Debut Album

Joshua 4:4-7

4 So Joshua called together the twelve men he had appointed from the Israelites, one from each tribe, 5 and said to them, "Go over before the ark of the LORD your God into the middle of the Jordan. Each of you is to take up a stone on his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of the Israelites, 6 to serve as a sign among you. In the future, when your children ask you, 'What do these stones mean?' 7 tell them that the flow of the Jordan was cut off before the ark of the covenant of the LORD. When it crossed the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. These stones are to be a memorial to the people of Israel forever."

I was reading this passage again lately because it helps me to remember why to trust the Lord. We have had some loss and trials lately. It hurts being sharpened and refined and even forced to trust God, but oh, how it grows us!

So I chose in the midst of heartbreak to look back. I look back on the “stones” that have been set up in my own life where God has made impossible things happen and I remember again to say, “You are faithful”. When I don’t feel it, you are faithful and I will choose to remember that.

I love that Joshua by divine revelation had the Israelites take the stones from the middle of the river. From the middle of the conflict and trial that seemed insurmountable and before they had reached the other side they picked up their stones to set up as an altar of worship. That is my hearts prayer: Lord, when I am still in the midst of trial I will pick up the weight you have put in front of me and worship you. I have other altars from my past. Some built with ease and others through sweat and tears, but all go to show the faithfulness of my God.

In a culture overflowing with clichés and musical patterns that I’m all too familiar with, why as a musician would I want to focus my efforts and energy on songs of worship? This is a question I asked myself over and over again several years ago as we started to write, pretty much exclusively worship music. In the past, I had always wanted to write those soul searching songs about heartache and love and seemingly over night I had writers block… I couldn’t pen anything that wasn’t super cheesy unless I came back to worship.

My husband and I were living in Tennessee at the time and started writing songs to play for church and something amazing happened. There was a powerful connection that grew out of writing and singing something with our church based on where the church was, what God was doing and where he was leading us. I had been paying attention to the lyrical content of what we sang for a long time, having led worship for many years, but suddenly it became much more alive than it ever had been in the past to me.

I heard sometime later about an example of a tuning fork, and how if you have two tuning forks in the same room, even at opposite corners, if you struck one, then the second would start to vibrate because it caught the frequency of the first fork.  It is being able to sing something out that captures part of His majesty.  And as you feel more of God’s character revealed to you, and have people join in with that song, frequencies match and send up something amazing to our creator. It goes beyond any “high” I have ever felt performing any verity of other types of music.

I went to a concert around that time of a very talented and well known musician. I really admired his ability and the music that was produced. He was and is right now, still at the height of the music scene. Thousands of people cheered as he played and finished his set, yet I was struck that even though people were captivated and moved by the music, our “praise” or excitement ended at the ceiling. It could go no farther. Yet, with worship, our praise never ceases to rise. It goes up and up into the heavens. Beyond the ceiling and the sky into the very courtrooms of heaven. And you feel it, there is no getting away from the fact that Jesus loves to hear us sing to him to proclaim truth about his character. This experience has always been captivating for me and my fascination only grows as my faith grows. It is the one area of my life that always continues to inspire and amaze me.