How Great Is Our God – Chris Tomlin, Ed Cash, Jesse Reeves

How does one describe something he’s never seen with the naked eye? Or, how would you paint a picture of an invisible person? Chris Tomlin doesn’t try to make it too complicated for us with his song “How Great Is Our God”, his way of answering someone who says ‘what’s God look like?’. What he says about this song’s development suggests that just maybe that’s the way God wants it. Just celebrate Him, and that’s enough. Almost sounds too easy, and that was kinda how Tomlin thought about it too, at first.

Tomlin recalls that the song’s development began with the chorus section ‘how great is our God…’ , and that that’s all he was able to come up with initially. He says he almost felt regret when he said to Him in effect ‘...this is all I have Lord, there’s no other words I can summon in the English language to describe how great you are.’ Evidently, Tomlin then offered some other words to go with the chorus, but he says the refrain became the focus of the song, after he took to heart some comments by friends. As a result, he says the song’s spotlight shone more brightly on the Holy One’s nature, versus what it was originally when Tomlin focused more on what we as Christians get from Him. Light, majesty, a creature that’s both lion and lamb, and a three-in-one concept none of us can honestly fathom…those are mysterious words that Tomlin uses to try to capture God’s visage. Think of a brilliant light hidden in a cloud (see the picture). Still, the song’s simple yet potent declaration of God’s supremacy is the overriding message.

Maybe that’s all the Lord wanted Chris Tomlin to think and sing about, nothing else but God. And, maybe that’s the secret of its success, why it was a number one hit song in 2006 and in 2008. Could that be why we don’t know more about Tomlin’s motivation for this tune – because why he thinks God is great doesn’t really matter? And, why I think He’s great doesn’t add or subtract from Him, either. Sure, I have Jesus to show people God, and His creation says volumes about Him too. And, my story of devotion to Him might resonate with a neighbor, or maybe a coworker. But, ultimately, if I position myself properly next to Him – on my knees, or prostrate before Him – then all the flowery phrases I could use to describe Him leave me. How great is God? He’s in a category all by Himself. He just IS.

Chris Tomlin’s brief comments on the song: http://christian-vids.blogspot.com/2007/06/chris-tomlin-how-great-is-our-god.html
 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Tomlin

(Chris Tomlin’s biography)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Great_Is_Our_God_(song)

(song’s history)

Holy Ground – Christopher Beatty

The below is the text of an e:mail that Chris Beatty sent this author on December 15, 2009, telling in his own words how “Holy Ground” was written (in 1982). Enjoy! I was a young pastor in Southern California on vacation with my wife, Carole, in San Diego. As was my practice I started my day with some Scripture reading, singing and exploring song ideas. Exodus 3:5 jumped out at me as having a profound meaning, not just for Moses, but for us all. "Do not come any closer," God told Moses. "Take off your sandals, for you are standing on holy ground." Two things immediately hit me: First, we should approach the Lord with deliberate preparation; Second, because He is everywhere we go, we can always expect a holy ground experience. There are four verses to Holy Ground, though they are not always all sung. The first verse sets up the premise that where we are, He is: This is holy ground. We're standing on holy ground. For the Lord is present, and where He is, is holy. The second verse engages us physically, acknowledging that all we do can be holy works: These are holy hands. He's given us holy hands. He works through these hands, and so these hands are holy. Verse three addresses our words, one of the most challenging areas of all to keep under His guidance: These are holy lips. He's given us holy lips. He speaks through these lips, and so these lips are holy. As this third verse repeats I like the sing the last phrase using the word "sing." He sings through these lips, and so these lips are holy. The fourth and final verse reminds us that were it not for his gift of life and time we would not exist: This is holy time. He's given us holy time. Time is His, and He's given us this holy time. Holy Ground as been sung around the world for 30 years in gatherings large and small. It is often used as congregations dedicate new worship spaces as well as in weekly worship. My prayer for us all is to remember the reality that God is in us, and around us and ever will be. See the following websites for singing advice from Christopher Beatty, who is a vocal coach – a guy who’s still behaving like he’s on holy ground, and therefore deliberately preparing others to be in God’s presence with their lips and voices. http://www.youtube.com/user/vocalcoach http://vocalcoach.com/about.html http://blog.vocalcoach.com/

Holy, Holy, Holy – Reginald Heber

Reginald Heber died too early, tragically most would say. In Calcutta, India one hot, humid Sunday in 1826 he preached to a crowd, and very suddenly suffered sunstroke and died. He was just 43 years old. But, the song words he wrote to His God, and that we now sing, didn’t end with his physical demise, for his wife and friends gathered Heber’s hymns that he had written – 57 of them – and published them. The words he wrote enrich our worship of God and give us a glimpse of the man who was known for his character, his decency. It’s no surprise that Heber, a man respected by those who knew him, would be in touch with God’s holiness, and that he wrote these words to coax us to do the same. It’s said that Reginald Heber was searching for a song for Trinity Sunday (it comes eight weeks after Easter), and decided that he’d write his own words for the occasion, since he could not find another. Kind of amazing if you think about it, for the doctrine of the Trinity had been codified in Christianity several hundred years earlier. In 325 A.D., the council of Nicea (in modern-day Turkey) had determined that the Bible teaches something quite profound -- that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit make up the Godhead, the Trinity. If you look on the margins of the sheet music for Heber’s song, you might even see the word ‘Nicea’ there, a reminder of that historic event 1,500 years before the tune written by John Dykes in 1861 was paired with Heber’s words to produce this song. One cannot miss in Heber’s words, and in his collaborator’s efforts too, the primacy of the message. God’s purity endures. I wonder if Heber’s last years, indeed his last moments, made this song more meaningful for him. Heber spent the 1823-26 years in India, and labored in a climate that wore heavily upon him physically. Heber’s wide-ranging responsibilities, as bishop of Calcutta, India, and of Ceylon, and Australia too, must have also been overwhelming at times. ‘How did he manage this?’, we might ponder. I might have quit, told my superiors ‘I’m chuckin’ this’, and gone home to the easier life of England, where Heber was born, educated, and ministered for 16 years before traveling to south Asia. Instead, Heber delivered God’s message, a testimony of His holiness to a nation mired in a caste system, rife with injustices. Who better than Heber, who sought God and patterned his own life after Him, to spread His hope to the poor and disadvantaged in India? How did he manage? Seeing God for who He is, in His unpolluted, unstained, eternal form can compel us, even transform us, even though it may cost us our mortality. I’m gonna try remembering that when I sing Heber’s song next time. Information on the song was obtained from the book “101 Hymn Stories”, by Kenneth W. Osbeck, Kregel Publications, 1982.

We Shall Assemble – Twila Paris

What famous people have you met, or seen close up? Were you nervous? Did your voice crack or fumble for words? Those would all be natural reactions to meeting the President, or maybe a movie star, a celebrity whose picture we’ve seen only on screen before. I wonder, how come they don’t get sweaty palms as they come near me? After all, we’re both red-blooded, covered with skin and bones, and ridden with imperfection. A giddy, nervous, or apprehensive response would logically be more appropriate at the sight of an alien, something unfamiliar and potentially dangerous. Maybe that’s what Twila Paris was thinking in 1991 as she wrote “We Shall Assemble”, an expectant, hope-filled encounter with an alien, a being unlike us – God.


Twila Paris has a lot to share about morality and her relationship to God. Both in her music and in her spoken words, you can tell she reveres Him, with her life and her avocation. What she composes for us to sing also shows she has hope, although it long ago might have been considered heresy, not reverence. You see, saying that believers, who are mere humans compared to our divine creator, will be on a mountain with Him would have been unthinkable, even terrifying once upon a time. In scripture, it’s often called a ‘holy’ mountain (Psalm 48:1), a place the average worshipper wouldn’t dare ascend. It was a death sentence to approach and see God’s face. Yet, Twila has us thinking and singing about this very thing. She’s written a book (with co-author Robert Webber) titled “In This Sanctuary: An Invitation to Worship the Savior”, and the album (also called “Sanctuary”) on which “We Shall Assemble” appears also reminds us of our privileged position, compared to our spiritual forefathers. Her thoughts resonate with believers, a fact also borne out in the Gospel Music Association’s award of praise and worship album of the year in 1991 for “Sanctuary”. Her message of an encounter with the Divine One doesn’t stop with the song or her book, either.


Twila Paris tries to live her life in the shadow of the holiness she has observed in the song we sing. You can read on her website that she lives by a moral compass, including when she steps in the voting booth on election day. In her words “Human beings are imperfect. We make mistakes. It’s who we are. We’re not going to find one of us who has all the answers. The only one who has all the answers is the One who created and sustains humankind and the world in which we live. So the most important issue in any election … Do I honor God and acknowledge His authority in my life? … As God’s people, we must continually fall to our knees and find our collective voice.” Falling on our knees will probably be par for the course on the mountain. And, her message for daily living here on earth is one for any believer, not just for one who writes songs. Her music makes me ask myself, ‘Will I be on that mountain with the way I lived this week? Was I the right example today?’ Sure, I have the promise that I will be on high with God, but I need Twila’s reminder, and my Bible, to tell me that God’s home is HOLY. I hope that as I draw closer to home, my trembles will be from anticipation, not foreboding. What’s causing your goosebumps today?


 Information on Twila Paris available at the following website:http://www.twilaparis.com/

I Stand in Awe of You - Mark Altrogge

What’s the most awesome sight you’ve captured on film or perhaps glimpsed briefly? A snow-capped mountain against an unpolluted, sapphire-like sky…or maybe a roaring tornado, cutting a half-mile swath of destruction…how about an encounter with a charging polar bear, or a grizzly who stands to show his ten-foot fury? When I think of awesome things, I tend to think of nature, something that I can witness with the naked eye, a phenomenon or creature that is completely out of my control, in whose presence I feel small. What would you say if I told you the most awesome spectacle was not even visible to the human eye? That’s so illogical, you’d probably at first scoff and dismiss such a thought. Yet, that’s Mark Altrogge’s message in “I Stand in Awe of You”, a song about our God, and how I should feel about Him.

Mark Altrogge wrote “I Stand in Awe of You” in 1987 as he contemplated the holiness of the Lord. He’d read R.C. Sproul’s “The Holiness of God” and A.W. Tozer’s “The Knowledge of the Holy” to gain some insight, a necessity when one is trying to capture the essence of the invisible. Altrogge’s conclusion is summed up with words like this: ‘beyond’, ‘like nothing ever…’, ‘too…’, ‘infinite’. No, we cannot see Him, and in many ways, if not for Jesus, He’s unknowable. To the rational, scientific, experiential observer, an exercise to describe -- and worship -- someone we admit is beyond comprehension is cuckoo. But that’s what we proclaim when we sing Altrogge’s composition. From his home in Indiana, Pennsylvania, where he’s a worship leader, Altrogge says his goal is to write doctrinally rich, passionate songs. He also relates that he thought at first that worship songs would be simple to compose, a belief that he now admits was shallow.

You might think his song, because of its single verse (at least, in most hymnals; a comment below links us to another verse!), lacks depth, but think again. Story after story in the Bible tell us that God is beyond our grasp, so we simply, pointedly reaffirm that principle when we sing Altrogge’s tune. I don’t need to sing lots of different verses to communicate this straightforward, overriding truth to the Creator. I’m not trying to impress God with my words, with my puny understanding of His nature. I just confess that I cannot, and I prostrate myself at his feet. The same God who inspires the sublime when I gasp at the mountains, windstorms, and fearsome creatures is the same One who gave Himself up, for me. That’s the most awesome, baffling, mind-blowing part of Him.

Source for Mark Altrogge’s story is the book “Celebrate Jesus: The Stories behind Your Favorite Praise and Worship Songs”, by Phil Christensen and Shari MacDonald, Kregel Publications, 2003. A shorter version of Altrogge’s song story is in “The Complete Book of Hymns: Inspiring Stories About 600 Hymns and Praise Songs”, by William J. and Ardythe Petersen, Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 2006.