Take Me As I Am

And when he hath found it, he layeth it on his shoulders, rejoicing.

Luke 15:5, King James Version

I'll come back when I have something to show

Many people who drift from God tell themselves the same thing. I will come back when my life is in order. When my hands are clean. When the story sounds better.

But the waiting makes it worse. The distance only grows. And one evening you look up and cannot see home anymore.

This song is for that evening. It is for anyone who has been away and wonders whether God will still have them. The answer in scripture is yes. Come as you are.

I didn't run. I just wandered.

Not everyone who leaves God storms out. Most of us drift. One field, then another field. We never meant to be gone. We only meant to look around.

The Bible knows this kind of leaving well. Isaiah 53:6 says, all we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned every one to his own way. And Psalm 119:176 is almost a prayer from inside this song. I have gone astray like a lost sheep. Seek Thy servant.

Notice what the psalm asks. Not show me the way. Seek me. I don't know the way back, so come and carry me.

The parable of the lost sheep

The bridge of this song comes from Luke 15:4 to 7. Jesus asks, what man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it?

Look at what the shepherd does when he finds it. He does not scold it. He does not ask where it has been. Luke 15:5 says, when he hath found it, he layeth it on his shoulders, rejoicing. Then he calls his friends and neighbours to celebrate.

That is what this song is counting on. You did not send for me. You came Yourself. You put me on Your shoulders and carried me home.

Jesus also says in John 10:11, I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. And in Isaiah 43:1 God says, I have called thee by thy name. Thou art mine. You call me Yours, even out here. Even like this.

If this song speaks to you, read the page for I Love You, which tells the other story from Luke 15, the father who ran to his lost son.

Just as I am

In 1835, an English woman named Charlotte Elliott wrote a hymn that the church has sung at altar calls ever since. Just as I am, without one plea. Billy Graham used it at the close of his crusades for decades.

Take Me As I Am is the same prayer for a new generation. No plea. No story. Nothing in my hands. Only, Lord, will You have me?

What the song is about

Take Me As I Am is a song for anyone coming back to God after drifting away. It confesses the waiting and the wandering, admits it does not know the way home, and leans everything on the shepherd who goes looking for one lost sheep. It ends with nothing to offer but itself. Take all of me. Take me as I am.

Take Me As I Am is the album's altar call song. Daalu by Michael CU is out on 3 November 2026.

A prayer for coming back to God

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Take Me As I Am lyrics