The "Good News" We Seek

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A young, indie-pop band called Ocean Park Standoff has recently released a hit single entitled “Good News.”  With catchy beats and lyrics, the song draws in its listeners from the opening notes.  Still, there is a greater value to this song than its potential to climb music charts.

About the motivation for writing the song, one of the band members remarks, "It was about our daily lives and breakups and work issues and the fact that everything coming at us from the outside world was like, 'It's only getting worse!' because that's what sells."  Indeed, the human heart cries out for good news in the midst of the mundane and in the midst of suffering.  The answer, however, does not lie in what we can do for ourselves, in the power or positive thinking.  This song should remind all of us that we need more than that.  This song is a cry for a deeper relationship with the Heavenly Father and His Son, Jesus Christ.

Many of the lyrics point the listener in that direction.  In the opening verse, we hear “You can take my best/It’s yours, it was never for me.”  At every stage of life, human beings seek to give their best to something.  We intuitively know that our best is not meant for ourselves, but for others.  That’s part of the Gospel.  The Lord reminds us that He has granted great gifts to us, but they are to be used to build up others.

At the end of each verse, the lead singer expresses a deep yearning. “I’m just looking for something to get me out of my seat/Something that’s true,” he sings.  Wow!  There may not be a clearer connection to the Gospel than this one.  Each of us searches for what’s true, and each of us longs to live purposefully for something.  We are not apt to dedicate ourselves to things that we don’t find true or meaningful.  Even our twisted, misguided actions are taken in search of the true, good, and beautiful.  We want to get out of our seats, off of our proverbial back-sides, and live for something great.  God, the foundation of all that is true, certainly can get us out of our seats and bring us to a new, great life.

Another poignant line repeats several times: “Tell me why it feels like I’m still on the run.”  In a psychological sense, all human persons “run” toward or away from something.  In the case of this song, it sounds as though the running is headed toward something that hasn’t been known or found yet.  This should tell us definitively that every human person longs and searches for fulfillment.  Once we realize that we should run towards Jesus Christ, because He is the fulfillment of all that we long for, our running takes on a new purpose.

The chorus chants, “I need some good news, baby/Feels like the world’s gone crazy.”  The world has gone crazy because our culture has begun to deny that all of us have deep and intense longings.  More than that, our culture has begun to tell us that we can satisfy the deepest longings of our hearts with gadgets, money, and sex.  We know intuitively that this is not true, and we see evidence of it everywhere in our world.  Gadgets, money, and sex have led us to craziness, insanity, because we have turned them into gods in themselves.  The Good News is that the Almighty God has given those things as gifts so that we might know more of His Goodness.  Everything that we see and know becomes subsumed under our relationship with Him.

Near the end of the song, there is an enigmatic phrase that we can connect to the Christian life.  “Give it all or give me up,” the band sings, “I won’t settle for enough.”  People do not want to be in relationships in which the other partner is not “all in.”  We want to know that another person is giving his or her best, whether in sports or business or marriage.  If we find out that a partner is not committed, we are tempted to quit.  We don’t want to settle for something that is “just enough.”  Yet, we must remember that the Gospel is not so much about what we get as what we give.  To be like Jesus, we will have to endure times when others are not at their best.


This is the part of the Good News that will surprise us.  There certainly will be times when we feel justified in quitting a relationship, when we feel as though the world is getting the best of us, or when we feel that we just aren’t worthy.  In those moments, Jesus reminds us that He has sought us out by taking on our human nature; He has reconciled us to the Father by enduring the Passion and Cross for us, even though we have quit on that relationship many times; that He offers the very best thing in the universe, the grace of the Father.  Recalling the opening lines of the song, the Heavenly Father offers His best to us, His Only-Begotten Son.  He does not need grace, forgiveness, or salvation.  Grace, forgiveness, and salvation are entirely for us, and that is Good News.

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