WORSHIP REFLECTIONS are weekly devotionals based on worship songs/hymns. Our hope is that this content encourages your love and adoration of Christ Jesus as you grow in closer communion with Him through personal worship.
Sarah Sattler, Worship Leader at Cornerstone Bible Church, presents this worship song devotional based on the Elevation Worship song "Gone".
The song “Gone” by Elevation Worship is a wonderful representation of hat it looks like to respond to the saving acts of God. I love this quote by Constance Cherry (The Worship Architect: a Blueprint for Designing Culturally Relevant and Biblically Faithful Services, Baker Academic, 2010, p. 5):
God initiates worship. This is in full keeping with God’s character, for God is a person who acts first...Worship is fundamentally the result of, and response to, great saving events performed by God.
In this first verse of this song, it talks about Christ being the atonement for our sins, causing us to live without shame. Causing us to live as though our chains are gone. To not not live in bondage anymore.
Psalm 107:10-15
Some sat in darkness and in the shadow of death, prisoners in affliction and in irons, for they had rebelled against the words of God, and spurned the counsel of the Most High. So he bowed their hearts down with hard labor; they fell down, with none to help. Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress. He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death, and burst their bonds apart. Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love, for his wondrous works to the children of man!
A prisoner who is released from their chains:
• Rejoices
• Gives thanks
• Lives differently
Chains = sin and our sin is GONE!
CHORUS
“My sin is dead and gone, and I sing hallelujah. He is risen, it is done, and I sing hallelujah”
VERSE 2
“Praise is a weapon that will overcome. I’m gonna shout like the battle’s won.”
Examples of praise as a weapon:
• Old Testament
• Jehoshaphat Defeats Moab and Ammon
2 Chronicles 20:21-22
After consulting the people, Jehoshaphat appointed men to sing to the Lord and to praise him for the splendor of his holiness as they went out at the head of the army, saying:
“Give thanks to the Lord, for his love endures forever.”
As they began to sing and praise, the Lord set ambushes against the men of Ammon and Moab and Mount Seir who were invading Judah, and they were defeated.
• New Testament
• Paul and Silas
Acts 16:25-26
About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them, and suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken. And immediately all the doors were opened, and everyone's bonds were unfastened.
“Fall back devil, ‘cause your time is up.”
Hebrews 2:14-15
Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death-that is, the devil—and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.
Through Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection, he defeated the one who holds the power of death . . . and that’s the devil. He said, “Get back devil your time is up!”
And we have nothing left to do but to praise Him. Because we have been set free, all we have to do is rejoice, give thanks, and live differently.
— Sarah Sattler, Worship Leader