He’d just made a move, and he was searching. That’s what Josh Baldwin shared as he talked about “Made for More” after the song was released in 2024. He had several collaborators – Blake Wiggins, Jessie Early, and Jonathan Smith – so it wasn’t just Josh making up his own mind about how he himself was ‘made for more’; indeed, Josh and the others implicitly acknowledged that identity begins with the One who made us all. Josh had been part of Bethel Music based in Redding, California (see its seal here), which has been a collection of songwriters that may have played a role in the song’s development. So, when he moved across the country to Tennessee, he was evidently hunting for some ‘newness’. Fortunately, he found that this endeavor did not really take him in an opposite direction, but rather allowed him to step back from leading and reexamine the basics of his faith. What did his life mean for him personally? That’s what comes through in the words that Josh began, and which Blake, Jessie, and Jonathan helped focus and refine.
Josh said the song emerged during a songwriting session, so one can imagine the ideas that were shared back and forth in ‘Made for More’. He says the song felt pretty special right from the start, and actually helped him rethink what the theme of the album on which it appears should be. That tells us, who are searching like Josh was, that something pretty essential is contained within the songwriters’ collective thoughts when they finished their work. It’s said that these essentials captivated them through several scriptures – Romans 8, Isaiah 43:1, and Ephesians 2 – which ancient writers also used to communicate powerful, life-giving manna to their age, and now to ours. In short, one word helps sum up how they said we should feel: Alive! That’s what the ancients were saying poetically and otherwise. The Apostle Paul no doubt read what Isaiah had written what God told him: ‘Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine.’ It must have dawned on the prophets, Jesus-followers like Paul, and these 21st Century songwriters that God doesn’t redeem people to let them remain dead or to live a futile existence; He wants His chosen ones to be as alive as He is. Josh says this living message, that being ‘made for more’ helped strengthen his own son, and became like a personal anthem when he and his family were hunting for a new church in Tennessee. There were valleys and peaks, but they could count on the Creator-God to remain faithful. If you’re feeling hamstrung by your past mistakes, leave them in the dust, and as Josh and the others wrote in their lyrics, take heart, for ‘I have a future and it's worth the living’. Life is so much more than merely being born and then dying, so don’t ‘be tending a grave’, because that will only be a temporary stopping/resting point along the way.
Josh and company have so much more to say about being “Made for More”, and its message evokes an emotion that actually can transcend the human life experience. It will go beyond the grave, where none of us have yet been. And yet, Josh and the others say something else that’s interesting in one of their verses – ‘The cross of salvation was only the start’, implying that there’s so much more than looking out ahead to the finish line. Jesus did say ‘It is finished’ (John 19:30), so we all look to that seminal moment when Jesus accomplished the saving act for you and me. How Josh and his friends respond, though, is to say ‘we’re risen now’. If your day has a heavy rock that you feel like you’re dragging along behind you, let it go, and grab hold of what’s said in “Made…” -- I know I am Yours. Am, not will be someday. Right now.
See more comments about the song here: https://www.brightfm.com/shine/shine-daily/josh-baldwin-on-the-purpose-behind-made-for-more/ and here: https://worshipleader.com/worship-culture/made-for-more-josh-baldwin/
Read about one of the songwriters here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josh_Baldwin
Read about a songwriting venture here in which the principal songwriter has been involved: Bethel Music - Wikipedia
See information on the image of the Redding seal here: File:Seal of Redding, California.png - Wikimedia Commons. This work was created by a government unit (including state, county, city, and municipal government agencies) that derives its powers from the laws of the State of California and is subject to disclosure under the California Public Records Act (Government Code § 6250 et seq.). It is a public record that was not created by an agency which state law has allowed to claim copyright, and is therefore in the public domain in the United States. The image may be found inside this site: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redding,_California
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