He Knows My Name – Tommy Walker

 He wasn’t thrilled with the topic, and really needed someone else to push him into it. What if Tommy Walker’s Divine Maker had felt that way in the beginning, if He had pursued half-heartedly the man-making project, if He had even decided that “He Knows My Name” was just a momentary and insignificant cerebral fragment? Instead, Tommy decided, eventually, that God’s inspiration wasn’t just whimsical, and that an upcoming sermon by a minister in a Los Angeles church (see the seal of Los Angeles here) was the stimulant he could not ignore. After all, he was a worship minister, and this was his role – to write a song when so directed. God is creative in His very nature. So, when someone tells you to mimic that characteristic, what’s that say about you if you refuse? Tommy had already decided that God’s work in his human-ness wasn’t an accident, so he answered with what this minister was expecting. Just flip the switch, and say ‘OK, I’m ready; you’ve got me, God. Use me to say what You want’.

Actually, Tommy Walker’s Los Angeles preacher who asked him for a song in 1996 probably deserves some notable credit for ‘He Knows…’, because that was the title of the sermon that he’d already chosen. You can almost see Tommy sighing as this minister (Mark Pickerill) pitched the idea at him; what had stirred this minister’s thoughts, anyway? Tommy admits he needed ‘sheer discipline’ to agree to this, because he really didn’t feel motivated, even as the poetry began to develop and ink flowed from his pen. Tommy was initially convinced this would be only an average-quality song, but he stuck with it nevertheless.  Perhaps it was the simplicity of the concept that helped Tommy finally feel that something special was in work. Just go with the idea that this Creator made me, and scope out how He expressed Himself in that process. He doesn’t just know ‘my name’, He knows my ‘thoughts’. He gave me a ‘heart’, and my ‘tears’ are ones He gives me. And, He listens when I ‘call’, because He knows what’s going on inside this person He made. It’s all about intimacy with this God and me, Tommy must have decided, as he continued to write. It started in the very first few moments, ‘before even time began’, that I became His. ‘In His hands…’, and ‘…His own’, are words that Tommy used to confess that he could not exist, even as a thought, if God had not first been who He is. And, despite my ability to leave or try to ignore Him, He won’t ‘leave me’. Perhaps that’s because something is more true of God than even His created humans understand at times: that He cannot remove Himself from those He made, since we’re in His image. A human may decide to run away from Him when he really doesn’t want to be part of His Creator. How long can that really persist, one might ask? How much sadness does that engender in God when that happens? Jonah ran the other way, and a whole generation snubbed their noses in Noah’s day. They didn’t have God in human likeness to change their minds. What excuse do you and I have?

Tommy includes a lot of scriptural reminders that God does indeed see each of us intimately (see the link below that show what many writers have said – John [John and 1 John), Isaiah, Jeremiah, David [in Ps. 56, 139], and Moses [in Exodus]). He does feel what we feel, cries over those He made, as the bible’s shortest verse relates (John 11:35).  Why’d He create, if the result has pained Him so? That He’s inscrutable is also who He is, but not when it comes to reaching out for me. It’s a lifelong education, this knowing Him. He already knows me, and yet I cannot help feeling the frustration that there’s always a deficit on my end of this understanding. But, I cannot deny the link is there, and that to fight Him is vain. He knows you and me. Tommy thought at first that this was a ‘so what?’ Then, he thought about it some more. Keep thinking, he says.      

Information on the story behind “He Knows My Name” can be found in Tommy Walker’s book Songs from Heaven, written with Phil Kassel in 2005, published by Regal Books.

Also see the story here: https://www.tommywalkerministries.org/media/song-of-the-week-2019-16-he-knows-my-name

See information on the seal of Los Angeles here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Seal_of_Los_Angeles.svg . The seal  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 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.

Work, for the Night Is Coming -- Annie Walker Coghill

 

Did she really like work this much?! Most people think of work in a negative way…I have to go to work. But, perhaps Annie Louisa Walker (later Coghill) was really just taking a cue from what she’d read God-in-the-flesh once say about his daily activities. ‘Do what I made you to be’, she might have surmised, or as she paraphrased what He said, “Work, for the Night Is Coming”. She didn’t feel that saying it only once or a few times was sufficient, but was it a conscious choice to say ‘work’ the same number of times as her age? Some circumstances in England, or as likely in southern Quebec (in Canada – see map) where her family had recently arrived, coaxed three poetic verses from this teenager’s pen. The poem’s theme evidently stuck with Annie, as the subsequent years in her new home and then later after she returned to England showed.

 

Annie Walker’s location when she wrote about work is suggested in the publication where her poem-hymn first appeared, and the title she chose further indicates at least one activity in which she was engaged when she picked up her pen. Leaves from the Backwoods that was published in Montreal, Canada in 1862 contained the poem she first crafted with the words ‘The Night Cometh’. It was evidently something she created as an 18-year-old in 1854, shortly after her family arrived in Pointe-Lé­vy, Qué­bec from England (in 1853). The area was still developing in the mid-19^th Century, with Annie’s father working for the regional railroad that connected the American northeast with southeastern Canada. Perhaps Annie thought of the area as ‘backwoods’, compared to the old-world England where she’d been born and raised up until her mid-teens. But, it didn’t seem to bother her, this girl who penned the word ‘work’ (or a synonym or form of the word ‘work’) 18 times in just three verses. Her phraseology indicates she was reading about an encounter Jesus had with a blind man whom He healed (John 9), when His followers asked Jesus to explain the root cause of the man’s disability. In short, Jesus did not affix blame. Instead, He looked at the situation as an opportunity to ‘work’, to reveal the power of God. Since He was in fact the God-man, could Jesus do any less than a God-work? And so, He also must have suspected that His work would cause no little consternation among the locals, especially the ‘religious’ authorities, since what He’d done happened on the Sabbath when any work was taboo.

 

We can guess that Annie was inspired by Jesus’ example, given her poem’s opening words and how many times she recommends being about one’s toil throughout ‘Work…Night Is Coming’. Was this a window onto her own life? Annie and two sisters would help organize and operate a school in Ontario, and then later she was a governess and book reviewer in England. Annie went on to author nine other publications, in addition to Leaves from the Backwoods. Annie had lots of abilities, and wasn’t shy about using the skills with which she’d been blessed. You and I might look at God and say, I cannot do as He could! True, but take a page from Annie Walker Coghill’s life example. Work can be a great thing, if it reflects the Great One who moves you.

 

  

   

See more information on the song story in these sources: The Complete Book of Hymns – Inspiring Stories About 600 Hymns and Praise Songs by William J. Petersen and Ardythe Petersen, Tyndale House Publishers, 2006; Amazing Grace: 366 Inspiring Hymn Stories for Daily Devotions by Kenneth W. Osbeck, Kregel Publications, 1990.

 

See the author’s biography here: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/bio/c/o/g/h/coghill_alw.htm

Also see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_Louisa_Walker

See the song’s verses here: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/htm/w/o/r/k/workfort.htm

See here for information about the place from where the author wrote her song: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9vis,_Quebec

That’s Why We Praise Him – Tommy Walker

If you wanted to sum up in one word what Tommy Walker learned from writing “That’s Why We Praise Him” in the late 1990s, it would be ‘Obedience’. It probably is different for each person, for each of us is wired to easily obey some things, while other compliance calls are more demanding. Walker shares that resisting temptation can be toughest -- thus, making obedience essential --when fatigue sets in following a mountaintop-like experience. Think about Jesus’ life, and the same principle applied to Him.

Jesus was tempted on the mountain by Satan when He was tired and hungry (Matthew 4:8), and He obeyed His father, so He has the credibility to advise you and me, right? It was that reputation that spoke to Tommy Walker one night in a hotel room. You can read the entire story in his little book (see the reference below), but in short, Walker was tempted that night, following a Promise-Keepers gathering. And, despite his lonesome and weary state of mind, he resisted the thought of surfing through channels -- hotel room television channels -- because he wanted to respect and obey God. With lots of time on his hands, a self-imposed TV blackout, and his guitar in hand, Walker found a tune. It was as if God was saying ‘…here’s a gift’, and Walker relates he wrote the song on the spot, sensing it would resonate with those who would hear it. Is it an accident that Walker’s asceticism that night, mimicking Jesus’ attitude 2000 years ago in the wilderness, yielded a Divine gift? Perhaps it’s a recipe for song-writing that should be tried more often.

How would you show someone obedience in a one-look picture today? I think of a soldier offering a salute to his commanding officer (see the photo above). Walker was obedient, and he wrote words in “That’s Why We Praise Him” to remind believers that Jesus was too. ‘He came to die’, ‘He gave His everything’ remind us that He submitted, just as a private does to his C.O. And, I remind myself when I sing this song, Jesus never stopped doing so. He’s higher in rank than I’ll ever be, and yet He continued this obeisance. How? Why? He must have known something that I don’t. How did Jesus manage to be a servant? Oh, that’s right…His Father gave up Jesus to do all this, so He’s a servant-minded Father, teaching His son and all His earthly children the same lesson. Now, doesn’t it make more sense to salute Him, when you know all this?

Information on the story behind “That’s Why We Praise Him” can be found in Tommy Walker’s book Songs from Heaven, written with Phil Kassel in 2005, published by Regal Books.

http://www.tommywalker.net/index.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Walker_(worship_leader)