Bri Babineaux - My Hands Are Lifted Up Lyrics

Video

Bri (Briana Babineaux) - My Hands Are Lifted Up / Make Me Over (Unplugged Video)

Meaning & Inspiration

I’m still shaking the dust of the pigpen off my clothes. When you’ve spent your nights sleeping in the dirt, waking up to the smell of feed and regret, you don't really know how to talk to God anymore. You just stand there, empty-handed, waiting to see if He’s actually going to open the gate or just let you rot on the perimeter.

Bri Babineaux sings, "Make me, shake me / Mold me, use me." It’s an uncomfortable prayer. When you’ve been running, "shake me" sounds like a threat. It sounds like everything you’ve tried to hold onto—every bit of pride, every excuse you made for why you left—is about to get knocked loose. It’s terrifying. I spent years building a life out of shards and bad decisions, trying to convince myself I didn't need the Father, and now I’m asking Him to take the hammer to it?

But that’s the thing about being found. You realize the "self" you were trying to preserve wasn't worth keeping anyway.

There’s this line in the song: "Lord make me over." It isn’t some clean, Sunday-morning request. It’s the plea of a person who has looked at the wreck they made of their life and realized they can’t patch it up with a few good deeds or a prayer. You need a total demolition. It’s like when Paul says in 2 Corinthians, "If anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!" It sounds nice on a plaque, but in reality, it’s violent. Getting "made over" means letting go of the habits that kept you warm in the dark. It means admitting that the dirt under your fingernails is permanent unless He does the washing.

I’m sitting here listening to her scream—not singing, screaming—for a blessing, and I recognize that desperation. It’s not a request for a new car or a comfortable life. It’s the desperate cry of someone who knows that without His presence, the silence is unbearable. I remember the weight of that silence. I remember thinking I was beyond fixing, that the "smoke" from the life I chose was too thick to ever scrub off.

But then she keeps repeating it. Make me. Shake me. She’s begging for the kiln. If you’ve ever been broken, you know that the fire is where you get refined, even if you’re terrified of the heat. I’m still standing here with my hands up, not because I’m some picture-perfect saint, but because I’ve got nothing left to hold onto. The mud is still on my boots, the memory of the long walk home is still fresh, but for the first time in years, I’m not running. I’m just waiting to see what He does with a mess like me.