Every so often there are songs that just grab you for some reason or another. Sometimes the instrumentation is what sticks out (I remember being part of a high school theatre production and the opening music was so beautiful that my friends and I fed off that music to get us into the performance). Other times a lyric will pull you in, and you wrestle with it for days, months, years. The best is when you get some pairing of these two. I have been a fan of Audrey Assad's music for a number of years, but the song "I Shall Not Want" from her latest album Fortunate Fall is probably my favorite song she has ever released. The music perfectly fits the emotion of the lyrics, somber and meditative while still remaining hopeful.
This song is a plea to God for deliverance from secondary fears and desires. It starts off listing a number of things that you and I would probably recognize: a love of comfort, a life characterized by worldly passions, a fear of losing all that we have. These are excellent representations of American self-indulgent culture that has seeped into the church, and they are things that we see very easily within ourselves. These are things that we should always be bringing before the Lord, casting these cares upon Him and trusting in Him.
The second verse keys into insecurities that can wreak havoc on the Christian life. We all, as human beings, want to feel understood, to feel accepted. None of us wants to be lonely (which is understandable, the Christian life is meant to be lived in community; but that's another topic for another time). These sorts of insecurities permeate our lives when we overthink things. Often we spend too much time analyzing something in our own minds, not focusing on the truth of Scripture, to the point where we have scared ourselves into non-action. Assad identifies this, and entreats the Lord for deliverance from such insecurities.
Now here's where things get interesting. Up until this point we can relate to the song very well. Then, in the third verse, Assad flips the script. Now the song is asking for deliverance from things that we don't normally like to acknowledge. Yet at the same time, we all have fallen into these categories: "From the fear of serving others / From the fear of death or trial / From the fear of humility / Deliver me, O God." Our pride would have us believe that we aren't afraid of serving, we just don't have the time right now. We're working on our humility; maybe we can just try a little harder this next week. We say we would be willing to die or suffer for our faith, but refuse to put ourselves in a position where that might happen. We are falling once again into the trap of overthinking a situation and paralyzing ourselves from taking any action.
There is a way out of these fears and insecurities, and we are reminded of what it is in the chorus: "When I taste Your goodness, I shall not want." Did you catch that? The cure for our personal desires and fears is to taste of the goodness of our God. Bring your cares, your fears, your insecurities to the Lord, lay them at His feet. Our cares are infinitely small compared to the glory of our Father. And we have a promise that God will take care of our cares; the apostle Peter charges the believers in his first epistle to "[cast] all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you" (I Peter 5:7).
When we have put our full trust and reliance on the God of the Scriptures, we have all that we will ever need. He will provide things like food and shelter and clothing. Now, that does not mean you ought to go quit your job and just "trust in the Lord"; usually your faithfulness in your job is exactly how the Lord provides. This means that you do your work with your faith firmly planted in the promised hope of God's provision. He may bring trials and hard times into your life, so that you can learn to trust Him all the more and bring your cares and concerns to Him.
Allow me to close out this topic with our Savior's own words:
Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, "What shall we eat?" or "What shall we drink?" or "What shall we wear?" For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. (Matthew 6:25-33)