I’ve been enjoying Sovereign Grace Music for about seven years now. I love how each song exhibits a distinctive blend of theological precision and musical excellence. I love how my affections are raised in proportion to spiritual truth being more clearly apprehended. I love how the centrality of the substitutionary death, burial, and resurrection of Christ on our behalf is set forth in various lyrics and melodies. The songs help me remember that just as I received Christ (i.e., by faith), so I am to continue to walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith (Col. 2:6-7).
Of course, many of the songs are also uplifting in tempo. Sovereign Grace Music employs a full array of instrumentation and is not averse to drums and electric guitars. I often play albums like No Greater Love while I’m running and doing other forms of vigorous activity. The energizing aspect is a side benefit, and I naturally enjoy this style of music.
Perhaps that is why the first thing that stood out to me in Come Weary Saints was the relative solemnity of the songs compared to those on other albums. I suppose this was not unexpected: I believe this is the first album Sovereign Grace Music has produced that is specifically aimed at ministering to Christians in sickness and suffering. In the product description, they note:
…all our problems don’t end when we turn to Christ. We still get sick. Marriages end. Children die. Our plans, great or small, are disrupted. We grow weary in the battle.
Scripture assures us that God is sovereignly using our difficulties as tools to make us more like his Son. “We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” (Ro 5:3–5) While we know these things are true, in the midst of our hardships we can lose perspective. Problems can loom large, and our hopes can grow dim.
Very true. Which is why this album is a most welcome addition to our home. With twelve new songs, there is much that can be said. Song writers include Steve & Vikki Cook, Stephen and Mark Altrogge, Joel Sezebel and Todd Twining, and Peter Gagnon. Bob Kauflin chips in by adapting older songs by Henri Malan (It Is Not Death To Die) and Samuel Trevor Francis (Oh The Deep, Deep Love of Jesus). Kauflin’s rendition of the latter is probably one of my new all-time favorite songs (I’ve listened to it over 100 times).
I particularly appreciated the unity of message in Come Weary Saints. Each song seemed to complement all the others, as if variations on the same theme: God’s faithfulness in the midst of our sufferings and temptations, ordaining all things for our good that we might enjoy Him both now and forever. One song thanked God for the trials and pain through which our faith is strengthened and we are sanctified (Every Day, by Sezebel and Twining). Others focused on the grace of Christ at Calvary which preserves us day by day. Still others spoke of God’s ways being higher than man’s. Etc..
I highly recommend this album. The songs are wonderful for personal or family worship, for uplifting background music, and for seasons of spiritual lethargy.