Made for More -- Blake Wiggins, Jessie Early, Jonathan Smith, Josh Baldwin

 

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 21^st 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.

 

 

Details of the song found here: https://www.google.com/search?q=made+for+more+song+story&aic=0&bih=825&biw=1459&sca_esv=ae1e161c6b0f2947&ei=kOx7ae6IHqjm5NoPoLqlmQo&ved=0ahUKEwjukL_z8rGSAxUoM1kFHSBdKaMQ4dUDCBE&uact=5&oq=made+for+more+song+story&gs_lp=Egxnd3Mtd2l6LXNlcnAiGG1hZGUgZm9yIG1vcmUgc29uZyBzdG9yeTIGEAAYFhgeMgYQABgWGB4yBhAAGBYYHjIGEAAYFhgeMgsQABiABBiGAxiKBTIIEAAYgAQYogRI_HhQ9A9Y_HFwAXgBkAEAmAFSoAGsDaoBAjMxuAEDyAEA-AEBmAIboALVC8ICChAAGLADGNYEGEfCAgUQIRigAcICBRAAGO8FwgIGEAAYBxgewgIIEAAYBxgIGB7CAggQABgFGAcYHsICChAAGIAEGEMYigXCAg0QLhiABBixAxhDGIoFwgILEAAYgAQYkQIYigXCAgUQABiABMICChAuGIAEGEMYigXCAgUQLhiABMICFBAuGIAEGJcFGNwEGN4EGOAE2AEBwgIIEAAYogQYiQWYAwCIBgGQBge6BgYIARABGBSSBwIyN6AHzbABsgcCMja4B9MLwgcENi4yMcgHKIAIAA&sclient=gws-wiz-serp

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

O Church, Arise – Keith Getty and Stuart Townend

 

What we might imagine in the form of armor, like that once worn by mounted troops in the French army (see the picture here), is what Keith Getty and Stuart Townend want Christians to think about as a metaphor for life in a spiritual struggle – one for which God has provided tools for the battle. Once you have this armor in place, you and your compatriots can say “O Church, Arise”, because then you are fully equipped for whatever comes your way. It was 2005, and Keith and Stuart had been at contemporary songwriting for some time, especially along themes meant to lift the church and remember what scripture says about its history and mission. There’s no better place to start than with what an apostle, a one-time staunch opponent of Christianity, had to say on the subject of spiritual battle.

 

Keith and Stuart needed no other circumstance or reason to write a new song in 2005, except that there was a sense that Christians needed a new injection of courage to wage the ongoing struggle with the forces of evil. And that was why they read what Paul had to say to some believers in a place called Ephesus a long time ago. What they read in Paul’s 11 verses (6:10-20) is packed with punch about how to defend oneself, and so these two songwriters took the words composed some 20 centuries earlier to construct their own musical version of this apostle’s directives. The ‘shield of faith’, ‘belt of truth’, and ‘sword’ (of truth) are part of the lyrical ‘armor’ that Keith and Stuart sing to stir others to exploit.  It’s clear that that the enemy is a ‘captor’, armed with ‘devil’s lies’, and that this is ‘war’ with ‘battle(s)’ to be fought against the forces of ‘darkness’. But lest those on the side of God misunderstand and engage in the battles the same way that the enemy does, Getty and Townend make it clear that the Christian’s mode of attack is with the unconventional. Love is our ‘battle cry’. Love is used multiple times in conjunction with ‘grace’ and ‘mercy’, for they are synonymous with the approach of our ‘captain’ – Christ. He modeled for His disciples in the few short years of His mission on earth how to behave, even unto death. It’s His ‘cross where love and mercy meet’, which initially gives Satan and his accomplices pride, but then he lies ‘crushed beneath His feet’ when the ‘Conqueror’ arises and ‘emerges’ from the sepulcher, giving all of us a reason to join in a ‘vic’try march’. Keith and Stuart conclude their four-verse hymn with a callout to the Spirit to strengthen those of us who are still here, with the help of aged believers and memories of those who’ve already gone on before us – the ‘saints of old’. We are not alone. Keith and Stuart also say that the following inspired much of their lyrics: 2 Corinthians 12:9, Isaiah 61:1-3, and Revelation 5:9-10.

 

And, as long as we stay connected to Him through a church of strong believers, we shall never be alone. No one aims to go be with God alone in the Afterlife. Read some more of Paul’s letters, and see if you discover some regular theme in how he concludes them. Paul must have thought that church was really crucial in the life and steadfastness of others whom he called brothers and sisters. A ‘holy kiss’ was one way that Paul often told his contemporaries to regard one another (Romans, 1 + 2 Corinthians, and 1 Thessalonians), and that’s one way to look at what Keith and Stuart have written in ‘O Church, Arise’. You sing what their poetry coaxes from deep inside your mind and spirit – the truths of where our faith is rooted, and the direction in which we are all headed. They have us sing ‘we’ no less than six times, and so we’re all aimed in the direction of His eternal embrace, and we’re already walking arm-in-arm with each other and in His Spirit. That’s church.

 

Read about the song’s meaning according to one of the composers/authors here: O Church Arise Lyrics - Stuart Townend

Read about the composers/authors here: O Church, Arise | Hymnary.org

Read about one of the composers here: Stuart Townend (musician) - Wikipedia

Read about one of the composers here: Keith Getty - Wikipedia

See here for how the song’s lyrics compare to scripture: Is 'O Church Arise' Biblical? | The Berean Test

 

See here for information about the image: Géricault - Portrait de carabinier - Louvre - Cuirass - Wikipedia. Artist Théodore Géricault (1791–1824)… The author died in 1824, so this work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 100 years or fewer. This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published (or registered with the U.S. Copyright Office) before January 1, 1930.

Oh the Deep Deep Love -- Samuel Trevor Francis (and Bob Kauflin)

 

He wasn’t the first to contemplate a radical solution to his misery, nor the first to instead salvage a hymn from his experience. It was a turning point for Samuel Trevor Francis, perhaps something that might be described as an epiphany when he thought about it years later and said “Oh the Deep Deep Love” about the God that he felt had saved him one night. What he wrote suggests he was looking upon a mighty body of water, and comparing that scene to what he’d probably read so many times before from the pen of an apostle. What might you and I ponder if we were on a bridge over the River Thames in London? (See a picture here of the Hungerford Bridge over that river, as it might have looked to Samuel Francis in 1845, some 30 years before he authored the hymn.) Is one’s life too gloomy to be saved by a God with a love that knows no bounds? That’s what Samuel asked himself.

 

Could a nighttime walk over the Thames while wallowing in his despondency decades earlier have been what Samuel was remembering as he reached middle age in 1875? This 41-year-old London merchant and preacher had apparently suffered from some depression as a teenager, and thus thought briefly about suicide one winter night as he walked across a bridge. Did the cold, roiling water change his mind, or was it his recollection of what an apostle wrote about the vast dimensions -- how deep God’s love is (Ephesians 3:17-19) – that helped him overcome this momentary darkness? Admittedly, we in the 21^st Century have only a general comment from this 19^th Century author, many years after this incident, to evaluate precisely if this bridge episode had indeed stuck with him and motivated ‘Oh, the Deep…’ in 1875. And yet, his own remarks (in an 1898 publication of some of his hymns; see them in the Hymnology Archive link below) indicate that many of his works were sparked by his desire to show how someone can overcome a despairing life with the love of God. ‘Oh, the Deep…’ fits seamlessly into that category. Certainly, the multiple references to water bodies signal that Samuel was observing a piece of His watery creation, one that especially struck him. It was ‘vast, unmeasured, boundless, free’ (v.1), and ‘ocean’ (vv.1 and 3) could suggest he was alternately near the English coast, observing the North Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea, or the English Channel, instead of the River Thames in London. Any of these bodies of water would have served his temporary urge to end his life! Fortunately, he also discovered that God’s love was a ‘current’,’all around’ and ‘underneath’ him (v.1), that His praise could travel from ‘shore to shore’ (v.2). He returns again and again to how deep – one ‘deep’ is not enough – is God’s care and longing for us. His provision in this life is like that Divine River of Life that transports the soul ‘onward’ and ‘homeward’ (v.1).

 

The power of water, that is something perhaps unappreciated until you’ve seen what it can do in a flood or worse yet a tidal wave. Samuel Francis must have thought about what it would mean to drown in the Thames or elsewhere, how suffocating in water would feel, and how it might have been for those who scorned God’s provision in Noah’s day. Those are the negative examples of God’s water. God also makes transport possible with it, provides life in it – fish and other creatures man can consume for nourishment – and how it is necessary to make land-based crops grow to feed and sustain us and the rest of his creation. Samuel was likewise pondering the positives of God’s watery ingenuity, one night on a bridge. What He’s made can point to Him, if I’ll just take a moment to turn around my negative thoughts and look at things from a different direction. That’s what Samuel did. Would you prefer to drown or ride the waves?         

 

See here for some biographic information on the original writer: S. Trevor Francis | Hymnary.org

 

See here also for biographic information on the author: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Trevor_Francis

 

See information on the hymn here: O the Deep, Deep Love of Jesus - Wikipedia

 

See more information on the song and its writer here: O the Deep, Deep Love of Jesus - The Center For Church Music, Songs and Hymns

 

See some pretty extensive notes on the song here (including a brief note on how the new chorus was written by Bob Kauflin): O the deep, deep love of Jesus — Hymnology Archive

 

See this link for image of the Hungerford Bridge over the River Thames in London, and its public domain status: File:Hungerford Suspension Bridge (1845).jpg - Wikimedia Commons  The following statement appears with the image: This work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 100 years or fewer. {{PD-US-expired}} – published anywhere (or registered with the US Copyright Office) before 1928 and public domain in the US.