I remember like yesterday running in the empty 3rd floor of the flat I stayed in during my September 2010 trip to Cambodia. Sokhom and I opened the Cambodia Bible School with 19 Muslims and 2 Buddhists – 19 of them baptized into Christ on September 11, 2010!!! I could not run outside because I had no idea where I was and I definitely did not want to get lost in Phnom Penh. Since there was zero furniture in my apartment (except a bed on the 4th floor) I decided to run in circles on the 3rd floor. It was a little boring running back and forth from the kitchen to the living room 200 times – but I had no other choice. What saved me was listening to Christian music while I ran. One song that I listened to over and over again is Healing Begins by Tenth Avenue North. It touches my heart every time I hear it as it brings back precious memories.

Here is what the writers of the song say about its message:

This is a call to let your walls fall down, let your masks fall down, let your pretense fall down, because guess what? Your walls are glass anyway. We can see through them. You are fighting a losing battle and this is where the healing begins, when you let the light expose the darkness. – Mike Donehey

True joy and true life is found when we can let the light expose our darkness and really be comfortable with that…because we are a new creation, not because of anything that we’ve done, but because of what Christ has done for us. That should free us to be able to say “Look, I don’t have to put on a front. I don’t have to have a masquerade and act like I have it all together; in fact, just the opposite is true. I want to expose shortcomings and my weakness into the light and really experience the fullness of Christ in that because when you are weak then you’re strong.” I think where the light meets the dark is the place that this record kind of deals with. – Jason Jamison

Read Luke 18:9-14 and then listen to Healing Begins by Tenth Avenue North.

Luke 18:9-14

Now He also told this parable to some people who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and viewed others with contempt: “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and began praying this in regard to himself: ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other people: swindlers, crooked, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax collector, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to raise his eyes toward heaven, but was beating his chest, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, the sinner!’ I tell you, this man went to his house justified rather than the other one; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”