Father, Open Our Eyes

As we find ourselves yet again at the sacred days of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday, I wanted to share a song that I wrote last year (which was included on our recent album) in the hopes that it helps you appreciate even more the great love of God the Father in sending his Son to the cross in our place.

Last April (2013) I was sitting in my office, live streaming The Gospel Coalition’s conference, which focused on “Jesus in the Gospel of Luke”. During the last plenary session, they had a man named Gary Millar give the final message on “Jesus Betrayed and Crucified”, using Luke 22:39-23:43 as the text. I had it on in the background but after just a few minutes I had to stop and devote my full attention to this remarkable message. I had never heard the story of Jesus’ crucifixion preached on with such clarity, tenderness, and conviction. Here it is in its entirety (and you should watch the whole thing sometime before Easter).

One of the things I was struck by was Gary’s beautiful, poetic delivery (his accent didn’t hurt either). He described Jesus as a “strong Lion for our defense” and a “humble lamb as our sacrifice”. He talked about how Jesus was in complete control the entire time, when everything else was falling apart. And he kept coming back to this refrain: “How can we take Him for granted?” I was deeply affected.

I asked Gary for his permission to borrow liberally from his sermon for my song, and he was very gracious.

Here is a lyric video of my song, inspired by Gary Millar’s message, entitled “Father, Open Our Eyes”.

The lyrics are:

Infinite grace and mercy, tenderness deep and wide
A strong lion for our defense, a humble lamb as our sacrifice
How can we take Him for granted? How can our hearts become hard?
Oh, that again we would run to our friend, embraced by the grace in His arms

Father, open our eyes, help us to savor Jesus Christ
Father, level our pride, show us the one who gives us life
Help us to love Your Son

Innocent, perfect beauty, met by our wicked sin
The King eternal becomes the judged, His enemies to be made His friends
How can we take Him for granted? How can our hearts become stone?
Oh, that today we would fall on our face, undone by the love He has shown

Come, Holy Spirit. Lead us to Jesus. Help us to worship

Jamie Brown. Copyright © 2013 Worthily Magnify Music. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

If you’d like to buy the mp3 on iTunes, click here.

Here’s a chord chart in F (recorded key).

Here’s the sheet music in F.

Here’s a chord chart in E.

And here’s the sheet music in E.

You can purchase the whole album here.

My good friend and gifted worship leader/composer/orchestrator Joshua Spacht has arranged this song for a string quartet, and if you’d like the score, contact me. I owe Joshua big time for transcribing this song into sheet music form for me!

I hope this song (and Gary’s teaching) are a blessing to you, and even your congregation, and that you would see afresh the glory of Jesus. How can we take him for granted?