Adam Young

Wow. Tonight was the kind of night you remind yourself to soak it up — the vivid colors, raw energy, and waves of emotion, because you’ll want to savor them when they’re gone. I’m so honored to be here, so blessed to know the people around me, and so thrilled to live by the grace I’ve been given. I feel undeserving to know I’m part of a plan that’s so much bigger than I am and it’s truly mind-boggling. As the most average, ordinary person, it’s so cool for me to be able to do the extraordinary things I get to do — and nights like tonight are poignant reminders that life is pretty darn beautiful for a dreamer in a crazy world.

Thank you for the endless support you’ve given me over the handful of years I’ve been at this. I feel such gratitude and heartfelt appreciation for those who continue to support my music and various projects that mean a great deal to me. To know there are people out there who feel inspired by the things I dream up is more valuable than any artist royalty or music award. I so treasure your support.

Life is short, beauty is fleeting, the glitz and glam comes and goes… it’s exhilarating to soak it all up, hold onto the good, toss away the bad, and continue to live according to what’s truly important.

Onward.

The itch of self-regard craves the scratch of self-approval. That is, if we are getting our pleasure from feeling self-sufficient, we will not be satisfied without others seeing and applauding our self-sufficiency.

This is ironic. Self-sufficiency should free the proud person from the need to be made much of by others. That’s what sufficient means. But evidently there is a void in this so-called self-sufficiency.

The self was never designed to satisfy itself or rely upon itself. It never can be sufficient. We are but in the image of God, not God himself. We are shadows and echoes. So there will always be an emptiness in the soul that struggles to be satisfied with the resources of self.

This empty craving for the praise of others signals the failure of pride and the absence of faith in God’s ongoing grace. Jesus saw the terrible effect of this itch for human glory. He named it in John 5:44, “How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?” The answer is, you can’t. Itching for glory from other people makes faith impossible. Why?

Because faith is being satisfied with all that God is for you in Jesus. And if you are bent on getting the satisfaction of your itch from the scratch of others’ acclaim, you will turn away from Jesus.

But if you would turn from self as the source of satisfaction (repentance), and come to Jesus for the enjoyment of all that God is for us in him faith), then the itch would be replaced by a spring of water welling up to eternal life (John 4:14).

-John Piper