Song Showcase/Story Behind The Song – April 2009 – by Gordon Jensen

DRAWN TO THE FOOT OF THE CROSS

Album: I’m Listening Lord

Words and Music by Gordon Jensen

The cross of Jesus Christ holds a strange and wonderful magnetism. From the beginning of time, it has drawn millions of people from every nation and walk of life searching for peace, light, and a life beyond them. They find it there.

To those who say, "I found God", there is a response, "God wasn't lost, you were!" So, if it is God finding us, there is a journey. A quest, wherein our hunger, thirst, and desire to know God, draws us to a horrific scene of execution by crucifixion near old Jerusalem in the year thirty something. There we see the sinless Son of God dying a death of agony in our place. Thus, God finds us!

The cross of Christ is conspicuously positioned as the one and only gate to eternal life. Mankind, from Eden's fallen, march forward to it, while we together with those of the past two millennia travel back to it. "And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to Myself." (John 12:32) There is no other point of entry to the Kingdom of God, but a lowly, if not repulsive, bloodstained instrument of torturous execution; the cross of Jesus Christ.

The cross is powerful because of Who died upon it. The sinless Lamb of God was sacrificed on this rough-hewn wooden altar twenty centuries ago. Christ was on the cross and "…God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself." (II Cor. 5:19) Ironically and paradoxically, this vehicle of suffering and death, both symbolized and is the actual expression of God's great love for mankind.

The cross knows no competition. There are many counterfeits and synthetics making their cases in the form of various world religions, ideologies, and philosophies. All are, in the final analysis, impotent and powerless to span the gap between fallen humanity and Sovereignty. God does not view other religions as contest, but delusions, doctrines of demons, and non-entities. The cross, while demonstrating the depth of God's love, is completely intolerant of opposing claims to salvation. "For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus." (I Timothy 2:5)

The proud, arrogant, self-willed and blind, sneer at the bloody cross, despising its exclusive claims and offer… They speak of many other avenues to the Father. Their mantras are, "I think-I feel-I believe." All are disconnected from the Eternal Word, which establishes specific and non-negotiable conditions. "You were not redeemed with corruptible things, like silver or gold…but with the precious blood of Christ." (I Peter 1:18,19) Every human being, having experienced the life-changing force of the Gospel; every former derelict, every criminal, incorrigibly selfish person, or moralistic and self-righteous individual, regenerated by the Holy Spirit and connected to the "true vine", has journeyed to the foot of the cross, by faith and in spirit.

All are candidates for eternal life, as the call is to "whosoever". It is the work of the Lord, to draw, convince, convict, and transform people. While God may speak through us, it is neither the pitching of an idea, or the selling of a product; it is His work entirely! "No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him…" (John 6:44)

Men and women, young or old, wealthy or impoverished, irrespective of personal history, race, education, or pedigree have come. Acknowledging spiritual bankruptcy and laying down all personal claims, they have found mercy, grace, and real life at the foot of the cross.

I personally experienced the Father's drawing as a young boy, six years old. I was convinced of my personal need of the Savior, crucified for me. I became convicted of my own sin and immensity of the baggage passed down through my ancestors clear back to the first Adam. Realizing Christ and His cross as the only door to eternal life, I confessed my sin and found cleansing and inexplicable newness, as an incredible weight was lifted. It was not a cerebral thing, but very real within me. I joined the innumerable crowd of the ages that "gathered round to find that they'd been found…drawn to the foot of the cross!"