MULTIMEDIA-ENGLISH
You are more -w/ lyrics (Tenth Avenue North)
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3:40
Video page URL
https://multimedia-english.com/videos/music/you-are-more-w-lyrics-tenth-avenue-north-3304
Description

The famous hit by Tenth Avenue North now with lyrics included on this praise video.


You can see the original music video here: You Are More.

Transcript

There's a girl in the corner
With tear stains on her eyes
From the places she's wandered
And the shame she can't hide

She says, "How did I get here?
I'm not who I once was.
And I'm crippled by the fear
That I've fallen too far to love"

But don't you know who you are,
What has been done for you?
Yeah don't you know who you are?

You are more than the choices that you've made,
You are more than the sum of your past mistakes,
You are more than the problems you create,
You've been remade.

Well she tries to believe it
That she's been given new life
But she can't shake the feeling
That it's not true tonight

She knows all the answers
And she's rehearsed all the lines
And so she'll try to do better
But then she's too weak to try

But don't you know who you are?

You are more than the choices that you've made,
You are more than the sum of your past mistakes,
You are more than the problems you create,

You've been remade.

You are more than the choices that you've made,
You are more than the sum of your past mistakes,
You are more than the problems you create,
You've been remade.

'Cause this is not about what you've done,
But what's been done for you.
This is not about where you've been,
But where your brokenness brings you to

This is not about what you feel,
But what He felt to forgive you,
And what He felt to make you loved.

You are more than the choices that you've made,
You are more than the sum of your past mistakes,
You are more than the problems you create,
You've been remade.

You are more than the choices that you've made,
You are more than the sum of your past mistakes,
You are more than the problems you create,
You've been remade.

You've been remade
You've been remade.
You've been remade.
You've been remade.

Explanations

TEAR STAINS= A stain is a coloured area that makes something dirty. Women often have make-up around their eyes (especially a black line), so when they cry, the tears dissolve the black makeup and produces a black stain line running down their cheek. So if a woman has tear stains, that means that she is or has been crying.

FROM= This "from" expresses cause, so she's crying "from the places she's wandered" and "from the shame she can't hide" means that she's crying because she's wandering and feeling shame.

WANDER= /wɒndə*d/ To walk without direction, without a purpose.

SHAME= A painful emotion caused by a strong sense of guilt, embarrassment, unworthiness, or disgrace.

HOW DID I GET HERE?= I feel so bad, what did I do or what happened? I don't understand.

I'M NOT WHO I ONCE WAS= I am a different person, I have changed (for the worse)

CRIPPLED= Handicapped, damaged, disabled. If you are crippled by the fear, you are so afraid that you can't have a normal and free life because fear limits you greatly.
"The cripple" is an old-fashioned (and a bit offensive) way to refer to "the disable" or "the handicapped" (people who can't walk or/and move their arms).

I'VE FALLEN= I have degraded, I have become a bad or dysfunctional person.

CHOICES= Elections.

THE SUM= The addition. "The sum of your past mistakes" is "all your past mistakes put together".

REMADE= Made again, transformed, changed.

SHAKE THE FEELING= Stop the feeling, getting rid of the feeling, sending it away from you.
If you "can't shake the feeling that it's not true", you can't stop thinking that it is not true.

REHEARSE= Practise. When you rehearse something, you do it several times to get ready and do it correctly in the future.

THE LINES= In a theatrical play, the lines are the things an actor has to say, the script.

WEAK= The opposite of "strong".

THIS IS NOT ABOUT...= The important thing is not...

WHAT'S BEEN DONE FOR YOU= This is a reference to Jesus' death. Jesus (God) died on the cross to save us and make us free, and also to show how much God loves us. So it is what Jesus did for you that makes you important, and it is what Jesus did that tells you who you are: God's child, and so, immensely valuable and loved.

BROKENNESS= The condition of being broken. But here, "broken" is used in the sense of "desperate, depressed, suffering" (broken-hearted or devastated).

WHAT HE FELT TO FORGIVE YOU= Many Christians think that when you do something wrong, God doesn't need to forgive you, because he has already forgiven you even before you sinned. When Jesus (= God) physically died on the cross, all our sins (before, during and after His death) were forgiven once and forever, and he forgave all our sins because He loved us so much and He wanted to prove His love in a way we could easily understand. So when the song says "This is not about what you feel, but what He felt to forgive you", it means "the important thing is not how depress you are, the important thing is how much God loves you, and if you understand that, you won't feel depressed anymore, you'll feel loved and appreciated".

Meaning

What this song is trying to tell you is that God's love will make you free (but His love can't reach you if your heart is closed to love)


"You've been re-made" (transformed), this is what you get from conversion. Accepting God's love will wash away all your sins (limitations) because it will make you feel strong enough to break all your chains and you'll shine again as good as new, and you'll discover that "you are more than the sum of your past mistakes". Now you're free to be you, without the burden of the past. You are so much more... you are simply great. But why?

Modern science tells you that you are simply the result of chaos, a strange coincidence in a meaningless universe, the result of an evolution that made a terrible mistake and created a plague of primates that are destroying a world that would be much better off without us.

Modern psychology tells you that you are not free to act, because your actions are conditioned by your education, your environment, your friends, your education... and so you have no option but to be exactly what you are because all those things are stronger than you.

Modern philosophy
tells you that nothing makes sense and we are alone in the universe (except maybe for some aliens living in some distant galaxy), and if you want to be free you must simply follow your animal instincts and desires and let yourself go without thinking too much of the consequences. So that will finally take us back to the old natural law which says that "only the fittest (the strongest) survive" and the weak must perish or be used.

Modern politics tell you that you are nothing but a producer and a consumer, a piece of the big machinery, so you are on this world simply to work so that you can make a lot of money so that you can spend all that money buying things that you don't need so that your country's economy will grow, because that is the only thing that matters, the market, not the people.

Modern New-Age religions
will tell you that if you connect with the stream of energy flowing across the Universe you will be a god, and so you will be limitless, almighty (with super-powers), and that will make you rich and popular and happy... but the only people who seem to get rich and popular and supposedly happy are the people who write all those books telling you that you are a god and the power is inside you.

And finally, modern society tells you that you are important only if you are "successful", which means that you must have money and power. If you don't produce and spend, you are useless, valueless, of no importance, so a housewife or a retired person, for instance, are not important people, and children are important just because they are great consumers and future producers.

So everywhere you look today, there's a big flashing sign telling you "You are Nothing. Nothing matters". A most famous commercial brand slogan says "Just do it": morality is not a filter or guidance anymore, don't think of the consequences, if you want to do it, just do it, have fun and enjoy the present because nothing matters. And then we are shocked when some people want to kill, rob, lie, beat their wives, oppress the weak or break the street lamps and they "just do it" because that is the message they are receiving all the time. We are living the nonsense of a society that is constantly telling you to let the animal in you go out, and then it is horrified when that animal comes out and causes havoc.

Against all this, the Christian gospel (gospel = good news) is telling you: you are more than all that, you are important, you are the son/daughter of God. Don't look for the power inside you because all you can find there is your own fears and limitations, look for the power in God, and His love will make you feel strong and immensely valuable and important. You may be rich or poor, a king or a servant, healthy or sick, young or old, an engineer or a housewife, an architect or a brick-layer... there is no difference, all of us are just the same because we are all God's children and that makes each and everyone of us unique and important. Evolution may have created our bodies the way they are, but it is God's love that brought us into life, and no son of God can be a slave. So whatever your past and your present may be, you are free to choose your destiny and, with God by your side, you will be strong enough to shape your future.

Jesus came to this world to teach us how to be free, through His message and, most of all, through His example. But all His life would have been just a nice and forgotten biography if He hadn't died for us. By suffering incredible torture and death on the cross, he proved to us how big God's love for us is, how important we are to Him. By rising back to life after His death, he proved to us how powerful God is. It was His death and resurrection that gave His disciples the strength they needed to risk their lives and spread the message, a message of hope for all mankind. His disciples became so free that not even death could stop them (and most of them were killed). In the same way, if you believe what God did for you, you will become so free and strong that nothing, not even death, can stop you. It's not a nice fairy tale, it happened to them, it has happened to millions of other people after them... and it can also happen to you today. And loving God is easy because now we know how much He loves us:

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son (John 3:16). We love him, because he first loved us (1 John  4:19) .

So it's not what you are, who you are, what you have, what you do, what you chose or what you make, it's what He made for you. Jesus gave His life for you to prove how important you are and how much He loves you. If God Himself died for you, how can you ever think that you are nothing? How can you ever think that nothing matters?  You   Are   Gold  !

As the movie says, there are two paths in life: the way of nature and the way of grace. You can choose which path you want to walk in this life, a meaningless path going nowhere or the path going straight to Love. You can choose to be just an intelligent monkey or God's child. Whatever you choose, God will love you and be with you, but you will end up living an empty life of anguish and fear or a full life of love, freedom and joy... and that depends entirely on you.


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You can watch the lead singer explaining the meaning of this song (briefly) here:


You Are More -video journal.