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Re:Tuned Mainstream Music

Artist: Lady Gaga
Song: Rain On Me
Album: Chromatica
Featured In: YLO 119

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Discussion Guide PDF

Lady Gaga

Discussion Guide

Artist: Lady Gaga
Album: Chromatica
Label: Interscope
Song: Rain On Me
From: YLO 119 (Spring 2020 | Missions)
Writer: Albert Forsythe | Diocese of Knoxville | Knoxville, Tennessee

Theme(s): Perseverance Confidence Self: Image/Uniqueness Depression

Teaching Point

Young people, at times, look at the world with expectations that something is owed to them. They are only looking for a good time without an expectation that this world is flawed. When we realize that there is no free ride and none of us are innocent, we can then open ourselves to the true meaning of God and learn what it means to live a life worthy of His love.

Opening Questions:

What do we expect in this life? When life mistreats us, where do we look for comfort, strength, and relief?

Discussion

Scripture tells us that when humankind draws its strength from mere flesh and turns away from Him, we are like a bush in the wasteland. But, we are blessed when our confidence is based on trust in the Lord. Read Jeremiah 17:5-8. This Scripture shows a relationship to God that is one of prosperity and calls us to bear fruit.

Lady Gaga describes this song as a “celebration of tears” – it’s about being able to keep going despite hardships. Gaga states its message is about submitting yourself to devastation. She says, “the song uses the metaphor of rain for alcohol used to numb pain.” Its first verse sees Gaga thinking about the hardships of life while Grande delivers lyrics about accepting reality in the second verse.

Confidence, hardships, and self-worth are subjects that, yes, even adults struggle with in life.

Just when you think that you’ve “arrived” in being confident, something or someone can seem to knock the wind out of your sails with a small push. It is how we do this and how we react to those struggles that determine where our confidence and perseverance is to be found, not in ourselves, in other’s opinions of us, or the latest ideas, or anything other than the fact that God has us securely in his grasp.

The key to living with confidence is to remember that we find it and our identity in God alone. All of the other voices, thoughts, or ideas around us can be very fickle. Yet, God does not change. He loves us with a confidence that is greater than any other force we might encounter.

Survey your spiritual landscape and ask yourself:

Am I genuinely leaning on the confidence of God, or am I going about this life on my strength?
Am I using something artificial such as alcohol or promiscuity?
What are some of the things or people that you are tempted to look to for your self-worth?
How do you deal with depression or anxiety?
What would have to change in your life or the way you make decisions for you to trust in God?
What do you think it means to find your confidence in God? What would that look like for you?

Reflect on these questions, and ask God to remind you to rely on Him alone.

Conclusion

Think of Job from the Old Testament. Imagine that you were friends with this poor guy. Job’s friends come to sit with him to help, but to make a long story short (read the book of Job), they tell him that he must have really made God mad for all this to happen. And through it all, through all 42 chapters of this book, Job never loses his faith in God.

He asks God questions, though, and in one of the most amazing passages in the Bible, it says that God answered Job in the storm. You have to love this: God spoke to Job through the storm. God gives this fantastic reminder to Job: God Is God.

The book of Job ends as God restores Job and gives him above and beyond what he ever had to begin with, and you get the idea that Job knew God in an authentic and profound way.

Read Job 42:10-17. There are a lot of things that you can learn from this amazing book of the Bible. But what we learn about God in this book is that He is sovereign and that our suffering does not go unnoticed. And that God will bring redemption out of the tough things that happen in our lives if we allow Him to.

The pain and suffering will not last forever.