Becca Music’s Jimmy Needham Concert: Guy, Guitar, and Gospel at Christ’s Commission Fellowship last night was gut-challenging, grace-filled, and God-glorifying.    The youthful-looking (“I look sixteen”)  doting father of two and loyal husband of one unabashedly and unapologetically shares his faith through entertaining self-written music. The lyrics are biblically-based and therefore powerful. His left-handed guitar playing is dynamic, vibrant, and energetic. His singing, according to him, is a few octaves higher than most; it goes in unexpected places between raspy, croony, to awoo-wooey.

He collaborated with a rap artist to make a rap version of the hymn, “How Great Thou Art”, on what seems like a fusion of the Old Testament and the New Testament uniting as worship to Jesus Christ.  He mixed traditional with modern (How Sweet It Is To Be Loved By You).  Some inter-active singing with friendly competition between the men and women in the crowd kept everyone engaged.

“Just because it doesn’t have ‘Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior’ in its lyrics doesn’t mean it’s not Christian. What can be more Christian than rejoicing in the wife of your youth and loving your kids?” He sang the song that won his wife over and the song he wrote for his daughter, Lively.

His humour in between songs was good-natured and refreshing.”It’s a weird name. But I’m an artist. I can do what I want so deal with it,” he jokingly said as he introduced his song, “Daddy’s Little Girl” with a video of precious moments he shared with Lively playing in the background. “Aww” moments galore to satisfy the cuteness craving.

He shared his testimony of moving from sin and thinking that his sin was judicial to getting filled by having a relationship with The Bread of Life, Jesus Christ and realizing that his sin was not being hungry for what God is offering.  Jimmy shared that after all the grievously wicked sins of the Israelites in the Old Testament (such as burning their children as sacrifice or having sex with prostitutes in the temples to please idols), God could have said ANything but this is what He chose:

Jeremiah 2:13 “My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.”

Jimmy said, we should be hungry for Jesus, The Bread of Life! He gave insights to recognize idolatry.  Anything we cannot give up is idolatry. Anything that we can’t stop thinking of is idolatry. Anything that takes a higher priority than God is idolatry. These things that we may run after and expend energy on cannot save, cannot help unlike God Himself who is a spring of living water, the source of life here and for eternity.

What a night of uplifting worship with heart-turning deep messages of faith.

It is a blessing to see in action a man living out his faith by being a good husband, good father, using his talents to worship and give thanks to His Maker and Lord. How does the world churn out men like him? It started when someone “spared” five or ten minutes to share the gospel with him when he was sixteen. That turned him around as the power of Jesus was unleashed in his life.

A sobering question to reflect on is, have I been sharing Jesus with others that they may be filled with the spring of Living Water, that the power of God may be unleashed in their lives? How many people are surrounding us whose lives could be transformed from bondage to freedom. Are we sharing Jesus?