Blessed Be the Lord God Almighty -- Bob Fitts

He and his family really didn’t get what they thought they would when they moved to Kona, Hawaii in the early 1980s. The sights and the history of the place were certainly what they’d dreamed about, enough to plausibly make anyone say “Blessed Be the Lord God Almighty” when taking it all in. (See here a historical photo of King Kamehameha, who held court on the “Big Island” of Kona in 1816, nearly 150 years before it became the U.S. 50^th state.) But, that was about it. Poverty was not what Bob Fitts thought he and his wife (Kathy) and their two young children would find, yet that was the reality of their lives, despite the beauty of their surroundings. And so, Bob might have been excused for having other things on his mind one day when a church asked him to sing a song. The premier of this song he crafted in just a few minutes wasn’t exactly auspicious. In fact, it fell as flat as the lifestyle in which the Fitts family found themselves. That was not the end, however. Read on.

What emerged from the deprivation Bob Fitts experienced was ultimately in stark contrast to the surroundings in which it was first conceived. The Fittses were living in what is locally called a ‘coffee shack’, a dwelling normally used by farmers who grow the famous coffee for which Kona is known. Fitts had accepted a challenge to move to the island and help guide young people in the Youth With a Mission (YWAM) outreach organization. Probably the high cost-of-living, scarcity of housing, and the nature of Bob’s position led to the subpar housing they found available. Consequently, Bob’s state of mind left him feeling pretty bereft, spiritually as well as physically, when a church asked him to sing something special. Bob fashioned a song for the occasion in just a few minutes, lauding the God he was willing to serve in spite of the hardship he and his family were enduring. At first, he didn’t even bother to write down the words or record the music, and when he arose to sing it at the event for the first time, his memory failed. Bob must have thought that this episode was rather indicative of his entire Hawaii experience, in a way. A promise of something special had instead come up empty, or nearly so. Nevertheless, Bob did not throw in the towel, but on the way home from this deflating experience he recalled the tune and the words to “Blessed Be the Lord God Almighty’, permitting him to record them this time in his shack-home. YWAM was soon helping spread Bob’s song, locally and worldwide. He relates one of his most poignant moments was hearing a stadium filled with thousands in South Korea singing ‘Blessed Be the Lord…’ in a language he doesn’t even speak. Maybe it was Bob’s poor-in-spirit moment in his shack that made room for the rich creation that was born so readily and widely adopted.

You think that Bob Fitts’ ‘Blessed Be the Lord God Almighty’ experience may have something to do with him still living in Hawaii, 40 years later? The Fittses have travelled widely to spread the message that was encapsulated in the song born in a shack. In fact, they make their church ‘home’ in Singapore, while still maintaining a home – but, not the original shack! – in the Kailua-Kona area. Hawaii’s isolation perhaps spurs their outlook, the urge to extend themselves far and wide. This must help them see and appreciate even more the blessed way God has worked, to fashion and use them as tools, even while they were feeling pretty needy and suspecting they were in the wrong place. ‘…lift your name in all the earth’, Bob wrote in one phrase of the shack-song. Perhaps he was hoping for that when he accepted the challenge in the early 1980s with YWAM. Now, the Fitts clan seems to be living it.              

A source for the song story is the book “Our God Reigns: Stories behind Your Favorite Praise and Worship Songs”, by Phil Christensen and Shari MacDonald, Kregel Publications, 2000. See more information on the song story in The Complete Book of Hymns – Inspiring Stories About 600 Hymns and Praise Songs by William J. Petersen and Ardythe Petersen, Tyndale House Publishers, 2006

See here for information about one of the author: https://www.bobfitts.com/about

Come, Now Is the Time to Worship -- Brian Doerksen

In 1997 he was 32 and walking through a famous spot in London called Wimbledon (see an old map of it here) when he had what someone might say was a ‘Job moment’. Brian Doerksen probably was not really thinking about worship in the way he’d considered it previously, because he was feeling low. And yet, the words “Come, Now Is the Time to Worship” came over him despite the emotional turmoil that consumed him, perhaps not unlike how the ancient character Job arrived at a devotional moment following a season of profound loss (Job 1:20). The struggle was not confined to one area, but reached into both Brian’s professional and family life. He and his wife had been trying to serve God, which made the two-fisted blow the Doerksens had suffered seem especially difficult. And so, Brian was out one morning to walk and empty himself mentally of his troubles, at least temporarily, when….

…he started to hear the music, in his head or actually in the space about him, for what he would soon write. ‘Come, now is the time to worship’, Brian says he perceived in a very clear way. Conversely, Brian and his wife (Joyce) and several friends had had a professional failure with a musical in the months preceding the Doerksens move to England to take on a ministry in a church, so Brian was still feeling wounded and broken from that experience. On top of that, he and Joyce had just discovered that one of their children had a form of mental retardation – a condition that would be diagnosed in a second of their six children a few years hence, in 2000. So, was the morning on the street near Wimbledon a much-needed oasis for Brian, or did it flow from the twin struggles that the Doerksens experienced? ‘Yes’, someone might say. Both ways of looking at this might be true, at a time when Brian admits he was barely clinging to his faith. This besieged worship leader says he bounded home and immediately sat at his piano to sort out the tune and ask himself why he was getting this message. Doerksen says he realized in those moments that the Divine worship calling is not something that clicks on and off, like a light switch. It’s on all the time, and the light may be various colors and shades. He invites all creation to worship constantly, because that is our very purpose as His creation. In good and bad times, He is watching and waiting. Perhaps 1997-98 was when Brian Doerksen knew more intimately what true worship (John 4:23) meant.

Brian’s season in London was about two years, a time when ‘worship’ was a discovery he might not have thought he needed. After all, he’d been the child of pretty faithful Mennonite parents who also encouraged his Christian musical interest when he was a teenager. Brian’s experiences from Central American countries to southeast Asia just after he graduated from high school, and then later on leading worship in a church in Canada in the 1980s may have suggested to him that he need not re-dig the worship well from which he apparently had already been drinking. But, Brian indicates the cinders of failure were the seeds of his worship rebirth, giving him and us a song about coming to Him anew. From a time of apparent hardship came a new potency in Brian’s worship life. God can make worship come from just about anywhere He wants. 

       

See the following link for the story of the song: https://www.staugustine.com/article/20150611/LIFESTYLE/306119979

Read about the author here: https://web.archive.org/web/20061022232759/http://www.briandoerksen.com/about/biography.html

And here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Doerksen

Great is the Lord Almighty -- Dennis Jernigan

This 59-year old calls Muskogee his home in Oklahoma (see the map here) currently, so that might have been where Dennis Jernigan first penned the words that he still often sings today, nearly 30 years after he wrote them. Dennis had a lot of great reasons to exclaim that “Great Is the Lord Almighty” in 1991 as a 32-year old. By the time he wrote the words, Dennis had begun to hear lots of stories – perhaps many from people who could not have imagined that they would be sharing them – as a result of his own example. Jernigan often describes himself as a ‘reborn’ person, a ‘new creation’, and perhaps that’s what he imagined a group many centuries earlier might have thought about themselves, as conquerors rather than as beaten-down reform projects. Get in touch with these old biblical stories, he says, and understand He’s still the Almighty in our century.

Dennis doesn’t share too many precise details about how each of the more than 2,000 songs he’s written have evolved since his ‘rebirth’ in the early 1980s, but knowing his very personal redemption story helps contextualize most of what he’s composed since that time. Freedom is another very key word that Dennis emboldens in his testimonial (see website link below), using it as an umbrella to cover all that has happened over the last few decades. In short, Dennis’s life has been an about-face from the homosexual lifestyle that he was in until the early 1980s. A 1981 concert and a close friend’s help at the same time helped Dennis begin the process of turning around, a progression that culminated in his marriage to his wife Melinda in 1983 and the beginning of a life with her and the nine children they would eventually have together. He might have said ‘Great is the Lord Almighty’ right then, but that moment would actually happen several years later, after Dennis began sharing his ‘rebirth’ in church settings. Was it the ensuing events that perhaps inspired Dennis to call out to the Almighty musically? He relates that many people confessed their own hurts and struggles as he made himself vulnerable beginning in 1988. A community had been hidden, but now were openly calling upon the same Almighty, in a way that they witnessed Dennis model for them. Dennis’ verses in ‘Great Is the Lord Almighty’, in a parallel way, speak of a people needing their Almighty at the Red Sea, at ‘the brink’ (v.1), and while marching around Jericho in the Promised Land (v.2). You can hear Dennis personalize his redemptive state in the words ‘…since He took my blame’ (v.3), and for others like him who were formerly ‘…dying and lost in their sin’. Proclaiming Him as the Almighty and seeing His redemption transform yourself and scores, even hundreds of people, would be something to witness! That’s where Dennis was in 1991.  
     

Dennis’ other words in ‘Great…Almighty’ are in the present tense, emphasizing that this God is still busy today re-birthing people. ‘He is a mighty God’, ‘great is the Lord Almighty’, Jernigan asserts repeatedly in the song. He’s not finished with you and me, including especially if you feel as damaged as Dennis did in 1981. You and I can be ‘lifting up a mighty joyful sound’, the same way an ancient generation did, and which is related in a bestselling book we can all read – the bible. It’s not just book stuff, however. Dennis is living proof.  

Hear a recording and see all the words of the song here: https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=great+is+the+lord+almighty

See testimony of author here: https://www.dennisjernigan.com/djs-story

See biography of author here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Jernigan

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