Well, someone once asked me this question. The answer is simple: In Every Way. Let me explain (Please note some of this gets very personal and I give a lot of personal history in some cases, but this is to help you understand some of what I was going through, so you can better understand how the songs helped me.)

See when Jars of Clay came out I was a new Christian and was just getting into Christian Music. Well, their first CD was one of the first I ever bought. I loved the CD the second I heard the gregorian chants at the beginning of Liquid. I learned how to worship and how badly one can be broken down by a mere song (Worlds Apart). The lyrics help me understand God a little bit better, and understand myself slightly.

Well ... Then Much Afraid came out. I was skeptical because I Ioved the first CD so much, and by this point I had much more music under my belt and had heard many different new things and liked so many other bands in addition to Jars. Well, I bought it on release date and popped it in. Now just so you understand, I was just entering my senior year of high school and was trying to figure out where I was gonna go and what I was gonna do. I was scared and frightened cause my life, as I knew it, was about to end upon finishing high school (a lot of people I had known since I was like 5 were moving away and I was losing a lot my old friends).

Jars helpped me move from fear into faith. I ended up reading Hinds Feet on High Places and got a better understanding of what faith was and what it took to move from that point of fear to a faith that God will supply and be there. Songs like Crazy Times, Frail, and Portrait of Apology really helped me through some tough times.

Now when If I Left the Zoo came out, I was in a relationship that wasn't going anywhere, and I thought it was where God wanted me. I was teaching the person what love was and how to love, and most importantly how to be loved. The person I was dating had a low self esteem problem. She thought she didn't deserve "a nice guy like me." That ended on a real bad note (she ended up leaving me for a guy jerk because he wasn't as nice as me and she didn't want to "waste me on growing up"... she's now married to him).

Well I got the IILTZ, and lo and behold, Jars did it again! They managed to come out with an album of songs that helped me through something else that was in my life. Songs like Collide, Famous Last Words, I'm Alright, and Grace really pushed me through, to help me with what my heart, mind, and emotions were going through. It was at this point I decided that the Jars have a spy satelite orbiting in space watching me, because they always seem to come through when I need them most.