioned His damsel

God leaned over our body of earth

Breathed life into our lungs

Made our heart beat from dirt

He put light in our eyes

He gave us each other

And He gave us Himself as a prize

And we were naked and were not ashamed

But of course, the plot thickens

Enter stage right The Villain

The serpent was craftier

Than any beast in the garden

He made a beeline for the tree line

And found Eve and her husband

And in less than fifty words

He convinced perfectly satisfied people

They were starving to death

And since that day

God's damsel has known nothing but

Starving to death

The poison of asps is heavy on her breath.

We traded the glory of the incorruptible God for a silly substitute

Like a school kid duped into giving up

His brand new Jordan's

For a pair of worn out tennis shoes

We became dark-hearted

Bent inward on a mission to find

within ourselves the solution,

Like trying to number the stars

While gazing through L.A.'s air pollution

We couldn't see

And we fell in love with lesser things

And we bought them each a diamond ring

And we betrayed our Maker,

Our Husband, our King

Let me clarify

This doesn't just apply

To the treacherous and murderous

Even the best of us

Are as bad as the worst of us

Outwardly clean

But inside full of dead men's bones

Like the Taj Mahal,

It looks good and all

But there's nobody home

And one terrible day

We looked around

But there was no more villain

To be found

He crawled inside of us

Like a virus, rewired us

And now the damsel

Is the villain as well

We tied our own self

To the train tracks

The horn blows and careening

Toward us is 10, 000 tons

Of God's wrath sounds so loud

You can barely hear

The screaming "Who will save us from the

Body of this death?!"

Enter stage left, Jesus of Nazareth

The Word became flesh

And dwelt among us

He came lowly

Perfectly holy

He came like a groom

On his way to the altar

To meet the bride

And for the dowry,

He had no cash

So He paid with his life

Are you shocked

By the consequence of sin?

Be more shocked

By the mercy of him

Couldn't free ourselves

So Christ became our freedom

Couldn't fill these lungs

So He became our breathing

We live because He died

Once a harlot now a bride

Sins were scarlet,

Now made white

Perfect by proxy

Saved by a surrogate

Holy through Him

The Hero and the damsel are one,

Once again

But wait,

I haven't told you the best part yet

As if there wasn't enough here already

To impress you the best part

About this story is the story is true

The only fairytale that's not a fairytale

So long mother goose

Farewell Dr. Seuss

This here's the genuine article

God made

We strayed

God's love, displayed

God-man gives grace

Stands in our place

Our sins erased

Debt paid always

So fall on your face,

And give God all praise