Let It Rise – Holland Davis

 

Distraction. Disappointment. Prayer. Surprise. Worship. If you asked Holland Davis to describe using one-word details how he coaxed the song “Let It Rise” to its fruition, that is how he might answer. The moment didn’t start out very auspiciously, though he and his bandmates were in a mellow setting on a beach in Point Loma, California (San Diego area, see postcard view of it here), a place that should have had the assembled worshippers feeling appreciative for the Creator’s handiwork all around them. Holland might add that such a moment is when God’s activity might be most apparent – when things seem to be going awry, a callout to Him can elicit a radical change that can only be attributed to the supernatural. Just focus on His presence coming into a group that wants Him to be near, maybe through the prayer of even just one distressed soul. Holland tried it out, probably not for the first time in 1997. The episode just reaffirms how God ‘inhabits the praises of His people’ (as the Psalmist David said, 22:3).

 

Holland took advantage of an opportunity for his band to guide some evening worship, but once at a beachside chapel in Point Loma, he felt that the opportunity was going downhill pretty precipitously. The band, including some new members, was stumbling a bit in the performance, and the church’s members were responding with inattention, a cycle that quickly had Holland feeling desolate. God was not being honored appropriately, neither in the music the band was presenting, nor in the crowd’s reaction. Where could Holland turn, except in prayer to the God he so much wanted to lift up in reverence and exultation? And so, the words just came to him spontaneously, a petition that turned out to be the song’s title with some additional words that Holland’s spirit formed that day. The lyrics were really those that came from deep inside his moment of despair, as he asked God to help the band and the crowd sense the divine Spirit, and to ‘let the glory’, the ‘praises’, the ‘songs’, and the ‘joy’ of the Lord ‘rise among’ them. Could Holland have really been surprised when the awkward moment evolved into something truly special, like a beauty that takes one’s breath away? He says it was a strange feeling, but Holland seemed to recognize God’s presence nevertheless. As he and band members relaxed and let the Spirit flow through them and the crowd, an uncertainty in the crowd yielded to a greater sensation, and what was going to be a bomb of an evening worship instead grew into a 45-minute elevating experience. Was Holland Davis and the band responsible? Holland remembers feeling that his only credit for the evening was trusting that the Spirit was already present, if he and the rest of the assembled would accept that God was indeed near, not far away. If a crowd gathers with the intent to praise Him, that is harmonious with God’s desire, too. Worship leaders only need to believe that, and let the worshippers know they can believe it too.   

 

What’s left after worship has been had? Perhaps that is the thought that had Holland on edge as the evening in 1997 began. How might the evening’s other plans have proceeded, if the music had not inspired genuine worship? It was a bible study night for the church, after all. Would a dispiriting worship harm a study that was meant to bring relevance of His word to them? I want to know that He can make a difference to me in the middle of a busy week, not leave me shrugging my shoulders. No doubt there might have been some in Jesus’ era who thought His life and effect was a ‘so what’. What was it Pilate meant when he said ‘What is truth?’ And yet, Jesus inspired so much passion among others – both venomous and adoring. Can you feel His passion for you? There’s something He’s put inside you, which He wants to make grow…it’s called eternity (Ecclesiastes 3:11). No one should want this without Him there beside you. The alternative is too horrible, and He’s too great. Think about that if you find yourself talking to Him soon.      

 

 

The source for Holland Davis’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.