“After the man left, she's nothing left, no one, no love, no one to call her friend. She's stuck in the pit of hell, she's almost sick of the smell. She's numb, she's dead from the inside out, her heart is screaming but you don't hear the shout. Who’s the voice? Whose going to break the door down? Who wakes her up from this nightmare now?
We've got to rise up,
Open our eyes up.
Be her voice,
Be her freedom,
Come on stand up!”
- From Twenty Seven Million from Matt Redman and LZ7
Those who know me know that I have been a cynical critic of the modern worship music industry and the shameless commercial gimmicks to get Jesus to number 1 in the charts. Well, here is a brilliant use of those two things. A song birthed in the modern worship industry with a clear agenda to make a noise for a great Kingdom bringing cause.
There has been a real re-awakening in the new Church/modern worship industry in recent years to the social justice agenda of the Gospel. With all the new awareness and indeed active response to the state of the world it has not been so easy to translate it into the actual music. Tim Hughes perhaps has done it best in God Of Justice which was a welcome addition to generally very self indulgent worship songs. Delirious? final album was full of it but didn’t get the response from fans – interesting! Also Delirious?’s brilliant Our God Reigns written as they spent time in Rwanda and thinking through many other of the planets ills was watered down when the difficult verses about injustices were dropped as Churches used the song to leave the chorus sitting out of context and out of some of its revolutionary power!
Twenty Seven Million takes up the fight that Christians have powerfully battled for some time; the sex slave trade. It is hard to believe that there are more slaves now than at any other time in history but that is indeed the truth. It would shock us all to know how close to where we live that slavery is happening. Redman and LZ7 do a great anthemic job at sharing the information and calling the Church to get involved. May it indeed get to number 1, not so that Jesus becomes any more credible (he doesn’t need the pop charts!) but that Christ’s Kingdom shakes the foundations of the principalities and powers that be.
The song exposes the economic evil of what is going on in our generation through the life of one girl... there are 27 million like her. It reaches deep into the conscience of your soul and the emotions of your heart strings before demanding that it transforms your thinking and shakes your body out of its media dumbed down apathy to stand up for what you believe in. Here’s a healthy song for your iPod, intent on calling us to world change. Buy it now!
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