Black & White: Songs of Faith and Love by Kevin Jacobson

He traveled with a musical group in college and eventually toured with The King's Messengers, a Southern Gospel quartet, for four and a half years. Kevin appeared to be a model Christian yet there was still something missing.

"On April 17, 1989, I went to a concert and the Lord started to deal with me about my own life and about the fact that I needed to have a personal relationship with Jesus. But I argued with God and said, 'But look at everything I do for You.'" It wasn't until a year later when Kevin heard a message on the cross that he accepted Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. "Until that day, I did everything that a Christian should do, at least on the surface, but was just as lost as anyone." Because of his own experience, Kevin truly understands the need to minister to those who often seem to need it the least.

A couple of months after he was saved, Kevin accepted a staff position at a church in Waterford, Michigan which eventually led him to follow a friend to a flourishing Baptist church in Texas. It was this friend who really began to challenge Kevin's understanding of worship. "During this time, I spent a year in Psalms looking at how David worshiped God. I want to be like David - - and I guess my own personal worship comes out of that. I want to be a man after God's own heart." In September of 1994, just before Kevin moved back to Michigan, he was asked to lead worship for a seminar given by a friend. What Kevin expected to be about 100 people turned out to be close to 1000. Upon playing a song that he had written, Kevin experienced the awesome power of worship. "I saw for the first time one of my songs really connect with people. As I heard them singing it back, it really gave me the desire to write more songs that people can lift up to the Lord. That was a turning point in my ministry."

Because of his time spent in various churches ranging from the very traditional to the more contemporary, Kevin also began to experience a broader understanding of the ways God is working throughout the Body. "I think one of the most important things I've learned is that God is God everywhere. The Holy Spirit really impacted me as a result of my varied experiences within the Church. I was raised in a church that gave me a solid Word foundation, so I'm not always as accepting of things at face value as others. I want to know that all things are being done in line with scripture. When I began to attend a church that was more contemporary, they were also very Word oriented and maintained the order that scripture calls for."

It was based on an experience at this more contemporary church that Kevin's song "Beyond the Veil" was written. During a service there, a woman received prayer. "The man ministering to the woman said to her that she had been cleansed by God and declared worthy and that she needed to let go of her fear and help others to step beyond the veil into God's presence in worship. That whole idea grabbed me to my core. The veil was torn in two, and the Lord is allowing us to step into His presence. I took the prayer for that woman as a personal challenge to help others step beyond the veil with my music."

The Lord has continued to place this call upon Kevin's life: to help bring others into the fullness of all that God has for them. A scripture that illustrates this is Joel 2:25, which is a scripture that Kevin has claimed for his life. "It says, 'So I will restore the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the crawling locust, the consuming locust and the chewing locust...' There are four different kinds of locusts. One takes the flower, one takes the stem, one takes the leaf, and one takes the root - - so when they are done there is virtually nothing left. God's promise to us is that He will take us back from nothing and build us up again. That has been an awesome source of strength in some of my most difficult times."

"I want to help others to realize what the Lord is continually showing me - - worship isn't just something we do on Sunday, it is a lifestyle and we need to lift up our lives in worship everyday."

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