[Pauler]

Inpop Records duo Shane & Shane member Shane Barnard shares insight from his journal on the songs featured in the long-awaited new recording, Pages, which releases Aug. 28. Please consider printing Barnard’s thoughts on the songs in full and/or incorporating into your features and reviews. (Shane & Shane high-resolution images are available upon request.)

Shane Barnard Shares Journal Excerpts
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The songs of

PAGES

Shane Barnard (left) and Shane Everett

1. Vision of You

Over the years we have learned a very real and sobering truth: we can't change hearts. We can set up big speakers and fancy lights. We can sing and make noise on wooden things with strings. We can conjure up the most eloquent words possible, but if the Spirit of God doesn't stir... and move... and change, we are left with songs. Just songs. This song is a prayer to the ever-present God to come and stir our hearts for King Jesus. To do so much more than songs…

2. We Love You Jesus

God gave me this song in a coffee shop in Kansas City. Out of the blue, a song of love came rising in my heart - for His journey to earth through a baby, for His death on the cross, for His rising and taking the sting out of death. He gave it to me as a gift to prepare me for the months to come; my father passed away just a few months after I wrote the song. “We Love You Jesus” reminds me that because of Him, my dad did not feel the sting of death.

3. Beg

"Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law? And He said to them, ‘You SHALL love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment’.” (Matt 22:36-37) This is A LOT of love! Is it even possible?

"God has the right to COMMAND of me what, by the nature of my profound rebellion, I cannot give.” (John Piper)

I WANT to love Him, like he asks. But I don't. So... I beg.

4. Over the Sun

In the book of Ecclesiastes, King Solomon looks for meaning and satisfaction in EVERYTHING under the sun... and He discovered that it is all found on the other side. This song is a letter to us who are stuffing our faces with the food found under the sun, hoping to quench an eternal thirst. This song is a letter from Solomon telling us to stop looking here, and start looking over the sun, where life is hidden.

5. Holiday

Jesus IS my rest. He is my holiday. He is my home. And He is here! In the storm, He is here! When I need to "get away," I can! Because He is inside of me! The God of the universe is here.

6. Bad Days Better

I don't know what I would do without my Jesus. I don't know where I would run, or what shoulder I would cry on. He makes bad days better. He makes rough places smooth. He unexplainably makes me happy in hard times.

7. Psalm 62

What an amazing thought to think that my salvation doesn't lean on me! It leans on a ROCK, something that doesn't move! A FORTRESS! Let us run to Him in our weakness! For our life in God rests completely ON God! It is secure.

8. Burn Us Up

"...our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and He will deliver us out of Your hand O king. But EVEN IF HE DOESN'T, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.” (Dan 3:17-18)

This is a story of deliverance! Our Sunday school favorite is of how these three men, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, were rescued from the fiery furnace without a single singed hair! But there is this line, this HUGE line: "Even if He doesn't." These men were convinced they had a God who was able, but they were ready to burn alive for this Deliverer.

9. Embracing Accusation

One day, the devil was singing over me the first verse of a very familiar tune: that I have gone astray. That I have failed to please God. That if I "cannot abide by the laws in this book and do them, I am CURSED.” (Gal 3:10) and He's RIGHT! I have failed! A LOT!

Soon after, The Holy Spirit of God completed the age-old song by singing the chorus over me. "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us!” (Gal 3:13) To the praise of His glorious grace! Amen.

10. Before the Throne

"Because the sinless savior died, my sinful soul is counted free. For God the just is satisfied to look on Him and pardon me." Jesus did it!

This is an old hymn written in the 1800s. I heard it at church and HAD to put it on the album. I wrote a chorus and put it after "Embracing Accusation" to better explain it.

11. Wounded

An old saint nicknamed “Saint John of the Cross” helped me with this prayer I have for God to mend and heal and complete the work He has done in me. He has captured me with His love. He has wounded me, and though He is my delight, I am flailing around in despair until I see Him.

12. In You

Why is it that in my deepest moments of despair, I find the deepest pools of peace? What an alien thing! In Christ I find my death, and in that, I find unexplainable rest. I pray that He would keep us on a beaten down path of dying to ourselves... and there be satisfied.

13. When I Think About the Lord

We have been singing this glorious song for years. It’s a song that says it all: He has saved us. He has raised us up with Him. He has filled us with his Spirit. He is WORTHY of all the praise!