Karl Allison tells how a modern piece of CCM radically changed his life.

I bought the album 'The Secret Of Time' at Greenbelt two years ago after hearing Charlie Peacock on mainstage. His set had so excited me that I just could not wait to get home and play the album. Side one was so good that I kept on playing it over and over again, without even thinking of turning the record over. When I eventually did, I was rewarded with one of my life's greatest moments of illumination.

I had no idea it was coming. It was an ordinary day and I was sitting in my front room quite unprepared for what was to follow. "The Secret Of Time" began. Immediately my attention was caught by the sheer depth of that first line: "Time is a gift of love and grace" and the song demanded to be listened to in a more intense fashion.

But still it was just another song. No fireworks yet. And then, suddenly, Charlie sang the lyrics which stunned me. "And over and over, I must learn and relearn, that whether I increase or whether I decrease is not my concern".

It's the first and last time that I remember being transfixed by a song lyric. It was as if time stood still and I had no doubt whatsoever that God was speaking to me. Great truths, scriptural truths that I somehow had not understood from reading scripture, came to me with complete comprehension.

I had to let go of my ambitions and let God shape the direction of my life. I had to repent of all those feelings of self-importance that I had built up over the years. I had to trust God sufficiently to allow him to make me as important or unimportant as he willed. If I lived for him then my status in this life was simply "not my concern".

I'd completely missed the rest of the song and the next track was playing. I took the needle from the record and played the song again, this time hearing the whole thing with a great joy. It was so personal to me; it was my song.
Of course, to learn a truth and to live a truth is not usually the same thing. Two years later and I am still learning from the Lord what it means to be humble, to give him control of my life and glory for anything that I achieve in it. And in the past few months, I have again been encouraged by that same lyric. It's not just me that is wrestling with this. Charlie is too! He's honest enough to say: "And over and over, I must learn and re-learn . . ."

I will be forever grateful to this supremely talented man for his honesty and humility and my prayer is that my own experience will mirror his. I want to learn the lesson. I want my life to give glory to God and not to myself.

THE SECRET OF TIME
Words and Music by Charlie Peacock

Time is a gift of love and grace
Without time there'd be no time to change
Time to be tried, humbled and broken
Time to hear the word of love spoken

I see the mission up ahead of me
And I tremble as one shaken
But if I have the eyes of Faith
The eyes to see
I will leave the outcome
In the hands of the one who called me
And over and over, I must learn and re-learn
That whether I increase or whether I decrease
It's not my concern

My history is written through the choices I make
Let me sing ten true words
I'd rather sing just ten true words
Than a hundred words that in the end
Will all amount to nothing, absolutely nothing.
© 1990 Sparrow (Word (UK)) Reprinted with permission