By: Mike Helms
May 31st used to be my Mom's birthday, but every year since 2006 it's marked the anniversary of my Mom going to be with the Lord after an almost 2 year battle with Ovarian cancer. The night before she died I had a sense that the time was drawing near, and that we had only a little bit of time left with her. I went out for a walk and spent a good while praying. I knew that “to be absent from the body” was to be “present with the Lord”. But it never quite dawned on me until that night that “to be absent from the body” was to be absent from me. I would no longer be seeing my Mom walk this earth. I would not hear her voice again or see her smile while I was in this place. I was ...
By: Mike Helms
"Amazing Grace" is probably one of the most iconic songs in existence! The trouble with iconic songs is that people can end up singing them with no thought to what they're actually singing about. Amazing Grace has been in more movies than I can count, and most of the time the movies had nothing at all to do with Jesus, the cross, us being wretched sinners, or anything at all even Christian! It's there as mood music, or as a veiled reference to redemption- not redemption through Jesus mind you, just redemption.
"Amazing Grace" has become like "The Lord's Prayer". We know it, we can recite it by rote, but are the truths of the song alive to us?
You can be sure that when John Newton wrote the lyrics to "Amazing Grace" he wasn't mindlessly reciting. You don't write about being ...
By: Mike Helms
I wrote "That's Only Half Of It" on a beautiful sunny day while driving across the Courtney Campbell Causeway from Tampa to Clearwater, FL. I always carried with me a micro recorder to capture the songs that would often burst out of me. This was one of those times! I was a pretty new Christian and totally new to Florida. Growing up in the Midwest I had never seen the ocean in person. I loved the constant sunshine and sandy beaches that were all around me in Clearwater. On that particular day I was headed over the causeway and loving everything that filled my eyes! "Man, this is AWESOME Lord!" That's when the thought hit me, "Whoa! That's only half of it! If you think this is good, it's nothing compared to what Jesus has to give you!" As I drove over ...
By: Mike Helms
Some Christians would prefer to only talk about the love of God and never mention His wrath- they love the thought of forgiveness, but don't think much about obedience. To them, John the Baptist makes a good bible story, but they sure don't expect to encounter a man or a message like his at their church!
"Prepare the Way of The Lord" was one of the earliest Christian songs that I wrote. It appeared on my first album which has long since gone out of production. As a brand new Christian I realized that God was calling me to something that demanded all of me and everything I had. My experience of Jesus was not founded in a church, it was forged out of a radical call of God on my life to leave a particular sin and come follow Him. ...
By: Mike Helms
"When I Consider" was written recently after experiencing an overwhelming sense of God's love for me. I think that whenever the Holy Spirit comes upon a person a renewed awareness of God's love will be one of the immediate results.
"... because God has poured out His love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom He has given to us." (Romans 5:5)
From my experience two things have always happened when God has poured out His Spirit in my life-
I'm made aware of how great a sinner I am.
I realize that God totally loves me and receives me in Jesus Christ.
There are those who will try to tell you that speaking in tongues is the evidence that one has received the Holy Spirit. No, that is not the evidence! The proof is that you are made to see that you are a wretched sinner and yet ...
By: Mike Helms
The third track from my album "Jesus On My Mind" is called "The Lord Was Crucified For Me". I wrote it in 1985, just a year after becoming a believer. I've always loved this song because it conveys the undeniable changes that were going on in my life after I first met the Lord. I was a brand new christian at the time and I was overwhelmed by the sense of God's love for me. I felt that whatever had to go in this world to get me closer to Jesus was well worth it. When the apostle Paul talks about counting the world as loss for the sake of knowing Jesus Christ in the book of Philippians, well, that was totally me! I had just discovered the one thing that really mattered in life and I wasn't about to let this world ...
By: Mike Helms
First love… You remember what it’s like... You can’t stop thinking about the person; your heart pounds faster when you’re around them; you stay up way later and get up way earlier just to be with them; your eyes SPARKLE at just the thought of them, and whenever you’re around them you can’t look away. Life suddenly becomes about THEM! When you wake up guess who's on your mind? During the day your mind floats away to thoughts of being with them, and at night, instead of counting sheep, you picture them with you, hand in hand (which, of course, gives you insomnia) but you don’t care because it’s one more moment to reflect back on time spent together, and dream about what tomorrow may bring.
A lot of people don’t know that falling in love with Jesus can be just like that! They think ...
The Church as Living Stones
