Matisyahu - King Without a Crown

Blogging Through Song

Release/Renew

I’ve loved this song since I first heard it back in 2006. I was a sophomore in bible college and thought it had a good vibe and a solid message, but it wasn’t until just recently hearing it again that the lyrics really came alive to me. Over the last year or so the Lord has been doing a major work in my heart regarding how I interact with my family and others in my life. He pointed out that I, like apparently many other men, had stopped growing in maturity and began fitting into the mold of what a culturally accepted for a man — more on that idea at a later time.

The last year he has grown and stretched me. It took time, but over the last few months I’ve seen and my wife has witnessed a substantial change for the better. In many ways He has been undoing a lot of the learned habits and behaviors that I’d picked up and replacing them with a strong desire to walk with Him in a genuine humility and to loving lead my family with grace, peace, and true biblical justice. It’s been difficult at times. It’s not easy to unlearn and change behaviors and ideas that you have carried and believed in for years, but it has been genuinely refreshing.

A Thought for the Men

One of the things that Jesus has really laid on my wife’s heart and mine, is to see other families submit themselves to God to allow His transforming work in their lives. For me, the focus is on the young men, the husbands, and the fathers. So many of the wives of my friends think they are doing well while their wives are feeling crushed under the weight and burden of being a godly wife. Now I’m not saying the ladies don’t have things they need to work on or repent from, but as the spiritual head of our homes it is on us to lift them up and to participate. They need us to share the burden just as Jesus carried the burden for his bride, the Church.

This is all sounding very lofty and idealized, but it’s rooted in a very real and practical need. It can also be very frustrating! I talk to men about this and how we need to be a community of brothers who can spur one another on to live like Jesus only to be met with vague agreement and empty platitudes of sermon note principles. Those things are good to know, and they are true, but unless those ideas translate into action they are meaningless. Consider the following verse from this song:

Strip away the layers and reveal your soul
Got to give yourself up and then you become whole
You're a slave to yourself and you don't even know
You want to live the fast life but your brain moves slow
If you're trying to stay high then you're bound to stay low
You want God but you can't deflate your ego
If you're already there then there's nowhere to go
If you're cup's already full then its bound to overflow
If you're drowning in the water's and you can't stay afloat
Ask Hashem¹ for mercy and he'll throw you a rope
You're looking for help from God you say he couldn't be found
Looking up to the sky and searchin' beneath the ground
Like a King without his Crown
You keep fallin' down
You really want to live but can't get rid of your frown
Tried to reach unto the heights and wound bound down on the ground
Given up your pride and the you heard a sound
Out of night comes day and out of day comes light
Nullified to the One like sunlight in a ray,
Makin' room for his love and a fire gon blaze
Makin' room for his love and a fire gon blaze

I will have a lot more on this topic in the future, but to keep it brief and to the point I’m increasingly finding men in the Church to have one of two problems:

1. They are in a very conservative tradition that leads to absentee husbands and fathers because it is the wife’s role to run the house and rear the children. These guys often end up with unrealistic expectations for their families and marital intimacy. They love their wives and their children but are not doing well and cannot reconcile that idea with the good work they are doing as a godly man.

2. They are in a more liberal/progressive tradition that leads to the circumvention of the biblical order of familial life. These guys often fail to take up the role that God has for them because they don’t want to seem to be going down the road of misogyny. They love their wives and their children, but are not able to fulfill God’s purpose for them without first breaking free of the Western feminist ideas on men and families.

Ultimately, it is our responsibility as men of God to reject the worldly cultures of both conservative and progressive Christianity for the biblical culture outlined in the Scriptures; and the only way we can do that is through brokenness, humility, and daily submission to the Holy Spirit with a teachable spirit to hear the hard things that trigger us to anger.

Lyrics

You're all that I have and you're all that I need
Each and every day I pray to get to know you please
I want to be close to you, yes I'm so hungry
You're like water for my soul when it gets thirsty
Without you there's no me
You're the air that I breathe
Sometimes the world is dark and I just can't see
With these, demons surround all around to bring me down to negativity
But I believe, yes I believe, I said I believe
I'll stand on my own two feet
Won't be brought down on one knee
Fight with all of my might and get these demons to flee
Hashem's rays fire blaze burn bright and I believe
Hashem's rays fire blaze burn bright and I believe
Out of darkness comes light, twilight unto the heights
Crown Heights burnin' up all through till midnight
Said, thank you to my God, now I finally got it right
And I'll fight with all of my heart, and all a' my soul, and all a' my might

What's this feeling?
My love will rip a hole in the ceiling
Givin' myself to you from the essence of my being
Sing to my god all these songs of love and healing
I want Meshiach now so it's time we start revealing

What's this feeling?
My love will rip a hole in the ceiling
Givin' myself to you from the essence of my being
Sing to my God all these songs of love and healing
I want Meshiach now

Strip away the layers and reveal your soul
Got to give yourself up and then you become whole
You're a slave to yourself and you don't even know
You want to live the fast life but your brain moves slow
If you're trying to stay high then you're bound to stay low
You want God but you can't deflate your ego
If you're already there then there's nowhere to go
If you're cup's already full then its bound to overflow
If you're drowning in the water's and you can't stay afloat
Ask Hashem for mercy and he'll throw you a rope
You're looking for help from God you say he couldn't be found
Looking up to the sky and searchin' beneath the ground
Like a King without his Crown
You keep fallin' down
You really want to live but can't get rid of your frown
Tried to reach unto the heights and wound bound down on the ground
Given up your pride and the you heard a sound
Out of night comes day and out of day comes light
Nullified to the One like sunlight in a ray,
Makin' room for his love and a fire gon blaze
Makin' room for his love and a fire gon blaze

What's this feeling?
My love will rip a hole in the ceiling
Givin' myself to you from the essence of my being
Sing to my God all these songs of love and healing
I want Meshiach now so it's time we start revealing

What's this feeling?
My love will rip a hole in the ceiling
Givin' myself to you from the essence of my being
Sing to my God all these songs of love and healing
I want Meshiach now

And see, I lift up my eyes where my help come from
And I seen it circling around from the mountain
Thunder!
You feel it in your chest
You keep my mind at ease and my soul at rest
You're not vexed

When I look to the sky where my help come from
And I've seen it circling around from the mountain
Thunder!
You feel it in your chest
You keep my mind at ease and my soul at rest
You're not vexed

1. Hashem is a Hebrew word meaning “the name”. It is a periphrastic term, much like adonai, used in place of the formal name for God to avoid accidentally misusing His name and violating the third commandment to not take His name in vain.