Never Gonna Let Me Go -- Jason Ingram and Kristian Stanfill

‘Take it all.’ That seemed like a key phrase that two songwriters settled upon when they thought about what they wanted to say for a song on this album that they and others helped put together in 2014. In order for someone to really mean what he says with those three short words, he would have to offer himself totally – an act of unreserved and complete sacrifice. That would be Passion – unlike what anyone else has ever lived, or died, to demonstrate. And so, when Jason Ingram and Kristian Stanfill were reflecting on Jesus’ passion – His great sacrifice for everyone – they must have thought about how he did that because of His unswerving devotion to those He created, that He was “Never Gonna Let (You and) Me Go”. (See the 16^th Century painting Christ Carrying the Cross here by El Greco.) We didn’t hear Him say so, but can you imagine what it was like when Jesus spoke to our enemy, with utter conviction--‘You cannot have them, Satan. They are mine!’? This day is passion’s culmination – Friday – when Jesus gave it all. Do you feel His grip?

 

The album’s name is Passion: Take It All, and that was the foundation upon which the Atlanta-Houston Passion Conference in 2014 built its message to young Christians that year. Jason and Kristian wrote, either individually or collaboratively with others or each other, four songs for the album, including ‘Never Gonna…’, with a very upbeat, celebratory kind of tune that testifies to how the saved can feel when they appreciate how much He’s done to complete our victory. And, that His hold on you and me is certain, results in an outpouring of thanks in its lyrics. Love is the engine, according to Jason and Kristian. His ‘love break(s) through..stone’…’breathes (into) my bones’…’reach(es) out to my soul’. This love also is‘calling…’, ‘making me new’, and ‘lifting me’. Is it any surprise that the Almighty God says He is love, through one of His apostles (1 John 4:8,16), and that this love can do so much? Just listen to what Jason and Kristian say this love overcomes: a ‘lost’ and ‘blind’ condition, ‘darkness wandering’, where ‘no life’ and ‘no hope’ permeate the environment (v.1). Medical doctors have no cure for a blind person, and have only limited abilities to revive the dead; and psychiatrists and psychologists can do only so much for the person who’s lost emotionally, someone without hope. But the Great Physician has the answer! That exclamation point is what Jason and Kristian might add if a musical note to express this existed. But, what they do instead is underscore with their lyrics the pivotal nature of love, by singing this four-letter word repeatedly in its various roles. Thirty times – is that enough to tell just how important this God-infused condition is? And, it’s so crucial to us understanding Him, that the word is not a passive noun in the song’s language. It is a verb, with potent action. Indeed, it’s so potent and alive, that it defied the death march that Jesus walked, and the cross upon which He hung, that passion Friday.

 

Jesus’ passion needs no more exposition from this blogger. What He’s done stands firmly all on its own. The only thing left for you and me is how to respond. He wants to give me an abundant life, one ‘to the full’ (John 10:10), and so it was no mere execution, no tragic accident that Jesus gave it all. Jesus Himself was preparing to execute the capital criminal that was menacing and killing the human soul. He’s knocked him out cold, condemning him to the Abyss, and finally to the fiery lake (Revelation 17 and 20). The match is over in this spiritual battle. The Bible’s last book says we win, if we join the love-natured, and Almighty Lamb. You can sing about never being let go, with the rest of us. Do you wanna be on the winning side?       

 

  

 

See here for information about one of the songwriters: Kristian Stanfill - Wikipedia

 

See here for biographic information on the other songwriter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Ingram

 

See here for information about the album on which the song appears: Passion: Take It All - Wikipedia

 

See here for information on the painting shown here, and its public domain status: File:Christ Carrying the Cross 1580.jpg - Wikimedia Commons.  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, 1929.

 

I Want to Know Christ – Paul, and Gerald Moore

 

Was he thinking of making his words into a song? Paul, the apostle of the Bible’s New Testament, certainly would have endorsed any system – like music – that aids memory retention of important things that one wants to implement as life strategies, like the declaration he made when he told a group of believers “I Want to Know Christ” (Philippians 3:10). This was an especially noteworthy assertion because Paul was under house arrest at the time, possibly in Rome (perhaps 61 A.D.), or maybe in either Ephesus (53-55 A.D.) or Caesarea (57-59 A.D.) (The picture, Saint Paul Arrested, was painted in the early 1900s [author Publisher of Bible Cards]). Would Paul have thought that the Greeks like Plato and Aristotle (who lived four or five centuries before himself) practiced something really useful for the Christian disciple to adopt, a memorization technique called Mnemonics? It might more certainly be said that Gerald Moore, a believer who helped popularize Paul’s words to the Philippian church, must have believed that this ancient Greek method was really valuable, since he borrowed it to create in 1991 his version of Paul’s prison-inspired words. Song-making is indeed one of His best gifts to us.

     

What would provoke a person to say something like what Paul voiced here – ‘bring it on, give it your best shot and make me suffer, just go ahead and kill me!’ Has the individual gone mad, beset by dementia, or else decided that suicide is his best option? One might say so, if Paul had not also included the part about ‘know(ing) Christ’, and more deeply ‘shar(ing)…’, and ‘conform(ing)’, and ‘ris(ing)’ in power like Him. One could look at this one-time enemy of Christ and say that he got what he had coming to himself; in fact, Jesus told Ananias, the first believer to encounter Paul (when he was still known as Saul), that this threat-breathing persecutor would be shown how much he needed to suffer for God’s name (Acts 9:16). In Paul’s many letters (Gal. 1:13-14; Eph. 3:8; 1 Tim. 1:15-16, and 1 Cor. 15:9), he comes across vividly as one who remembered his previous ways and still felt dogged with regret. He owed a lot, more than he could ever pay. And, the only way out was for him to offer the rest of himself in the service of Jesus’ cause. He saw his own life – hearkening to his Jewish roots – as a kind of drink offering that should be ‘poured out’ for his many sins (Philippians 2:17). Near the end of his life, Paul repeats this metaphor (2 Timothy 4:6), anticipating that his own demise and resurrection in the image of his Master was close at hand. Impossible, you say? Saul-Paul might have echoed this, had he not received the ‘fill(ing) with His Spirit’ through the ministering hands of Ananias (Acts 9:17). He never forgot how much damage he’d done, but he also never forgot how much he had received in his conversion, a story that he told at least two times, many years later in his life (Acts 22 and 26). Jesus’ words still rang like new in his ears. It was a life he couldn’t keep to himself, praying that others would likewise be filled in a powerful way with this same Spirit (Colossians 1:9), transforming the impossible into reality.

 

Gerald Moore enters the picture, some nineteen centuries later, with a tune that musically sums up Paul’s greatest purpose following his Damascus Road conversion. Nothing more than his name is known of Gerald. Is that intentional, so that the focus is on how to follow my ancient brother’s model, to be sculpted as a follower of the Holy Sacrifice, even as Paul was? Gerald was merely the conduit, as any believer is, of a Spirit who’s at work, doing something that takes years, even decades – as it did in Paul’s life – to be fully realized. Gerald may have been the arranger, the tune-writer, for what someone else already was singing – we just don’t know much about that part. If it was first sung around a campfire, as perhaps many folk melodies like this one were, an as yet anonymous soul must have also wanted what Paul had the insight and courage to say. Look deep inside his words…they’re more than a campfire song. Want to know Christ? Gerald helps remind us what Paul knew comes with this life goal.

 

See here for publication information about the song and its full text: Praise for the Lord (Expanded Edition) 864. I want to know Christ and the pow'r of His rising | Hymnary.org

 

See here for description of memory system called Mnemonics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mnemonic

 

Information on Paul gleaned from the NIV Study Bible, Zondervan Bible Publishers, 1985.

 

See here for information on the picture showing Paul being arrested: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Paul_arrested.jpg. 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 70 years or fewer. {{PD-US}} – US work that is in the public domain in the US for an unspecified reason, but presumably because it was published in the US before 1929.

Great Things -- Phil Wickham and Jonas Myrin

Who was it that said ‘necessity is the mother of invention’? Phil Wickham was really not thinking as far back as this little aphorism’s first usage (perhaps in Aesop’s Fables [see the information below] in ancient times, before Christ.), but instead around 2018, some 26 centuries later. He and his friend Jonas Myrin were looking for a new upbeat song to use in the opening moments of a church’s worship service in Riverside, California (see the seal of that southern California city here), and Phil says “Great Things” was that necessary piece they happened to co-write. But, as so often occurs, these two contemporary songwriters traced back through ancient scriptures, namely those found in the Bible, to find inspiration for their 21^st Century solution. They didn’t think about awe-inspiring events in their own experiences, but rather those centered around what God has done, ones about which we all can all read and re-read to appreciate Him repeatedly. He’s still that same timeless One.

 

Phil and the other worship leaders at Harvest Christian Fellowship had what at first glance might seem like an unusual problem – they were feeling that the lively songs they had been using were becoming too familiar, maybe even stale. Hmmm, how does something positive become a negative? Phil would say that that happens through overuse, and so he gave himself the task of finding at least one more opening song that could be the jump-off point for Harvest’s worship hour. The pages and the stories within his bible gave Phil so much grist for the music mill that was grinding in his spirit, that it wasn’t long before he was struck by a common theme – and indeed the theme for a new song – that he discovered in these well-known God-protect-and lead-the people stories as he read them. He looked in Psalms for a new musical message, but also in the wide variety of historical episodes when God was someone’s rescuer or the One choosing His people to do something miraculous – Daniel in the lion’s den; David versus Goliath; the Israelites taking Jericho; Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego surviving Nebuchadnezzar’s fiery furnace; and Moses and the people at the parting of the Red Sea. Phil noted that in almost all cases, the people praised their God in words, especially in songs, in the aftermath of the incidents. He found what Mary said upon learning her role as the coming Messiah’s mother (Luke 1:46-56, and especially v. 49) as perhaps the most provocative for his thoughts. ‘…for he who is mighty has done great things for me,     and holy is his name’, Mary sang in what we know today as the Magnificat (also see this blog’s 3/16/2023 entry for the Magnificat story). Mary’s baby’s pivotal position as all of humanity’s savior speaks to all generations in the present tense, rather than to a group of people in some past event. That was enough to spark Phil’s lyric-writing muscles, although he admits his mind was still stuck in neutral at one point, until Jonas captured the right words to complete a second verse and the song’s bridge. The two’s song theme, in a sense can never wear out, because God is not yet done doing great and amazing things.

 

Indeed, Phil and Jonas, while they were thinking of what He’s done already, also want us to expectantly rejoice in God’s never-done nature, because they wrote lines like these: You'll be faithful forevermore…And I know You will do it again…You will do great things. You can travel the musical road that Phil and Jonas constructed from beginning to an end, although exactly when that end will happen is unknown, for it’s hidden to the angels and even to Jesus (Matthew 24:36 and Mark 13:32). Is that part of God’s point, to keep us in the dark? Exactly what is He up to, we might sigh, and grouse, and complain when things seem tough. That was oftentimes the reaction of His chosen people, until they witnessed Him in action – Godly, awe-inspiring, terrifying action. Phil and Jonas tell us he was, and is, and is to come, in the musical phrases they chose…and, perhaps without really intentionally trying to do so, Phil and Jonas were looking at and thinking about what John was once told (Revelation 1:4,8 and 4:8), through some visions that were no less startling than what his ancestors observed. Ready to see Him do some more mind-blowing, astounding, stupefying things? My online thesaurus is inadequate to really capture the Almighty I AM!                 

 

 

See song story shared here (beginning/ending at minute mark 4:04 – 8:12) by the primary songwriter: Great Things // Phil Wickham // New Song Cafe - Bing video

 

Also see the story here: Phil Wickham – Great Things Lyrics | Genius Lyrics

 

See information on this quoted saying here: Necessity is the mother of invention - Wikipedia

 

See information on the image/seal of Riverside here: File:Seal of Riverside, 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.