“I’m a real believer in people finding God in the midst of Scripture,” shared David Nasser in a recent conversation with CMCentral, “because I see that everyday in my own life. I’m a product of Scripture. The night I became a Christian I opened up the Bible and read the story of Peter getting out of a boat and walking toward Jesus on the water. God spoke to me through that story and said, ‘Hey, you need to be like Peter and step out and come toward Me.’ Spiritually speaking, I stepped out of the boat of comfort and said ‘Jesus, I trust You,’ and I’ve never turned back.”

One of Nasser’s most compelling principles in “Glory Revealed” pertains to the Lord’s eager willingness to communicate with His people, and the companion CD underscores its point powerfully. Each of the book’s twenty stand-alone chapters shows how God’s glory is woven into our everyday lives. Nasser portrays a God actively engaged with the world, and each individual with ears to hear, through the normal experiences of daily life. In discussing how easily teachings are absorbed through music, Nasser says, “If people enjoy the record and take in the words of its songs, they’re memorizing over 40 passages of Scripture without even trying, and then those passages will come to life for them, for God is constantly revealing Himself through the Scriptures. We just need to relearn how to look and listen.”

The book’s twenty chapters cover topics as thoughtfully provocative as God revealed through:

• Conversation
• Fearing
• Not Fearing
• Friendship
• Our Inability
• Accountability

“We have to back up and re-fashion some of our language,” states Nasser. “God is not sitting at Starbucks for an hour with most of us, although you could easily get that impression from some people. He is speaking to us. It’s not with an audible voice, but rather through His Word, and through prayer and meditation and spiritual disciplines.”  

It is not the easier, less costly avenue offered by simply listening to the latest podcast or the hippest Christian music, but finding God and His Kingdom is that pearl of great value that Jesus encouraged us to seek in Matthew 13, the one worth the loss of everything else. “Jesus, the Living Word, is the glory of God revealed in human form, but He is no longer walking among us,” shares Nasser. “He has however left us his Word. To really love Jesus the Word we have to fall in love with the written Word,” he adds.

In listening to the Glory Revealed CD, and reading through the chapters of the companion book of the same title, I have been personally challenged to consider my own level of willingness to pursue the Lord through the instrument of His Word, the gift He gave to enable me to know Him. How did the Bible become so peripheral to our Christian experience?

When I mentioned this question, David Nasser impressed me once again with his openness. “I too have a wayward heart,” he answered honestly. “I find it too easy to wander away from Scripture, even as the guy who is the main flag-waver for this project. I too have to tell myself, ‘OK, God is not gonna give me a big syringe of I-want-to-read-my-Bible-serum.’ I’m going to have to apply discipline, in

David Nasser is not unable to understand how easy it can sometimes be to let the discipline of daily Bible-reading slip out of our lives, especially in an age that offers us so many seemingly-viable “aides.” But he thinks we have made a grave error in perspective. “I think we’ve gotten caught up in the frame rather than the art,” he says. “The podcasts, the music, even this book, they need to be the frame that frames out this great painting, which is the Word of God. If you go to see a great painting and talk about how wonderful the frame is, then the frame didn’t do its job. All of our songs and these other tools are supposed to be arrows that point us toward the Word of God.”

I’ve noted and applauded the recent healthy trend toward Scripture-based music. Considering the general laxity of the Christian community in terms of discipline and focus, it’s impossible not to find hope and comfort in these ‘voices in the wilderness.’ David Nasser and Mac Powell’s Glory Revealed seems to have struck a chord in the musical community, and Nasser’s “Glory Revealed: How the Invisible God Makes Himself Known” brings the second part of the one-two punch that we desperately need.

For more information about Glory Revealed, visit the official website: www.GloryRevealed.com