Search - Steven Curtis Chapman :: Declaration

Melanie W. (novelwriter) from SURFSIDE BCH, SC
Reviewed on 2/2/2008...

I absolutely love this cd! This is my favorite Steven Curtis Chapman cd. There are so many great songs on this cd. I highly recomend it.

Daryl J. from EUGENE, OR
Reviewed on 3/28/2007...

Good

Shelley K. from WAPAKONETA, OH
Reviewed on 2/5/2007...

Still in the shrink wrap. Was a gift - I already have this CD and it is one of my favorites of all time. You will sing along!

Kate R. from FRANKLIN, TN
Reviewed on 8/7/2006...

One of his best albums

His Best Album

D. Christensen | Mancos, CO, US of A | 10/10/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This album would be in my Top Five greatest albums of all time! It is absolutely fantastic! There are five standout tracks: Live Out Loud, Jesus Is Life, See The Glory, Bring It On, and Declaration Of Dependence. Live Out Loud is just an all-around good song about sharing your faith with others, not keeping it to yourself. This Day is about each day being new and to be content with what life throw at you. Jesus Is Life is pretty self-explanatory. No Greater Love is about God's great love for us. God Is God is about worshipping God, not ourselves or other material things. See The Glory is about waking up to the realization that there are huge things around us to be discovered if we just look up and pay attention to the beauty around us. Bring It On is about not running from trouble, and realizing that trouble makes us stronger and brings us to realize that we need to depend on God. When Love Takes You In is basically the same message as No Greater Love. Magnificent Obsession is about being awed by God's glory. Declaration Of Dependence is about being fully dependent on Christ. God Follower is about wanting to be just that-a God follower. Carry You to Jesus is about leading a friend to Christ. Savior is an all-around praise song. If you are first-time listener of Steven Curtis Chapman, this would be a good introductory album worth listening to. Highly reccomended"

What kind of flame?

David A. Baer | Indianapolis, IN USA | 05/13/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"An album of the caliber of Steven Curtis Chapman's DECLARATION worms its way deeper into an appreciative listener's soul with every new pass-through. Its appeal is multi-layered. Each new encounter with this kind of music reveals a new facet, a previously unheard sound, the pleasure of an allusive turn of phrase that had gone undetected.



Chapman winks and nods a fair bit in this CD, a hobby that doesn't distract him from exploring life-and-death themes via some very fine music. The album's opening track--the jaunty, witty, `Live Out Loud' starts the winking in earnest, but you get the idea he's just getting down to business and having a bit of meaningful fun while he arranges his desk.



If that's your first impression, events prove you correct with `This Day', a profoundly theological orientation to *this* day. Like the psalmists in some of their most perceptive moments, Chapman lays his emphasis on the given moment. Though he can sing that `you are the same yesterday, today, and forever', he knows you rarely get to eyeball all that. *Today*, by contrast, is right here, right now. Chapman, like the best practitioners of biblical faith, knows the transparent merger of bedrock confession, on the one hand, and the plea for the capacity to believe, on the other: `Father help me to believe ...', he cries out in imitation of a well-remembered gospel cameo, almost in the same breath as a stunning articulation of what he *does* believe. Such tranparency is in no small measure responsible for the affection Chapman's fans maintain for him. What in other mouths might come across as preaching is in Chapman's music the honest confession of something he is learning to get right without yet having mastered it.



When the CD liner gives three or four biblical texts at the beginning of each song's credits and lyrics, it is not because Chapman went looking for a string of biblical catchwords to tack clumsily to what he had come to by a completely other route. Nor is it because he simply couldn't make up his mind which passage `fit best'. To the contrary, the odd habit of prefacing his artistic work with a constellation of texts represents the fingerprint of a genuine biblical theologian who sings out with exquisite mastery truth what he has considered unhurriedly, quietly, lovingly.



Then follows `Jesus is Life', a winsome declaration of the benignly totalitarian claim of Jesus on one's life. In tracks like this, Chapman allows decency and charm to disarm the embarrassment that often surrounds speculation about `a certain Someone'.



Then, just when you thought it was safe to go outside, Something Big happens. `No Greater Love' changes the tone as an astonishing ode to the stubborn mercy that took the iconic Jim Elliot and four other men to Ecuador to die on the shore of a river with spears stuck in their bodies. This tune, which begs repeated listening, tells the story of one of the Amerindian men who in their ignorance took these men's lives. Tertullian's dictum that `the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church' soars here on a new melody. Rhetorical questions are sometimes the best way to articulate what we know and what we do not know in the face of life's majestic enigmas. Chapman wraps his wonderings about them in such grammar, to magnificent effect.



`God is God' arguably climbs the album's highest peak. It is perhaps the finest recent musical articulation of life's essential anti-idolatrous confession: `God is God and I am not'. Simply put, Chapman gets everything right on this track. From the ominous, strum-over-voice opening to the mid-sentence foundation statement (`... And the pain falls like a curtain // On the things I once called certain // And I have to say the words I fear the most // I just don't know') to the monastic-esque refrain and closing statement, every detail comes together, powered by the force that throbs at the center of Christian faith and the life-altering consciousness that by grace allows many to see things clearly and to realize that until now they had not.



`See the Glory' continues with the same large-ness of soul and note. But even this accomplished track cedes pride of place to the Anthem of The Wise Wo/Man that follows, a song that's become a kind of musical creed in this reviewer's home, to be played on the mornings that more than anything else promise a hard day ahead. Bring it On is an immensely courageous song. Part battle cry, part sung recollection of God's reliability, part self-talk, Chapman has sounded more sober and determined than he does on this potent track.



I didn't come lookin' for trouble

And I don't want to fight needlessly

But I'm not gonna hide in a bubble

If trouble comes for me

I can feel my heart beating faster

I can tell something's coming down

But if it's gonna make me grow stronger then...



Bring it on

Let the lightning flash, let the thunder roll, let the storm winds blow

Bring it on

Let the trouble come, let the hard rain fall, let it make me strong

Bring it on



Now, maybe you're thinkin' I'm crazy

And maybe I need to explain some things

`Cause I know I've got an enemy waiting

Who wants to bring me pain

But what he never seems to remember

What he means for evil God works for good

So I will not retreat or surrender



Now, I don't want to sound like some hero

`Cause it's God alone that my hope is in

But I'm not gonna run from the very things

That would drive me closer to Him

So bring it on



Bring it on

Let the lightning flash, let the thunder roll, let the storm winds blow

Bring it on

Let the trouble come, let it make me fall on the One who's strong

Bring it on

Let the lightning flash, let the thunder roll, let the storm winds blow

Bring it on

Let me be made weak so I'll know the strength of the One who's strong

Bring it on

Bring it on



If more of us were bent on being good instead of nice, there'd be a bit more of this track sung in living rooms, cars, offices, and church washrooms. That alone would improve the world.



Steven Curtis Chapman has grown on this reviewer gradually and mostly through my sons' musical collections. Yet I find myself standing back in quiet awe before this offering in a way that is not so true of this musician's other superb collections collections. In DECLARATION, justice, mercy, worship, music kiss here. Well-balanced friends, each fires the passion and acuity of the other."