The River Is Here – Andy Park

In 1994 Andy Park received a song idea from someone, although he didn’t know that’s what it was at first. By this time, he had already been involved with music projects in churches for several years in California and in British Columbia in Canada, so he was familiar with song development, composition, and production. Yet, the song “The River Is Here” came to him in a way that caught him off guard. Here’s what he says, in his own words:

‘This song began when I received a picture in my mind's eye of a mountain with a river running down it. I prayed about it, not realizing that it was a word from God to prompt a new song. I did a word study in the Bible for "mountain" and "river" and found imagery in Ezekiel, the Psalms and the book of Revelation which provided the basis for the song. While on a brief personal retreat I wrote the song.’

Andy Park no doubt discovered in his word search that ‘mountain’ and ‘river’ are really important to the Creator, our Holy One. Words like ‘holy’, ‘majestic’, and ‘glory’ describe the mountain of God, and yet He doesn’t stand far up there just to be aloof. No, He sends something from up above that I need. The river, His creation, that ancient songwriters and prophets describe, provides delight, nourishment, and life. This river emanates from the mountain where He lives -- where we’re going. Maybe it looks a little like one you’ve seen here on Earth (like the Yukon, see the picture). Even though the mountain may make me tremble, I can know that His presence will be enchanting, too.

That’s what “The River Is Here” communicates. Listen to the joy this mental imagery provokes. It’s infectious. God is love. He is generous (what an understatement!). And, His gift won’t wear out, but only grows more precious the closer we come to it, and the more people with whom we share this message. The next time you’re in a crowd that doesn’t know the song, teach it to them, and usher in some Eternity. The New Earth awaits, where all will be renewed, His word teaches. Words from Psalmists, Ezekiel, and John (Revelation), repeated by Andy Park, are a great place to begin the celebration.

There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells. (Psalm 46:4)

And he carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and showed me the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. (Revelation 21:10)

See the following for some background: http://andypark.ca/index.php?fuseaction=site.home http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Park_(musician)

Here’s a good U-Tube video of the song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcxdSaxVP_E

Andy Park shared this brief song story above with me in an e:mail on 1/12/2011.

Another source for Andy Park’s song story is the book “Celebrate Jesus: The Stories behind Your Favorite Praise and Worship Songs”, by Phil Christensen and Shari MacDonald, Kregel Publications, 2003.

God Will Make a Way – Don Moen

Mission Impossible – remember this? A match lights, a fire sparks (see the picture), and the musical entertainment begins, building with energy to a climax. These cloak-n-dagger agents capture my imagination, probably because their story has more adventure than mine. They treat danger with a cocky air of confidence. ‘…your mission, should you decide to accept it…’ is really wasted on me, because I know ‘Jim’ always accepts the assignment. The impossible mission crew never found a challenge they couldn’t overcome with careful team coordination, technology, and guile. The make-believe never allows that heroes might be defeated, perhaps by the completely unexpected, perhaps a death of one of the team.

Real life is different, in which an impossible situation might make me feel more depressed than excited. Don Moen’s song “God Will Make a Way” sprang from this kind of episode, a tragedy in his family. See if this song’s story sounds familiar, and if its light-in-the-darkness message might help.

 

 

You can read Don Moen’s own words for this song story at: http://www.donmoen.com/Blog.aspx?iid=26017

If you don’t have the link, Moen’s story briefly goes like this. In 1990, his sister’s family lost their oldest son in a car accident, as they were travelling between Texas and Colorado. Moen was unable to be with them in the aftermath, due to a previously scheduled recording session, but in his grief for them, he found solace by writing the song’s words on an airplane trip the following day. Isaiah’s words (Isaiah 43:19) comforted him, so he rephrased them for the song’s lyrics. His sister’s family met the tragedy with those and other words in the same book (43:4), which helped them understand their son’s seemingly senseless death might have a higher purpose. Friends of the family’s son came to accept God, because of the promise of heaven, and of seeing him again. The family’s own lives were fed as they involved themselves in their local church in a deeper way. Fruit comes about in ways we don’t expect, Moen’s sister remembers. 

 

 

Have you lost someone close? How are you dealing with it – does life seem unfair, maybe even impossible to comprehend, in death’s wake? There’s but one way to manage life, when death intrudes. It’s not pie-in-the-sky to hope in God and to prepare for a home with Him. I believe. If you don’t, what have you got to lose if you change your mind today? That’s what Don Moen and the prophet Isaiah have to say. There’s a way He’s made, though I cannot sometimes fathom it. Impossible, you say? What was impossible in Isaiah’s day is commonplace today – ah, technology. So, what impossibles will become possible in 3000 A.D.? In 4000 A.D.? The Beyond? Let’s go find out!

I Belong to Jesus – Dennis Jernigan

If someone told you one of his favorite “Christian” songs was similar in some ways to Chuck Berry’s rock-n-roll classic “Johnny B. Goode”, or maybe to a jazz\boogie-woogie or swing tune, what would you think? Rock-n-Roll and Christianity? Jazz and God? Time was when they were considered mutually exclusive, right? Hrrrumph…God doesn’t boogie – isn’t that what grandma said? Dennis Jernigan composed something in “I Belong to Jesus” that tests that presumption, although his real message is in the song’s words. The message is potent, overflowing with energy, one that can turn a life on its head. So, what kind of revolutionary music would be appropriate for such a song? Jernigan must have been wondering the same thing when he composed it.

Jernigan has a lot of life to tell in his music – maybe that’s why he’s written over 2,000 songs. His story of delivery from the gay (homosexual) lifestyle is stirring (one can read about it in many places – see them listed below). He tells the story readily, including a brief segment on a video in which he calls the song his personal declaration of what Christ has done for him. The Apostle Paul’s words to the Corinthians about becoming a new creation ring in Dennis Jernigan’s ears. He shares that he’s been ‘signed, sealed, and delivered…His’. There’s few issues in human culture that are as powerful as those surrounding sex, agreed? You can hear how dangerous sexual sin is in Jernigan’s words that he borrows from another Apostle (Peter) in the song’s first verse…Satan is a roaring lion, hungry to devour me and you (1 Peter 5:8). You can sense he knows the risk, given his former lifestyle. And, grace is not a license for a return to sin, but a gift that should make us want to not sin all the more, he says. Though Satan is to be feared, I just need to believe in ‘the truth’ that God has communicated to me – I belong to Him, not Satan. And, He was tempted by Satan, just as I am (see the picture above).

The magnet that draws my physical being toward evil is overpowered by Jesus. That’s the song’s theme. If that tension between the world of right (Jesus) and of evil (Satan) suggests a conflict is ongoing, maybe that’s what Jernigan’s musical accompaniment in the song intends to convey. It’s jumpy, exciting stuff. It reminds me that the Christian life is not for docile, couch potato-types. Jesus could not be tamed. When you hear the events of Jesus’ death and resurrection, set to Jernigan’s music, who wouldn’t want to join Him? Begin 2011 knowing and being confident in what Dennis Jernigan has you sing in “I Belong to Jesus” – you’re free !

Some biographical information on Dennis Jernigan: websites: http://www.dennisjernigan.com/

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

A video and testimony for the song “I Belong to Jesus”, by the composer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-JUa0Ux0mU

And, see this book: Giant Killers: Crushing Strongholds , Securing Freedom in Your Life, by Dennis Jernigan. WaterBrook Press, 2005.

Wonderful Grace of Jesus – Haldor Lillenas

If you’ve not heard the name Haldor Lillenas, you may in fact know something about him through a song that sounds familiar, perhaps one that appears to be written by Virginia Rose Golden, Laverne Gray, Richard Hainsworth, Rev. H. N. Lines, Robert Whitmore or Ferne Winters. They’re all pseudonyms that Lillenas used to publish his own songs. If you’ve ever been in a church (especially a Nazarene church), you may have sung one of his 4,000 hymns, perhaps the most well-known of which is “Wonderful Grace of Jesus”. Or, maybe you’ve sung from some sheet music that came from the Lillenas Music (Publishing) Company. He’s the same guy, a Gospel Music Hall of Fame inductee in 1982.

Lillenas wrote the song “Wonderful Grace of Jesus” in 1918. He was in his early 30’s (32/33 years old), and the pastor of a Nazarene church in Auburn, Illinois. He and his wife Bertha Mae had little to no money after buying a home nearby, but that didn’t impede Lillenas’s productivity. With $5, he bought a rundown organ from a neighbor, and composed this song soon thereafter. His family’s strong faith had been evident in Lillenas’s early life, probably even before their emigration from Norway to the United States in the 1880s. But, it may have been the events in 1906 that set the stage for Lillenas’s spiritual growth and the genesis of the song. That year in Astoria, Oregon, Lillenas committed himself to Christian work, in the wake of his mother’s death and the fervor he felt hearing and singing the songs in that place. Particularly in Portland, Lillenas saw many people come to Christ, an experience that further solidified his decision to work for Him. The impact of God’s grace apparently stuck with Lillenas over the next decade-plus, as he studied and ministered in Oregon and California.

What would happen if I thought about God’s grace for more than a decade? How long would it take to say all that the subject deserves? Might it be something outrageous, akin to Jonah’s experience of being swallowed by a fish (see the picture above)? That was some grace, wasn’t it?! It seems like those were the thoughts Lillenas was mulling over as he composed the song, considering its words. The theme he dwells on is the grandeur, the extreme nature of this grace. One senses that what Lillenas had seen or felt by 1918 overwhelmed him. ‘Greater than all’, ‘the most’, ‘the uttermost’, ‘for all’, ‘matchless’…these are some of the phrases that Lillenas employs to express his feelings about God’s gift. A doubter might accuse him of hyperbole – after all, how great can a song be that was composed on a $5 organ? But, this is just how our God is -- nothing posh is required for Him. You think God will have this ‘cheap’ grace-song playing for us along the streets of gold?

Biographic information on the composer found in the following:

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

http://www.hymntime.com/tch/bio/l/i/l/lillenas_h.htm

“The Complete Book of Hymns – Inspiring Stories About 600 Hymns and Praise Songs”, by William J. and Ardythe Petersen, 2006, Tyndale House Publishers.

What Can I Do ? (#2) – Paul Baloche and Graham Kendrick

Paul Baloche is not a brand-new believer, but he sings like one might in the song “What Can I Do?” that he and Graham Kendrick co-composed in 2005. He and Kendrick ask the question, as anyone who discovers God for the first time might. The Creator is also human, disgraced and crucified, the song emphasizes – a mystery that may confound us. But, for the one who wants to know how to respond to Him, the song has the answer too. I may keep asking the question over and over, year after year, trying to make sense of Him, yet the answer Baloche and Kendrick offer is the only one that makes sense, really. See if you think so. (A scoop on this song was orignally published on 26 July, 2009. This scoop # 2 on the same song connects you with Paul Baloche's own thoughts. You can see and hear the story verbatim from Baloche at the following link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OC2v94ttefs. )

Paul Baloche says that his collaboration with Graham Kendrick took place at the latter’s invitation for the two to spend some time in Britain (Kendrick’s home) in 2005. Kendrick already had the chorus written, which asks the basic ‘question’ and provides the ‘answer’ too, for the song. ‘What does one do, but say thanks, hallelujah (see the Hebrew text for this word in the picture), and live a life of praise?’, Kendrick had written. Baloche says worship for him is about revelation and response. ‘Revelation comes first’ he says, but perhaps in a way that has not occurred to us before, prompting a response. Take a sunset (verse 1 of the song), which Baloche shares he often uses near his home in Lindale, Texas to show his children God’s beauty. He’s like a great artist, painting colors in the sky for us to admire. It’s just one way, for when the sun goes down, the stars appear, allowing us to imagine Him on top of the vast galaxy. What kind of response makes sense toward One who paints earth’s sky, who has prepared the universe, and revealed Himself in this way? Baloche’s verse 2 sings of another revelation – greater and more personal for us – Jesus’ own life, sacrificed and then rejuvenated. Baloche offers me revelations on two levels, neither of which I can ignore if I’m really being honest with myself.

The creation I can see, and life from death – what can I do without God in either situation? That is the way Baloche has me position myself versus God, as I sing “What Can I Do?”. I cannot escape being here on Earth, can you? Oh, watching sci-fi films is one attempt to break away, but even in outer space I’d be where He’s already been. Are you troubled by thoughts of dying? ‘Don’t be morbid’, someone might say. Well, God-the-Son spoke of it, often. He was scared too, in the garden. But, he conquered it, and says I can too. I cannot escape the universe or the death that awaits. God’s created the one, and overcome the other. I’m sticking with Him. Singing praise, saying ‘Hallelujah’, living for Him…these are all He’s asking me to do in exchange!

Some biographical information on Paul Baloche:

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

http://www.leadworship.com/

Thou Art Worthy, Great Jehovah (# 2) -- Karen Chandler Eagan Tynan

Karen Eagan has given us the real scoop on the song "Thou Art Worthy, Great Jehovah", a scoop first posted on this blog on December 13, 2008 ! See it in her own words below:

I wrote Thou Art Worthy ,Great Jehovah during a devotion. Some of my other songs have been recorded but it seems that God has truly blessed me through Thou Art Worthy. I shared the song with my then fiancee, Rex Eagan and (he) began to play it on the guitar for me. As we began to sing it in the van, the driver had to pull over because the Spirit of the Lord began to move and he was weeping. The next time we shared it was in a County Jail and as I began to share the line Abba Father with the inmates they began to weep. About a month later we shared the song at Church on the Rock and Pastor Larry Lea, prophesied and said, "Karen and Rex that song will be heard around the world" within 6 months..Dr. Yonghii Cho, Pastor Robert Tilton, Pastor Larry Lea satellited a New Years' service around the world. Guess which song the Pastors' decided they wanted led? "Thou Art Worthy, Great Jehovah" WOW! God had blown it around the world.

Years later...and many songs later, the Lord began to give me verses to Thou Art Worthy and said, this is where this song came from. I was an abused child and the Lord had healed and delivered me and when you read the verses you will understand a little more.

vs.1... Here I am alone in my room, thinking about what I've been through. Though the years of pain and fear have left behind the stains of tears, Still in my heart these words keep ringing and then my spirit begins singing.

Chorus:Thou art worthy, Great Jehovah. Thou art worthy, Mighty God. Thou art worthy, Abba Father. Thou art worthy, Lamb of God

Vs.2 Here You are, Your Presence is so real to to deliver cleanse and heal. And as my hands begin to raise, so my lips break forth in praise.

Chorus

....That is the "rest of the story". After I began the verses I have had women tell me," the only song that I could listen to when I had to lock my abusive (husband) out of my room was 'Thou art worthy', now I understand". ....one more precious story. I was ministering at a nursing home for Christmas one year. An elderly man wheeled his wheelchair to me and said, " I love all the old hymns you all are leading but I was wondering if you knew a song that I used to sing in church? 'Thou Art Worthy Great Jehovah'! I said, 'yes sir I know it, did you know it had verses? Let me sing them to you and you join me in the chorus.' By the time I had sung the 1st verse and he joined me in the chorus I really understood where Thou Art Worthy came from. A wounded heart, soul, body that was totally delivered and healed by Him.

The above was shared with the blog author on 11 December 2010 on Facebook.

The Lord Is In His Holy Temple -- God

Habakkuk, William Kirkpatrick, and God. What do these people have in common? One being is timeless, another one lived some 2,600 years ago, and another is a relative babe compared to the other two (he lived in the 19th and early 20th Centuries). Yet, they all knew the words “The Lord Is In His Holy Temple”, a song that is one of the more unique compositions among Christian songs. Oh, the words seem pretty familiar, exhorting the audience (fellow Christians) to hold Him in reverence (perhaps as Solomon and the Israelites did, see the picture). But, who wrote the words? It might surprise you, as the exploration of the song did for me.

William Kirkpatrick wrote the music for the song in 1900, and the words first appeared in the prophet Habakkuk’s brief volume (Habakkuk 2:20) that was written in probably the 7th Century B.C (the 600s), but the words are not composed by the prophet. Instead, they are God’s. Habakkuk is sharing his angst with the Lord over injustice in the southern kingdom, and then his shock over God’s solution – sending Babylonia to punish the nation. The context of God’s song verse (2:20) is His discourse about idol worship’s futility, versus the True God. What has brought God to this point? Judah had survived the foreign invader longer than its northern neighbor, Israel, but by 605 B.C. (the approximate time of Habakkuk’s conversation with God) the Lord had seen enough. Idolatry, among other evils, permeated the nation. Habakkuk and his contemporary prophet Jeremiah could both see the approach of destruction. It came after decades of descent, telling us God was indeed patient with disobedience. Though resolute in His punishment on the people, He was not without compassion, for Babylonia would eventually be vanquished. ‘I am still GOD’, He seems to be saying with this verse. A nation will walk away from me, will be punished by evil invaders, and will be restored again – and I, the great I AM, am still here. Where have your idols gotten you?

Had God grown tired of Judah’s national waffle? Unlike Israel, which had a spate of evil kings for all of its 200 years (around 933 – 722 B.C.), Judah had been washed back and forth as bad and good kings reigned throughout its 350-year existence (933-586 B.C), first snubbing Him, then re-embracing Him. How would a volatile relationship like this work if it were person-to-person? I think it’s called divorce, usually, for most people who want stability and fidelity will tolerate nothing less. Think of it on God’s level, who regards time in eons, if you can. ‘Either choose me, or leave me’, He must have thought . And, this wasn’t the first era like this. Remember the 300 years of judges (roughly 1400 – 1100 B.C.) ? Can you hear Him saying ‘What else do I need to do to convince them? If they could just see things the way I do! ‘ Can you see the wheels turning in His head, later ? ‘Hey, what if I could get them to see me?’ I’m in heaven, my holy temple. Would it work if I visited them there, and became like them…? Hey, Jesus, I have an idea….’

See the following link for information about William Kirkpatrick: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/bio/k/i/r/kirkpatrick_wj.htm