This song is both a declaration and retelling of some of Jesus's miracles and healings, and also a prayer for Him to come and do the same today. It was written as part of 2024's 12 Song Challenge.
We sang the song Oceans in church, a few months after our daughter was stillborn. I used to love that song. I always longed to walk in faith wherever God would lead me. But now I found myself not being able to sing it. What if going wherever He leads would mean I lose another child? I suddenly realized I didn’t trust God anymore. I was shocked.
Some months later I went to a songwriters retreat. In a workshop the leader invited us to write down what bothers us and to give it over to God. After that we asked God what He wanted to show us. I ‘see’ a man on the water. The sea is calm and the sun breaks through, right above the man. We told each other what we received. Then we prayed again and I ‘heared’ a song line from the band Live: ‘Run to the water. I find you there’. I thought it was funny. I’ve always loved Live and God knows that of course. I didn’t know what to do with it, though. ‘Isn’t that man Jesus?’ someone said. I was startled and immediately thought of the song Oceans again. I realised Jesus was inviting me to walk on the water, in the light. I wrestled with what this means exactly. I listened to Oceans again and then the last line hits me: ‘in the presence of my Saviour’. That’s what someone said as well: ‘But Ineke, you don’t walk alone on that water. God is always there.’ It is true. If I honestly look back, I can’t recall a moment I was completely left alone. I was always in the presence of my Saviour. I kneeled down and told God that I don’t dare, but somewhere deep-down want to trust Him. I just didn’t know how. Then I described what I saw in this song. In the months following, I sang it again and again.
"A Time For Everything" was written in 2024 during the Resound Worship 12 Song Challenge Month where we were encouraged to write "a song for someone" - A song which someone in my church congregation could sing with real relevance, but where it could also be sung by everyone.
At the time, we has a family whose teenage daughter was suffering from unexplained seizures and swelling on the brain. She was in the intensive care ward of the specialist hospital, with the doctors a bit baffled by the cause and the necessary treatments. Her parents testified about how they were hanging on to faith through the circumstances, despite there not being a clear end in sight.
This song was written for them to sing. Thankfully she's on the mend now and back at school, after great medical care and a bit of a miraculous recovery.
It's my hope that this is a song you can sing, either because you're going through troubled times, or because you're standing alongside someone who is.
Reading the story of the Prodigal Son, I was struck by how the father hugged his son and gave him a coat, a robe. He restored his status, clothed him. Suddenly I was reminded of the soldiers who took away the robe of Jesus, God’s Son, when He was crucified. They cast lots to decide whose it would be. Jesus laid down His robe, His authority, His dignity, His status, for me to be clothed with garments of salvation and wrapped in a robe of righteousness (Isaiah 61:10). I was so amazed that I wrote this song.
Emily Scobee, Jonathan Jackson, Leslie McKee, Audrie Mouzakis
In the desolate places (or wilderness seasons) of life, God shows that He is still at work, and that may be the very place He wants us in order to satisfy our longings for Him. This song encourages us to find our rest in Jesus.
This song seeks to echo the words of Jesus who called for a new sacrifical life from his disciples. I've tried to keep it as simple as possible, so that we can consider the call and respond with a repeated "I will follow", hoping that each time we sing those three words our commitment becomes a little bit more real in our hearts.
This song draws its origins from the time of the illness and death of my Dad. Singing and making music before the Lord became a particularly important expression of worship for me at a time when I was largely unable to process exactly how I was feeling. And yet there were very few songs that resounded with how I was feeling; often it wasn’t the lyrics that were the problem, but the tone or mood of the song that just didn’t resonate.
While sitting at the piano with these kinds of thoughts in mind one day, this song began to emerge. It sought to express a confidence in God, albeit a confidence expressed in brokenness rather than in triumph; yet a confidence determinedly holding on to the promises of God - not least the ultimate promise that, one day, God will make all things new.
The second, third and fourth verses were written first, and came together relatively straightforwardly - though with lots of tinkering on the way. The first verse was the struggle, and the writing of it encapsulated the move I had to make from seeing it as ‘my song’, coming out of my particular experience, to one that, hopefully, can be sung by others within their own contexts of brokenness - past, present or future.