Coming Back is Sweet
Updated: Oct 8
Most believers don't wake up one morning and decide to walk away from God. Usually it happens slowly. Life gets busy. Priorities shift. The noise of the world grows louder while the voice of God becomes easier to ignore. Before long, we can find ourselves chasing things that promise satisfaction but leave us emptier than before.
Every wandering heart is searching for something—joy, purpose, peace, significance, security. The problem isn't that we desire those things. The problem is where we look for them.
Coming Back Is Sweet is a song about returning to the One we should never have left. It's a confession of pride, self-reliance, distraction, and wasted time, but it's also a song about surrender and the redeeming grace of God. For me, this song became something more. In many ways, this is the song that started everything that followed in this music ministry.
Personal Reflection
One of the hardest lessons I've learned is that nothing this world offers can compete with what is found in Christ. Lesser things can look appealing for a season. They promise comfort, pleasure, recognition, control, or relief from pain. But eventually every substitute leaves us hungry for what only God can provide.
The lyrics came from recognizing that in my own life:
“I was caught up in the noise of every day, Took my eyes off of Jesus and stepped away.”
I wasn't writing about some theoretical wanderer. I was confessing my own wandering. But there was another part of my story underneath these words too. A cerebral hemorrhage and damage to my right frontal lobe had changed things I once took for granted. My brain worked differently. My speech changed. My processing slowed. Eventually I was medically retired on disability.
There is a particular kind of grief that comes when you don't simply lose something—you lose parts of the person you remember being. When abilities change and doors close, questions about usefulness and purpose can become painfully real. What do I have left to offer? What purpose could God possibly have for me now?
I remember praying something very simple: “Lord, can I serve You being a janitor at a church. I'll happily do the lowliest task. I just want to be useful.”
I wasn't asking for a platform or a music ministry. I certainly wasn't imagining songs reaching people around the world. I just wanted my life to still be useful to God.
That's part of what gives these lyrics so much weight for me:
“I wasted so much time chasing lesser things,Now I’m ready, Lord, for what Your purpose brings.”
I couldn't give God the man I used to be. I couldn't recover wasted years, restore every lost ability, or go backward and rewrite what had happened. I could only give Him the man I was now.
That made another line more than a lyric: “Use me, Lord, I surrender it all.” I didn't know what “use me” would look like anymore. Looking back, that's part of what makes this song so important to me. The music that followed didn't grow out of God returning my life to what it had been. It grew out of surrendering to Him the life I still had.
Theme
Hundreds of years before Jesus walked the earth, the prophet Joel delivered God's call to His people: “Return to me with all your heart.” That's the heart of repentance. Not merely regretting what we've done, becoming more religious, or trying to recover enough lost ground to make ourselves acceptable again. It is turning back to God.
Joel reminds them who it is they're returning to: “for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.” Later in the same chapter comes an extraordinary picture of restoration: “I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten.”
We need to handle that promise carefully. It doesn't mean every consequence of every sinful choice will disappear, nor is it a guarantee that God will recreate our past exactly as though nothing happened. Those words were spoken in a particular context to God's covenant people following devastating judgment. But they reveal something important about the character and redemptive work of God: what looks wasted to us is not beyond His ability to redeem.
I couldn't recover wasted years, go backward and rewrite choices, or undo every consequence of wandering. But I could bring God what remained. That's what surrender does. It stops demanding that God repair yesterday according to our expectations and places today in His hands.
God doesn't need us to recover yesterday before He can use our today.
That truth reaches beyond our sinful wandering. Some things are taken from us that we never chose to lose. Illness, injury, disability, grief, and circumstances beyond our control can leave us staring at a life we barely recognize. God does not promise to restore every lost ability or return our lives to what they once were. But changed does not mean useless, and limitation does not mean the end of purpose. Whatever remains can still be surrendered to Him.
That's what Coming Back Is Sweet became for me: repentance for where I had wandered and surrender of the man I had become.
This song reminds us
Drifting from God often happens gradually through distraction, pride, pain, and misplaced desire.
Repentance isn't merely feeling sorry for where we've been; it's turning our hearts back toward God.
God's call to return rests on His gracious and merciful character.
Restoration doesn't necessarily erase every consequence or restore every loss.
Illness, injury, disability, and profound change do not make a life useless to God.
God's gifts are entrusted to us for His purposes, not merely our own gain.
Surrender means placing what remains in God's hands without demanding to know what He will do with it.
Jesus is better than every lesser thing we chased while wandering.
Scripture Foundation
Joel 2:12–13 — God calls His people to return to Him with all their hearts and reminds them that He is gracious, merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.
Joel 2:25–27 — God speaks restoration after devastation, showing that what appears lost or wasted is not beyond His redemptive purposes.
Psalm 51:10–12 — David asks God for a clean heart, a renewed spirit, and the restoration of the joy of salvation.
James 4:8 — “Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.”
Romans 12:1 — In view of God's mercy, believers are called to present their lives to God as living sacrifices.
1 Peter 4:10 — The gifts God gives us are to be stewarded in service to others.
Processing Questions
Take a few moments and reflect:
What distractions or lesser things have pulled your attention away from Christ?
Is there an area where God is calling you not merely to feel regret, but to return to Him?
Are you allowing regret over wasted time—or grief over something you've lost—to convince you that God no longer has a purpose for your life?
What gift, ability, opportunity, or part of your life do you need to place back into God's hands?
If your prayer became simply, “Use me, Lord, I surrender it all,” what might obedience look like today?
Prayer
Father,
Thank You that when I wander, You still call me to return. Thank You that You are gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
Forgive me for the times I've taken my eyes off Jesus and chased lesser things. Forgive my pride, my excuses, and the ways I've tried to find apart from You what can only truly be found in You.
I can't recover yesterday. I can't reclaim every wasted moment, restore everything I've lost, or undo every consequence. But I can give You today.
So I surrender again. I give You the person I am now. My life is Yours. My gifts are Yours. My limitations are Yours. My plans are Yours. Take what You have entrusted to me and use it for Your purposes rather than my own gain.
Restore the joy of my salvation. Keep my heart near Christ, and give me grace to obey whatever You place before me next. Use me, Lord. I surrender it all.
In Jesus' name, Amen.
Closing
I didn't know where this song would lead when I wrote it. I knew I had wandered. I knew lesser things had failed me. I also knew my life had changed in ways I couldn't reverse, and I wondered what usefulness I still had.
So I prayed, “Use me, Lord, I surrender it all.”
That prayer didn't make me the hero of the story. It put the story back where it belonged—in God's hands. What followed became songs, ministry, and opportunities I couldn't have mapped out beforehand. But the sweetest part was never what came afterward. The sweetest part was coming back to Jesus.
Maybe you look behind you and see wasted years. Or maybe you're looking at a life changed by something you never chose—illness, injury, loss, disability, or circumstances that have left you wondering what you could possibly still offer. You cannot give God the person you used to be. Give Him the person you are now.
His call still stands: “Return to me with all your heart.”
Come back. Lay it down. Put whatever remains into His hands and let Him decide what He wants to do with it.
“Coming back is sweet, Coming home again.”
Because Jesus is still better than everything we left Him for.
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