Songs – Page 2 – Worthily Magnify

O God Of Perfect Holiness (New / Free Song)

A few weeks ago I wrote a song called “O God of Perfect Holiness”, and wanted to share the free chord chart, lead sheet/choir parts, and video below.

The song was written for one of our services where I wanted something that focused us upward on God’s attributes of holiness, faithfulness, righteousness, gentleness, tenderness, and loveliness, in contrast to our sinfulness. It’s a simple four-verse modern hymn.

The lyrics are:

Verse 1:
O God of perfect holiness
Seated high above
What ocean-depths of faithfulness
And sacrificial love
That all of our iniquities
Were placed on Jesus’ head
So we, who once were enemies
Are now his heirs instead

Verse 2:
Oh God of perfect righteousness
True in all your ways
What kindness in your promises
What all sufficient grace
That you would send your Son
To live and die upon the cross
That through his victory he would give
That victory to us

Verse 3:
O God of perfect tenderness
Who welcomes sinners home
What Father-hearted gentleness
In Jesus you have shown
And we will spend eternity
With angels and the saints
Who day and night forever sing
His never-ceasing praise

Verse 4:
Oh God of perfect loveliness
Who made us from the dust
Who saved us from our wretchedness
In you we place our trust
And now to him who sits upon
The throne and to the Lamb
Be blessing, honor, glory, power
Forevermore, Amen!

Here’s a free chord chart, here’s the free lead sheet/choir parts (thanks to my colleague Andrew Cote for arranging this), and a video (sorry about the poor quality) is below.

Free Song: He Giveth More Grace

I’ve always loved the text to the old hymn “He Giveth More Grace” by Annie Johnson Flint, and the story behind it too. Annie endured incredible physical suffering throughout her life, and clung to God’s inexhaustible grace through it all. This hymn is a profound acknowledgement of the heaviness and burdens of this life – and a wonderful proclamation of the great power of God, and His generous grace in Jesus Christ that are available to us.

I wrote a new melody for this hymn a few years ago, and since then I’ve been amazed at how these lyrics have blessed people who have heard and/or sung it.

Below you’ll find a video of me singing the song, along with links to a free chord chart, and lead sheets as well. I hope this song is a blessing to you!

Chord chart
Lead sheet in C
Lead sheet in D
Lead sheet with first three verses in C, and modulation to D for verse four

Lyrics:

He giveth more grace as our burdens grow greater 
He sendeth more strength as our labors increase
To added afflictions He addeth His mercy
To multiplied trials He multiplies His peace

When we have exhausted our store of endurance
When our strength has failed ere the day is half done
When we reach the end of our hoarded resources
Our Father’s full giving is only begun

Fear not that thy need shall exceed His provision
Our God ever yearns His resources to share
Lean hard on the arm everlasting, availing
The Father both thee and thy load will upbear

His love has no limits, His grace has no measure
His power no boundary known unto men
For out of His infinite riches in Jesus 
He giveth, and giveth, and giveth again

Words: Annie Johnson Flint. Music: Jamie Brown.
© 2013 Worthily Magnify Music. All rights reserved. CCLI Song # 7055874.

He Giveth More Grace: New Arrangement

Several weeks ago, I saw that our September sermon series was going to focus on the generosity of God. As I was thinking what song of response would work one Sunday, the closing words of an old hymn came to my mind: “for out of his infinite riches in Jesus / He giveth, and giveth and giveth again”. I looked up the hymn, entitled “He Giveth More Grace” and was struck by the text:

He giveth more grace as our burdens grow greater
He sendeth more strength as our labors increase
To added afflictions He addeth His mercy
To multiplied trials He multiplies peace

When we have exhausted our store of endurance
When our strength has failed ere the day is half done
When we reach the end of our hoarded resources
Our Father’s full giving is only begun

Fear not that thy need shall exceed His provision
Our God ever yearns His resources to share
Lean hard on the arm everlasting, availing
The Father both thee and thy load will upbear

His love has no limits, His grace has no measure
His power no boundary known unto men
For out of His infinite riches in Jesus
He giveth, and giveth, and giveth again

This hymn was written by Annie Johnson Flint. She was orphaned by the age of 6, and became so crippled by arthritis that she couldn’t walk. Her arthritis prevented her from becoming a pianist like she had hoped, so she became a poet, and when she couldn’t open her hands to type, she would use her knuckles on the typewriter. An amazing story.

What I love about this hymn is the way it presents God’s generous grace. It can never be exhausted. It can never even begin to be exhausted. It is utterly and completely boundless. This is the kind of good news our congregations need to hear. This is like water in a barren desert.

I didn’t know the original tune for this hymn, so I took that as an opportunity to write a simple melody and arrangement. We sang it this past Sunday at my church and judging from all the questions and emails I got about it, it struck a nerve with people and was a blessing.

I’m sharing the rough demo with you, as well as a chord chart, since my guess is that if your congregation doesn’t know this hymn, they might be affected by the truth it proclaims just like mine was.

Demo:

Chord chart

Praise My Soul the King of Heaven

Having grown up in the Episcopal/Anglican church, one of the hymns I grew up learning to sing and love was “Praise My Soul the King of Heaven”. The first time you hear it the melody is a bit tricky. But it’s good. And the lyrics are full of powerful descriptions of the kingship and worth-ship of Jesus. But I never had much success putting the hymn in a more contemporary format.

One night in 2009 I was watching the consecration of Bob Duncan as the first Archbishop of the Anglican Church in North America and during the incredibly long procession of clergy and bishops, the orchestra and choir led the congregation in a powerful arrangement of the hymn. It turns out that John Wasson, a worship leader/musician in Texas had written the arrangement just for that occasion.

You can watch the really long procession and hear John’s full arrangement on this rough YouTube video:

It wasn’t long until I was trying to rip off John’s arrangement to use this hymn at my church. I experimented (with varying levels of success), but the result was that I had found a way to bring this amazing hymn into a contemporary context. The other small change I made was to close the song by going back and singing the last line of first verse after singing the final verse. It ends better that way.

When my congregation received word that we’d have to vacate our property of over-275 years, and I started exploring the prospect of recording a live CD in our Sanctuary before we lost it, I knew we’d have to put this hymn on it and try to capture a bit of the arrangement John had written in 2009. But… it couldn’t be as incredibly long.

So I sat at my kitchen island one night, about 6 days before we’d start recording the CD, watching the video of the song from Bishop Duncan’s installation, hearing Carl Albrecht‘s drumming in my head (since I’ve been listening to his drumming since I was a kid and he had kindly agreed to play drums for this project), Russell Crain’s electric guitar genius (since I had come to admire his playing when my Father-in-law began pastoring a church that neighbors his), and Simon Dixon’s organ prowess (since he and I have the privilege of working together).

I wrote a rough arrangement of it and recorded this really (really) rough demo. Oh, I was recovering from the flu, I just remembered:

Like I said, it’s rough. So when we began rehearsals for the CD, Carl suggested we cut the intro by half. Great idea. Then Russell began experimenting with different things he could do on the intro. On the first night we recorded, here’s what the intro sounded like:

Russell thought he could do his part better, so on the second night, he changed some things.

The result of all of this thinking/arranging/demo-ing/rehearsing/tinkering is on my church’s live CD. Here’s the final full-song result in its mixed and mastered form.

If you’d like to download it for free: click here.

Here’s the chord chart we used for the recording. If you want a more simple chord chart (without the crazy chords on verse 4 that we put in to work with the choir descant, click here).

Here’s my church singing the more simplified version of this hymn in our last service ever in our building. The picture at the top of this post is from that night too.

A Song of Trust in God

A few Sundays ago, June 17th, at our 11:00am service I got the sense that as we were singing familiar songs we were at risk of, yet again, doing what congregations can so often do, and that’s rush through, hurry along, and miss opportunities for heart-felt engagement with the living God.

We had a choir of men from our congregation that morning since it was Father’s day. I had chosen several familiar songs since we didn’t have much time to rehearse. But as we got to the end of “Shout to the Lord” I had a strong impression that God wanted us to put the brakes on, to come to a halt, to slow down, and to simply rest.

As a worship leader you can’t always bring things to a place of rest when you want to. We often want more time than we get, and we have to honor the Lord by honoring our pastor and keep things in the confines he’s given us. And we also have to be conscious of the fact that just because we’re a little frustrated with a disengaged congregation it doesn’t mean we should say so!

But on this particular Sunday I felt strongly enough about it to discern it was the Holy Spirit’s leading, so instead of rushing on to the next song, I sang a simple, spontaneous, song of trust in God. Several people mentioned after the service that it was helpful, so for them and for you, I’m posting it below.

So we run to you, O Lord
We hide ourselves in You
We come to you, O Lord
We trust in You

We cast our burdens at your feet
We lay our worries in your hands
We bring our lives to you, our Lord
We give our hearts to you, our King

You are our shelter, You are our help
You are our comfort and our defender
You are our Savior, You are our shield
And you never fail, You never fail

Time after time, day after day
Morning after morning your mercies are new
Lord, we love You. God, we trust You

You are our shelter and our comfort
And our shield

You’ll notice pretty quickly that these aren’t the most impressive words in the world. They didn’t need to be. They served a simple purpose that morning which was to help people settle in to a place of trust in God, instead of rushing through the songs and getting on to whatever was next.

Be sensitive, as you lead worship, to the moments when God wants you to put the brakes on. It’s in those moments that you might end up taking risks — some of which might not work at all — and God reveals himself afresh.