How He Loves Us

“Do not throw away your confidence; it will have great recompense. You need endurance to do the will of God and receive what he has promised.” 

Hebrews 10:35-36

I’ve been listening to the songs of Kim Walker-Smith for some time without knowing much about her. But yesterday, I purchased her e-book on Amazon and found out the background story to one of her most popular songs, “How He Loves” written by John Mark McMillan. If you search for it on YouTube, you will see it has been viewed 22 million times. Kim is a songwriter, worship leader for the Jesus Culture Band and Jesus Culture events, and a worship pastor at the mega Bethel Church in Redding, California. 

Her book, “Brave Surrender: Let God’s Love Rewrite Your Story” starts on a Friday night in 2006, the start of the annual Jesus Culture Conference. She is slated to sing “How He Loves”, and the whole worship was to be recorded live. This was the second time they were recording their music live because of the success of the first album. The reason they did it was so the young kids attending the conference would have something to bring home with them and they could experience God’s presence and love in their homes after the event. 

Kim felt very connected to the song, even though it felt strange to sing “heaven meets earth like a sloppy, wet kiss”. She wrote: “...as the words came out of my mouth, I realized the truth of that lyric. When heaven shows up, when Jesus intervenes in my life, when I encounter God, it can be messy, passionate, and all-consuming. Not in a negative way, but in a way that causes me to say, ‘I am surrendering to Your love completely, God. I am not fighting for control, and I am trusting You in every outcome.’ And when Jesus shows up, He covers everything, just like a sloppy, wet kiss.”

That night, she is overcome by God’s love when she sings, “How He Loves”, the last song in the set. When there was a lull in the words, she burst out spontaneously, “And right now, if you haven’t encountered the love of God—and you would KNOW, because you would never be the same . . . you would never be the same AGAIN!—And if you, if you want to encounter the love of God right now, you better just BRACE yourself! Because He’s about to just BLOW in this place! And WE’RE GOING TO ENCOUNTER THE LOVE OF GOD!”

Afterwards, when she went backstage, she thought she had sounded like a bumbling idiot and was so embarrassed. When she remembered it was taped, she immediately looked for the director and pleaded with him to cut out her babbling. He said no, it was awesome and powerful! “He stubbornly maintained that my embarrassing moment had been the best part of the whole night and that all of the awkwardness was in my head,” she wrote. 

“The day We Cry Out was released, I felt incredibly raw, exposed, and vulnerable. I felt like I had recorded myself reading my diary and then blasted it out for the whole world to hear. I braced myself for the teasing, criticism, and mocking that I felt certain would come.” But instead of criticism, “Person after person said they could feel God’s tangible love filling the room and shaking them to the core. Some had cried for days as God delivered them from shame.” 

Sometimes God uses us in ways we would never imagine. Something that embarrasses us, or was an accident, unplanned, He can use for something good to happen. It’s hard to imagine but our hurts and pains, our challenges, and trials are all about our Father wanting more than anything for us to know Him, and His love for us in a deeper way.