Bob Kilpatrick was doing something that all believers do
when they’re alone and need something from Him. He prayed. Not quite in a
closet (like the one shown here), but close. It would have been hard to get his
guitar, and his bible, and some light in such a confined area, but with the
rest of the family somewhere else in the house, he settled in for some solitary
moments in one room. Sound familiar? My version is at this keyboard in a mostly
dark basement, hoping that this is a most special place between Him and me, as a
personal declaration to Him, and a way to enrich my life just by connecting with
Him. That’s what Bob Kilpatrick was up to that day in 1977. You can tell that
Bob did not have claustrophobia – or ‘closet’-ophobia – when he was alone with
God. Put yourself in his shoes and in the thoughts that he recorded, words that
millions of others have tried on for size.
It’s awful hard to close
off the mind from the day’s events…to forget and stop replaying human-to-human
(not always positive) interactions. Bob Kilpatrick, as member of the human
race, must have been there that day too. He knew what he needed, as he pondered
the music ministry he and his wife Cindy were beginning. Like other musicians,
the Kilpatricks wanted to make good music that would reach other believers. But
that day, Bob composed for just One, while sitting in his mother-in-law’s house.
Read the song’s words. It’s evident who that was. Bob thinks that may have been
the key to the song’s success - -that it started with a pure objective. He adds
that it was really others, including Cindy, who pushed the song’s introduction
to a wider audience. ‘Lord, I’m turned toward You…I want to stay that way’, Bob
might have said very plainly. It’s an attitude that he’s not limited to just
this one song. He’s written a book ‘Secrets of the Silence’, counseling his
readers to do what his well-known song did for himself long ago – find a quiet
place and time to be with Him. ‘Physician, heal thyself’, someone might say,
but it seems that Kilpatrick’s tonic has me looking upward, not inward, for the
‘Physician’.
Bob Kilpatrick found a way to say his simple prayer, set to
equally simple music, a statement that I should remember. Think of Him. Think
of myself and Him, of drawing closer to Him. This may challenge your
inhibition, being alone with the Omniscient. But, He’s also known as Life, Truth,
and Justifier, among so many other names that are uniquely His. So, I let no
one nor nothing else get between Him and me. That was Bob Kilpatrick’s method
in 1977. Have you got your solitary place picked out yet?
The source for Bob
Kilpatrick’s song story is the book “Our God Reigns: The Stories behind Your
Favorite Praise and Worship Songs”, by Phil Christensen and Shari MacDonald, Kregel
Publications, 2000.
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