What Song Shaped Your Soul?

Growing up in church, I learned the Trinity as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. As a little boy, however, the words Holy Ghost frightened me. My older brothers and sisters loved to tell ghost stories, and I was the perfect audience. I was terrified. So whenever I heard people talk about the Holy Ghost in church, fear was the first emotion that came to mind.

Later, I began hearing the third person of the Trinity called the Holy Spirit. Somehow those words sounded different. Instead of thinking about ghosts, I began thinking about the presence of God.

I have never been a great fan of country music or Southern Gospel music, although there are songs in both genres that have deeply touched my life. Years ago, while serving one of my churches, I attended a Southern Gospel concert. There I met singer and songwriter Kirk Talley. We discovered we had something in common—we had both grown up in the Free Will Baptist Church.

I purchased one of his cassette tapes that evening. On it was the song that won the 1991 Dove Award for Song of the Year, I Start My Day Kneeling Down? No—that wasn’t the song that changed me. The song was “He Is Here.”

One song changed my life. “He is Here” begins,

“I sense an awesome moving of the Holy Spirit,
And I see His countenance resting on your face.
I know that there are angels hovering all around us”

It spoke of the Holy Spirit moving among ordinary people and quietly calling them by name. There were no dramatic miracles, no emotional manipulation, just the gentle invitation of God’s presence.

As I listened, something inside me broke open.

Years of fear, doubt, disappointment, and depression came pouring out in tears. It was as though a dam that had held back my emotions for decades suddenly gave way. I wept, not because I was afraid, but because I realized I was deeply loved.

For most of my life I had pictured God primarily as the Holy Judge who saw every failure and every shortcoming. That night I encountered something I had overlooked for years. I met the God who is love.

In my heart I could almost hear the words spoken at Jesus’ baptism: “This is my beloved Son.” For the first time, I sensed that if God could say those words to Jesus, then through Christ I, too, belonged to Him.

The fear that had followed me for so many years began to lose its grip.

That evening did not solve every problem overnight. Healing rarely happens that way. But it marked the beginning of a new journey. Looking back, I can see that God had been leading me all along, even when I resisted, questioned, or tried to find reasons not to go.

As the years passed, I often thought about John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, a book I had read and reported on in high school. I realized that life is not about arriving; it is about walking. I am, first and foremost, a pilgrim.

Over time, that pilgrim became The Curious Pilgrim.

Was it an accident that I attended that Southern Gospel concert? I don’t believe so. I believe the Holy Spirit gently led me there, even while I was kicking and screaming and trying to think of excuses not to go.

I have never been the same.

The journey of healing continued for years, and it still continues today. But that night became the turning point. It was the moment I stopped living in fear and began learning to live in the love of God.

Every pilgrim can point to places along the road where everything changed.

That concert was one of mine.