SONG COMMENTARY
NAME ABOVE ALL NAMES
The first to be received was “The Name Above All Names." I say 'received,' because something like this does not come from human intellect. As I said above, the songs came from very mundane settings. I was doing a kitchen chore at the time the lyric to "The Name Above All Names" came to me.
The power of God came over me in a way I never experienced before. I had previously enjoyed outpourings of the Holy Spirit in my life, but they were always mellow, “warm fuzzy “confirmations of God's love. This was decidedly different from anything I had experienced before. This felt like the militant presence of the commander-in-chief of the forces of the Most High God.
I will never forget the exact words of God to me at that time. He said "get your pen boy, we're going to write ." I went out to my music room where I had a very heavy flight case for my guitar standing up on end. I placed a yellow legal pad on top of the case and began to write. The words flowed past my intellect through my hands onto the page. It was like a Christian version of automatic writing. I marveled at the words that poured onto the paper as I realized they were way beyond my personal spiritual scope. That was the birth of the song “The Name Above All Names.” I believe it today to be a prophecy to the church, and that I was just blessed to be able to put into musical form.
(Side note: In my opinion, the most powerful line in any of my songs is the line “I formed the worlds with a whisper, but I'm getting ready to shout!"
My wife Karen actually came up with this line. She had been out praying, and came back and shared that the Lord had spoken these words to her heart. I immediately wrote the line down, and figured that I would work into a song somewhere down the line. It fit so perfectly into the song “The Name Above All Names." So my most powerful lyric was written by my wife. I hate it when that happens.)
KINGDOM COME
I have less clarity of memory in regard to writing this song.
Although it appears second on the album, it was not the second song written. I believe the second song was "Soldiers Of Lion", and this song came later.
Four of the songs on the album came first as prophecies. This was one of them. "Name Above All Names", "Soldiers Of The Lion", and "The Power And The Glory", were also prophecies.
Although I believe this lyric to be even more prophetically impacting than "Name Above All Names," it came less dramatically.
I remember sitting at the piano and writing the words down very quickly. Again onto a yellow legal size pad . The verses flowed very quickly, and I actually received more verses than I could use on the song. If I had used all the verses the song could've been 6 to 8 minutes long. So I actually pared the song down and cherry picked certain verses. (Verses that do not appear in the song appeared on the liner notes and are in the lyric section of my website.)
Production note: This song was the busiest arrangement and the hardest song to mix on the whole album. I believe it took us four days to mix this one song.
WE ARE THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOD
This song was written in my normal fashion, composing the music and the lyrics at the same time. It was composed on piano, but when we cut the track we featured guitars.
The lyric was a combination of the teachings of two major influences in my life at that time. Some of the ideas came from Kenneth Copeland's teaching on the righteousness of God. Other parts of the lyric came from the influence of E.W. Kenyon’s books.
I had been somewhat beaten down through all the trials in my life, resulting in the attitude that I was just a dishrag and a failure in my spiritual life. These teachings give me a fresh perspective. Instead of seeing myself as a sinner, I can see myself as the righteousness of God because of what Jesus did on the cross.
As the song says, it doesn't mean that I won't sin and I won't have failure in my life, but it gives me a different and more positive way to view myself, again because of what Jesus did for me on the cross.
Production note: I was trying to get a "Pretenders" feel on this track. Because of some preconceived notions that I had about the arrangement, I kind of blew the opportunity to really make it sound like that. Consequently, is not one of my favorite musical tracks on the album.
BLESSED BE THE NAME OF MY ROCK
I have a much more vivid memory of writing this song.
I was preparing for a concert at Buena Vista High School in Ventura, CA , and was backstage in what would be considered the green room. In those days I carried a guitar and, to warm up, I would open up my Bible and sing a few passages. This particular night my Bible opened up to Psalm 144.
The first line reads, "Blessed be the name of my rock who trains my hands for war and my fingers for battle." I had also recently been reading the book of Joel.
The chorus was birthed from the passage from Psalms, and then I moved over to the book of Joel. I just took much of the imagery from those passages and put them into the lyric.
The back room was made of cinder block and had quite a wonderful natural echo. My guitar sounded really fat and my voice sounded great, and I just began to perform the song right out of the Bible as I composed it.
This song is one of those rare songs for me that was completed in one sitting. I usually fret over a song for some time, or put it on the shelf for season of time to come back to it later. This song was kind of a done deal and I recognized it.
I actually went out and performed at that night for the Buena Vista High School audience.
SOLDIERS OF THE LION
This song was also prophetic, but did not come as a direct spoken prophecy.
I was in Danville, California to do a concert at the church that was then pastored by Jack Hayford's brother, Jim. I was in my hotel room that afternoon resting when I had what I can only call a spiritual visualization. I have never had a vision. I would define a vision as tangibly seeing something like on a TV screen but with no TV.
This was different.
It was a series of images in my mind that unfolded like a movie as I wrote the words down. The words and images came to me almost "line upon line" as the story unfolded. Again the basic words were written down in one sitting.
Production note: I was going for kind of a 'Pink Floyd' sound on this song, especially in the beginning verse. Another concept I had was to do orchestral parts with guitars. That is fairly common now but was not so common in those days. I was not completely successful in that arrangement concept. Bob Rose, who produced the album, wrote parts for the string players and wrote guitar parts out. The experiment was only partially successful in my opinion.
Side note- There was a lot of spiritual warfare involved in the production and recording of this whole album. I believe it is an album that came straight from the heart of God, and Satan did not want to see me succeed in finishing it.
Some of the most intense spiritual warfare I experienced personally was in the recording of the lead vocal of this song.
I was recording all the lead vocals out in a little studio in Camarillo California.
I usually work best vocally to warm up a bit and do a few passes of a song before I start seriously recording takes. However, my voice warmed up rather quickly this night and the lead vocal that is on the record was recorded almost in one take on the spot, about the fifth take. It truly was intense in the studio , because this is the very first lyric I ever wrote that actually addressed the devil personally.
When I came to those passages which spoke directly to him, I got a kind of a creepy feeling and fear almost came over me. But the take didn't stop and the song was completed.
When I was done, we took a break. I called home to see how things were going. My wife Karen asked me "what are you recording tonight"?
I told her "Soldiers Of The Lion. " She said "I thought it must be something intense because all hell is breaking loose at the house here tonight. So this explains it."
DON’T SHOOT THE WOUNDED
“Don't Shoot The Wounded” almost didn't make it on the album.
Producer Bob Rose did not like how the bass guitar and the kick pedal of the drum played together. He actually refused to finish the song.
I felt so strongly that, on such a victorious album as this, this particular subject had to be addressed; that not everybody is victorious in their walk, and we need to uphold those who are weaker in faith than ourselves.
I finished up the song myself, which is why it's the only song on the album in which I take specific and complete production credit.
The title came from something quoted to me by Rob Watson my keyboard player at the time. He may have been going through something at the time in his personal life, but he told me, "The Christian army is the only army that shoots it's wounded." I'm sure the statement was not original with him, but it was the first time that I'd heard it, and it resonated with me. I felt it really needed to be made into a song.
This is another song that came lyrics first. I sat down and wrote all the lyrics in one sitting. I struggled for a long time to write the musical part of it. No musical approach I tried seem to enhance the power of the lyric. On the contrary it seemed to diminish it. I tried doing it like a blues song, like a rock song, like medium paced ballad... nothing seemed to work.
And one day I was sitting at the piano and I just began to play what but we call 1-4-5 blues chords. My mind went to the idea of something Bob Dylan does sometimes. He does what is called "talking blues," where he almost recites the lyric over the top of the music. When I did this, everything fell into place. The power of the lyrics seemed to be enhanced by this treatment.
I know I was right about including this song on the album. Over the years I've received tremendous response to the lyrics of this song. It seems to especially resonate when I play to street people or people in shelters. Many I'm sure are not even Christians, but they relate to the sentiment of this song.
Production note: it was really cool to get Irv Cox to do the saxophone solo on this song. He had done the very famous saxophone solo on the song "Miracles" by Jefferson Starship. His and my kids went to some kind of a school function together, and my wife had met Irv through school. She mentioned him to me, and I called him up to see if he would play on my album.
What I coached him to do on the solo was to make the saxophone kind of squeal and cry. Kind of like someone who was wounded.
AND THE RAIN CAME DOWN
"And The Rain Came Down" was a song I actually wrote to submit to Johnny Cash.
I had heard that Johnny Cash was getting ready to do a gospel album, and I thought it might be cool to try to send it to him to see if he might do my song. However I never figured out how to get in touch with him, so I was never able to send a demo to him. Consequently, he never did the song and I decided just to do it myself.
The demo I had recorded for submission to Johnny was very different from my recording. It had a decided four beat piano track. (Available as a bonus cut on the Collector’s Series version of the album “The Stand”)
The producer of the album, Bob Rose, came up with the idea of doing a more contemporary track. I guess he was inspired by the guitar rhythm part from "Eye of the Tiger," and he came up with this arrangement which featured that kind of guitar idea. I thought it was quite different from the Johnny Cash arrangement and quite nice. This was not one of the “prophecy songs” on the album.
The song is a contemporary version of the story of Noah and the ark, with a dream twist at the end. My pastor at the time was Jack Hayford, of Church On The Way, Van Nuys, CA, and he told me that the message reminded him of Larry Norman’s “I Wish We'd All Been Ready."
I took this as quite a compliment.
Cool Story:
I was doing a concert in a little town named Owego, near Binghamton NY. The church was in a rural area, and I had to drive quite a ways on a dirt road way out in the boonies to find it. I was thinking “who would come way out here for a concert?.” But they did come, and we filled up the 200 seat or so facility. The building was a kind of A-frame with a glass wall behind the platform, which looked out onto a forested area. I started singing “And The Rain Came Down”, and right as I sang the chorus for the second time, thunder and lightning heralded a flash flood, which began to pelt the huge glass window behind me. It was truly an awesome moment, my song with visual effects by God!
WALL OF LOVE
I had this image of the love of God coming down and surrounding us like a wall, protecting us from evil and the fiery darts of the wicked.
I don’t think you find this illustration in scripture, but I felt it was a legitimate idea. It could be in Scripture in some indirect way, but I don't think there is a literal scripture that speaks of God's love as a wall.
The only thing memorable about this song is that I originally wrote it for a funeral- a home going. I only had a couple of days’ notice, and I never really got the song together for that occasion. It originally was written in a very somber away, sort of reverential and encouraging but in a very downbeat way. I actually forgot about it after the funeral.
I didn't come back to the song for quite a while, and when I did I really felt prompted of the Holy Spirit to pick up the tempo and make the song more joyful and victorious.
Even though this song is in the first person speaking like it’s God, it is not a prophetic song.
Once in a while I still perform it in a very downbeat way when I’m in the mood.
WALK AS I WALK
Now here's a song with a story! (The full story will be in my upcoming biography, but here is a condensed version.)
I just came through a time of divine revelation on the state of my life and marriage at the end of the ordeal of my alcohol addiction. The Holy Spirit had showed me in no uncertain terms that I had really lost the love of my wife, and that my life was in for a complete rebuilding and renewal.
I believe that we are triune beings, body, soul, and spirit. As a result of this very dramatic confrontation with the state of my life, I had become a broken man. This was a good breaking, the kind that God does because he loves us. But I also had a broken heart.
We use the idea that our heart has been broken in a very clichéd way- in life, in songs, and poems. I can tell you what I had was a real broken heart. There is a physical ache to the whole process, and I knew that it was going to be quite a time before I would become whole in that sense again.
However, the spirit part of me was one with God again and up on Mount Zion. But my soul was crushed. My mind needed to be renewed to the word of God, and I needed to get my life back on track. My relationship with my wife felt very fragile. I had no assurance that she would stay with me.
I had a booking up in Canada where I needed to be gone for a week. I did not want to go because I did not want to leave my wife. I wanted to minister to her and try to win back her love. I had not read the Word in a long time. About a year earlier I'd signed up for Kenneth Copeland's newsletter, "Believers Voice Of Victory." At this time I was still at the Vineyard and the word on Kenneth Copeland was that he was “anathema." (Anathema, a term derived from Greek ἀνάθεμα, which meant something dedicated and, in the Septuagint and New Testament, something dedicated to evil and thus accursed...) We had been warned from the pulpit not to listen to his teachings.
Well the first thing I do when that happens is go check out what he's teaching. I actually liked what he said on his TV show, and I signed up to receive his magazine. However, I was still spiritually anemic, and usually just threw it in the trash when it came. But now I'm getting ready to leave on this trip to Canada, and the magazine arrives in the mail a couple of days before. This time I really looked it over.
As I say I had not read the Word in a long time, and this little booklet actually became my Bible for the next month or so. The theme of this month's magazine was "Following The Faith Of Abraham." I didn't know what that meant, but I started to read the whole magazine. On the back of each issue, was a prayer. This month's prayer was entitled "Walk As I Walk." The lyrics to my song are a nearly exact paraphrase of the prayer on the back of that magazine. This prayer and the contents of that newsletter kept me going during the whole trip to Canada.
When I got home I ordered some more Copeland material, and started to glean from his teachings. It was a life changer for both my wife and me.
Disclaimer: Now, I understand the controversy in many circles today regarding Copeland’s teachings. I myself am very cautious in this regard, and am not advocating the whole of his teachings. But I will tell you, that this was a divine appointment, and God really used Kenneth’s and Gloria’s teachings in a very profound way in our lives. I consider him a man of God and a man of integrity today. But I do walk cautiously. I don’t go as far as many who would call him a heretic, but I do think he has said some very outlandish and unscriptural things in recent years. I think my role is to discern his teachings, not judge him, and pray for him.
THE POWER AND THE GLORY
Well, I'm not going to make anything up. I don't remember much about receiving this song.
One or two of the songs such as "Kingdom Come" were written on the piano. There was an anointing, but not the same kind of powerful experience that had accompanied other songs. I'm sure this is one of them.
They came prophetically, but more like me just writing them down on my legal pad. I feel the messages of the songs are just as strong, but the emotional experience was different.
This seemed like the perfect song to end the album.
The first to be received was “The Name Above All Names." I say 'received,' because something like this does not come from human intellect. As I said above, the songs came from very mundane settings. I was doing a kitchen chore at the time the lyric to "The Name Above All Names" came to me.
The power of God came over me in a way I never experienced before. I had previously enjoyed outpourings of the Holy Spirit in my life, but they were always mellow, “warm fuzzy “confirmations of God's love. This was decidedly different from anything I had experienced before. This felt like the militant presence of the commander-in-chief of the forces of the Most High God.
I will never forget the exact words of God to me at that time. He said "get your pen boy, we're going to write ." I went out to my music room where I had a very heavy flight case for my guitar standing up on end. I placed a yellow legal pad on top of the case and began to write. The words flowed past my intellect through my hands onto the page. It was like a Christian version of automatic writing. I marveled at the words that poured onto the paper as I realized they were way beyond my personal spiritual scope. That was the birth of the song “The Name Above All Names.” I believe it today to be a prophecy to the church, and that I was just blessed to be able to put into musical form.
(Side note: In my opinion, the most powerful line in any of my songs is the line “I formed the worlds with a whisper, but I'm getting ready to shout!"
My wife Karen actually came up with this line. She had been out praying, and came back and shared that the Lord had spoken these words to her heart. I immediately wrote the line down, and figured that I would work into a song somewhere down the line. It fit so perfectly into the song “The Name Above All Names." So my most powerful lyric was written by my wife. I hate it when that happens.)
KINGDOM COME
I have less clarity of memory in regard to writing this song.
Although it appears second on the album, it was not the second song written. I believe the second song was "Soldiers Of Lion", and this song came later.
Four of the songs on the album came first as prophecies. This was one of them. "Name Above All Names", "Soldiers Of The Lion", and "The Power And The Glory", were also prophecies.
Although I believe this lyric to be even more prophetically impacting than "Name Above All Names," it came less dramatically.
I remember sitting at the piano and writing the words down very quickly. Again onto a yellow legal size pad . The verses flowed very quickly, and I actually received more verses than I could use on the song. If I had used all the verses the song could've been 6 to 8 minutes long. So I actually pared the song down and cherry picked certain verses. (Verses that do not appear in the song appeared on the liner notes and are in the lyric section of my website.)
Production note: This song was the busiest arrangement and the hardest song to mix on the whole album. I believe it took us four days to mix this one song.
WE ARE THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOD
This song was written in my normal fashion, composing the music and the lyrics at the same time. It was composed on piano, but when we cut the track we featured guitars.
The lyric was a combination of the teachings of two major influences in my life at that time. Some of the ideas came from Kenneth Copeland's teaching on the righteousness of God. Other parts of the lyric came from the influence of E.W. Kenyon’s books.
I had been somewhat beaten down through all the trials in my life, resulting in the attitude that I was just a dishrag and a failure in my spiritual life. These teachings give me a fresh perspective. Instead of seeing myself as a sinner, I can see myself as the righteousness of God because of what Jesus did on the cross.
As the song says, it doesn't mean that I won't sin and I won't have failure in my life, but it gives me a different and more positive way to view myself, again because of what Jesus did for me on the cross.
Production note: I was trying to get a "Pretenders" feel on this track. Because of some preconceived notions that I had about the arrangement, I kind of blew the opportunity to really make it sound like that. Consequently, is not one of my favorite musical tracks on the album.
BLESSED BE THE NAME OF MY ROCK
I have a much more vivid memory of writing this song.
I was preparing for a concert at Buena Vista High School in Ventura, CA , and was backstage in what would be considered the green room. In those days I carried a guitar and, to warm up, I would open up my Bible and sing a few passages. This particular night my Bible opened up to Psalm 144.
The first line reads, "Blessed be the name of my rock who trains my hands for war and my fingers for battle." I had also recently been reading the book of Joel.
The chorus was birthed from the passage from Psalms, and then I moved over to the book of Joel. I just took much of the imagery from those passages and put them into the lyric.
The back room was made of cinder block and had quite a wonderful natural echo. My guitar sounded really fat and my voice sounded great, and I just began to perform the song right out of the Bible as I composed it.
This song is one of those rare songs for me that was completed in one sitting. I usually fret over a song for some time, or put it on the shelf for season of time to come back to it later. This song was kind of a done deal and I recognized it.
I actually went out and performed at that night for the Buena Vista High School audience.
SOLDIERS OF THE LION
This song was also prophetic, but did not come as a direct spoken prophecy.
I was in Danville, California to do a concert at the church that was then pastored by Jack Hayford's brother, Jim. I was in my hotel room that afternoon resting when I had what I can only call a spiritual visualization. I have never had a vision. I would define a vision as tangibly seeing something like on a TV screen but with no TV.
This was different.
It was a series of images in my mind that unfolded like a movie as I wrote the words down. The words and images came to me almost "line upon line" as the story unfolded. Again the basic words were written down in one sitting.
Production note: I was going for kind of a 'Pink Floyd' sound on this song, especially in the beginning verse. Another concept I had was to do orchestral parts with guitars. That is fairly common now but was not so common in those days. I was not completely successful in that arrangement concept. Bob Rose, who produced the album, wrote parts for the string players and wrote guitar parts out. The experiment was only partially successful in my opinion.
Side note- There was a lot of spiritual warfare involved in the production and recording of this whole album. I believe it is an album that came straight from the heart of God, and Satan did not want to see me succeed in finishing it.
Some of the most intense spiritual warfare I experienced personally was in the recording of the lead vocal of this song.
I was recording all the lead vocals out in a little studio in Camarillo California.
I usually work best vocally to warm up a bit and do a few passes of a song before I start seriously recording takes. However, my voice warmed up rather quickly this night and the lead vocal that is on the record was recorded almost in one take on the spot, about the fifth take. It truly was intense in the studio , because this is the very first lyric I ever wrote that actually addressed the devil personally.
When I came to those passages which spoke directly to him, I got a kind of a creepy feeling and fear almost came over me. But the take didn't stop and the song was completed.
When I was done, we took a break. I called home to see how things were going. My wife Karen asked me "what are you recording tonight"?
I told her "Soldiers Of The Lion. " She said "I thought it must be something intense because all hell is breaking loose at the house here tonight. So this explains it."
DON’T SHOOT THE WOUNDED
“Don't Shoot The Wounded” almost didn't make it on the album.
Producer Bob Rose did not like how the bass guitar and the kick pedal of the drum played together. He actually refused to finish the song.
I felt so strongly that, on such a victorious album as this, this particular subject had to be addressed; that not everybody is victorious in their walk, and we need to uphold those who are weaker in faith than ourselves.
I finished up the song myself, which is why it's the only song on the album in which I take specific and complete production credit.
The title came from something quoted to me by Rob Watson my keyboard player at the time. He may have been going through something at the time in his personal life, but he told me, "The Christian army is the only army that shoots it's wounded." I'm sure the statement was not original with him, but it was the first time that I'd heard it, and it resonated with me. I felt it really needed to be made into a song.
This is another song that came lyrics first. I sat down and wrote all the lyrics in one sitting. I struggled for a long time to write the musical part of it. No musical approach I tried seem to enhance the power of the lyric. On the contrary it seemed to diminish it. I tried doing it like a blues song, like a rock song, like medium paced ballad... nothing seemed to work.
And one day I was sitting at the piano and I just began to play what but we call 1-4-5 blues chords. My mind went to the idea of something Bob Dylan does sometimes. He does what is called "talking blues," where he almost recites the lyric over the top of the music. When I did this, everything fell into place. The power of the lyrics seemed to be enhanced by this treatment.
I know I was right about including this song on the album. Over the years I've received tremendous response to the lyrics of this song. It seems to especially resonate when I play to street people or people in shelters. Many I'm sure are not even Christians, but they relate to the sentiment of this song.
Production note: it was really cool to get Irv Cox to do the saxophone solo on this song. He had done the very famous saxophone solo on the song "Miracles" by Jefferson Starship. His and my kids went to some kind of a school function together, and my wife had met Irv through school. She mentioned him to me, and I called him up to see if he would play on my album.
What I coached him to do on the solo was to make the saxophone kind of squeal and cry. Kind of like someone who was wounded.
AND THE RAIN CAME DOWN
"And The Rain Came Down" was a song I actually wrote to submit to Johnny Cash.
I had heard that Johnny Cash was getting ready to do a gospel album, and I thought it might be cool to try to send it to him to see if he might do my song. However I never figured out how to get in touch with him, so I was never able to send a demo to him. Consequently, he never did the song and I decided just to do it myself.
The demo I had recorded for submission to Johnny was very different from my recording. It had a decided four beat piano track. (Available as a bonus cut on the Collector’s Series version of the album “The Stand”)
The producer of the album, Bob Rose, came up with the idea of doing a more contemporary track. I guess he was inspired by the guitar rhythm part from "Eye of the Tiger," and he came up with this arrangement which featured that kind of guitar idea. I thought it was quite different from the Johnny Cash arrangement and quite nice. This was not one of the “prophecy songs” on the album.
The song is a contemporary version of the story of Noah and the ark, with a dream twist at the end. My pastor at the time was Jack Hayford, of Church On The Way, Van Nuys, CA, and he told me that the message reminded him of Larry Norman’s “I Wish We'd All Been Ready."
I took this as quite a compliment.
Cool Story:
I was doing a concert in a little town named Owego, near Binghamton NY. The church was in a rural area, and I had to drive quite a ways on a dirt road way out in the boonies to find it. I was thinking “who would come way out here for a concert?.” But they did come, and we filled up the 200 seat or so facility. The building was a kind of A-frame with a glass wall behind the platform, which looked out onto a forested area. I started singing “And The Rain Came Down”, and right as I sang the chorus for the second time, thunder and lightning heralded a flash flood, which began to pelt the huge glass window behind me. It was truly an awesome moment, my song with visual effects by God!
WALL OF LOVE
I had this image of the love of God coming down and surrounding us like a wall, protecting us from evil and the fiery darts of the wicked.
I don’t think you find this illustration in scripture, but I felt it was a legitimate idea. It could be in Scripture in some indirect way, but I don't think there is a literal scripture that speaks of God's love as a wall.
The only thing memorable about this song is that I originally wrote it for a funeral- a home going. I only had a couple of days’ notice, and I never really got the song together for that occasion. It originally was written in a very somber away, sort of reverential and encouraging but in a very downbeat way. I actually forgot about it after the funeral.
I didn't come back to the song for quite a while, and when I did I really felt prompted of the Holy Spirit to pick up the tempo and make the song more joyful and victorious.
Even though this song is in the first person speaking like it’s God, it is not a prophetic song.
Once in a while I still perform it in a very downbeat way when I’m in the mood.
WALK AS I WALK
Now here's a song with a story! (The full story will be in my upcoming biography, but here is a condensed version.)
I just came through a time of divine revelation on the state of my life and marriage at the end of the ordeal of my alcohol addiction. The Holy Spirit had showed me in no uncertain terms that I had really lost the love of my wife, and that my life was in for a complete rebuilding and renewal.
I believe that we are triune beings, body, soul, and spirit. As a result of this very dramatic confrontation with the state of my life, I had become a broken man. This was a good breaking, the kind that God does because he loves us. But I also had a broken heart.
We use the idea that our heart has been broken in a very clichéd way- in life, in songs, and poems. I can tell you what I had was a real broken heart. There is a physical ache to the whole process, and I knew that it was going to be quite a time before I would become whole in that sense again.
However, the spirit part of me was one with God again and up on Mount Zion. But my soul was crushed. My mind needed to be renewed to the word of God, and I needed to get my life back on track. My relationship with my wife felt very fragile. I had no assurance that she would stay with me.
I had a booking up in Canada where I needed to be gone for a week. I did not want to go because I did not want to leave my wife. I wanted to minister to her and try to win back her love. I had not read the Word in a long time. About a year earlier I'd signed up for Kenneth Copeland's newsletter, "Believers Voice Of Victory." At this time I was still at the Vineyard and the word on Kenneth Copeland was that he was “anathema." (Anathema, a term derived from Greek ἀνάθεμα, which meant something dedicated and, in the Septuagint and New Testament, something dedicated to evil and thus accursed...) We had been warned from the pulpit not to listen to his teachings.
Well the first thing I do when that happens is go check out what he's teaching. I actually liked what he said on his TV show, and I signed up to receive his magazine. However, I was still spiritually anemic, and usually just threw it in the trash when it came. But now I'm getting ready to leave on this trip to Canada, and the magazine arrives in the mail a couple of days before. This time I really looked it over.
As I say I had not read the Word in a long time, and this little booklet actually became my Bible for the next month or so. The theme of this month's magazine was "Following The Faith Of Abraham." I didn't know what that meant, but I started to read the whole magazine. On the back of each issue, was a prayer. This month's prayer was entitled "Walk As I Walk." The lyrics to my song are a nearly exact paraphrase of the prayer on the back of that magazine. This prayer and the contents of that newsletter kept me going during the whole trip to Canada.
When I got home I ordered some more Copeland material, and started to glean from his teachings. It was a life changer for both my wife and me.
Disclaimer: Now, I understand the controversy in many circles today regarding Copeland’s teachings. I myself am very cautious in this regard, and am not advocating the whole of his teachings. But I will tell you, that this was a divine appointment, and God really used Kenneth’s and Gloria’s teachings in a very profound way in our lives. I consider him a man of God and a man of integrity today. But I do walk cautiously. I don’t go as far as many who would call him a heretic, but I do think he has said some very outlandish and unscriptural things in recent years. I think my role is to discern his teachings, not judge him, and pray for him.
THE POWER AND THE GLORY
Well, I'm not going to make anything up. I don't remember much about receiving this song.
One or two of the songs such as "Kingdom Come" were written on the piano. There was an anointing, but not the same kind of powerful experience that had accompanied other songs. I'm sure this is one of them.
They came prophetically, but more like me just writing them down on my legal pad. I feel the messages of the songs are just as strong, but the emotional experience was different.
This seemed like the perfect song to end the album.
