One thing I’ve realized a lot is that Christians nowadays seem to think that we are on top of the world. We seem to think that everything we do is right and there is only one way to do it. We don’t look outside of the box. We don’t see past our little Christian bubble.
Lacey Mosley, the lead singer from Flyleaf has had a very hard life but God has really used her and changed her. When Lacey was only ten years old, she began to use drugs and continued to for a long time. She began to change everything about herself, left her family, and even considered suicide. One thing that Lacey shared about on the radio was that she became an atheist because all the Christians around her judged her so harshly. All the people at the church criticized her because of how she looked and how she acted. Because of the hatred, she received from these Christian people, she became an outspoken atheist.
After awhile of struggling, God brought Lacey to a point where He showed her who He was. He showed her He was real in her life, and Lacey began to follow Christ every day. Now, Lacey shares with thousands of people what God did in her life. She doesn’t share this at churches, but she shares it at mainstream shows, where she finds girls who were just like her, girls who had lost all hope in a God. She shares with these girls the light that God shone in her life. Through Lacey, God is reaching other people. Lacey is able to show love and compassion to people because of her life experiences, and what she has undergone.When talking about the criticism she receives for what she does, Lacey says that she doesn’t believe that just because her and her band are Christians, they should be labeled a Christian band, she says this, "We all share the same faith. And so when we deal with the whole 'Christian band thing,' we kind of think about something P.O.D. says, like, 'If you're a Christian, it affects everything in your life. So if you're a plumber, does that make you a Christian plumber?” "I don't know the answer. We're a band, its part of who we are, so it comes out in our music, and it's the fuel for what we do. And finding faith saved my life. So I'm not ashamed of it at all. And most of our album reflects that."
Last night on the radio, the host of Total Axxess was very impressed with this band. I also was, for this very reason. Lacey and her band get so criticized because of what they do. When she gets asked how she feels about it, all she says is, “Well, it’s sad because they don’t understand, but you know, whatever?!” I love that. She has so much grace for people. People do not understand anything about her life and her reasons for doing this, and instead of getting angry about it and scowling those people; she just shows them grace and says, ‘whatever.’
The producer of Total Axxess went to one of their concerts and said that all the people at the show had you know a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Flyleaf played some worship songs and the people raised their beer bottles in the air. Some people will read this and think that’s so weird, but it really isn’t. Flyleaf is living out their faith in places were normal Christians would never be caught dead. Flyleaf sees that God loves everyone the same and sometimes the best place to share our faith is with people who never hear it or people who have given up on it. Another thing that the producer saw at the concert was afterwards, backstage he saw like 4 or 6 teenage girls gathered around Lacey and heard her sharing her testimony with them. The cool thing about that is that those girls really had someone to connect with. They had someone there who had gone through what they were going through. Some youth pastor somewhere may have said, “Don’t cut. Because… well, because it’s bad.” Lacey was able to share with these girls her story, she was able to tell them how God helped her through it. Sometimes, we don’t need some man who is better than us to tell us the rules and what not to do, but we need someone who has been through the things that we are struggling with and it able to connect with us.
Sometimes, as Christian we don’t realize that we’re not on top of the world. We forget that Jesus hung out with tax collectors. We forget that everyone is loved equally. Most importantly, we forget that it’s not our job to judge others. Flyleaf takes a big step. A step out of the Christian bubble and a step into the real world. We don’t have to live this sheltered life. We can be radical and do out-of-the-ordinary things. We can live our life out-of-the-box. We can, (in the words of Lauren Barlow, ‘Shake this world up a bit!’
I really enjoyed these 2 hours on the radio with Flyleaf. What they do is amazing and different. The way they react to things is loving and full of grace. I love what this band is doing, and I hope we all see the effect that it has on the world.
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