The Journey Continues (2018)
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TRACK LIST
STORIES BEHIND THE SONGS
CHORD CHARTS
LYRIC VIDEOS
TRACK LIST
- With Your breath (I will be still)
- As we look across our city (Lord will you act)
- When I am broken (With me through it all)
- You are my Saviour (My hope is in you)
STORIES BEHIND THE SONGS
With Your breath (I will be still)
About a month before the RESOUNDWorship Worship Songwriting Retreat takes place, you receive an email from the leader who encourages you to write something new to bring along with you to share with your critique group. I think the encouragement is to arrive “with your latest, not your greatest”.
I had managed to do this the first time I went but life felt so busy and hectic in 2018 that I didn’t manage to get round to it. When I arrived at the retreat I had been allocated the best room in the place, wide open balcony, amazing views – everything was set for songwriting brilliance – but it never came!
I went there with a real sense that I needed to hang around in Psalm 46 for a bit – the sense of being still. I thought about all the stories in the Bible where through the power of God’s voice, touch, whisper, shout amazing things had happened – but how so often we can miss it because life is full of noise, busyness and chaos. I’d also arrived with a tune that I couldn’t find words to fit – and that felt like an added pressure that I needed to write some lyrics to that, and also find a tune that would build a song around being still.
The teaching and sharing in the first few days were amazing – and it felt like God was using the time to help me unwind and quieten myself. I had come from a really hectic and challenging time at work, and that couldn’t just be switched off.
I remember waking up on the Tuesday morning – the day of the concert where we all get chance to play one of our new songs to the rest of the retreaters – and I suddenly realised that the tune I had arrived with fitted with the words I had been thinking over. I headed down for breakfast in a really excited state, headed back up to my room and wrote a verse and chorus to take to a 1:1 critique and then straight into my group session. That afternoon saw an additional verse and bridge added – and when I shared again later that afternoon – my group encouraged me to lay back on the timing and allow the song to breathe. I played it that night, with one of the group joining me – and this song was born.
A really useful reminder to me, and hopefully to you, that the God that we serve is really, really powerful – and that power works through us if we find the place to quieten ourselves and let him speak.
As we look across our city (Lord will you act)
As a church, we regularly took part in the 40 Days initiative across Hull. During 2007, there was a prayer that appeared in the daily study guide that included a prayer for use throughout the Lent period. This was as follows:
“Lord we ask that You would act, not according to the poverty of who we are or what we believe, but according to the greatness of who You are and what You can do”
Originally, this song had a chorus that simply set those words to music, but much has changed with it over the 11 years since four of the verses were written.
Hull has been the knocking boy of most of the country. Regularly being reported as the worst place to live, and often finding itself at the top of every league table it would wish to be at the bottom of, and the bottom of every league table it would wish to be at the top of. At the time of writing, teenage pregnancy was a significant issue in Hull – hence the reference in the first verse. It is a city where, growing up, our young people don’t even feel they have the option to dream or imagine what a future would be like – whereas their peers in other areas feel that their future is full of options that they can determine and shape, for many in Hull they believe that their lives will amount to nothing – ambition quashed before it even starts to take shape.
And within Hull, there are areas that are criticised from within – and Bransholme, where Bodmin Road Church is based, is one of those areas. Considered by many to be an area that they would avoid – and even with significant transformation and investment, those legacy issues still remain.
This song attempts to capture the position that Hull and Bransholme finds itself in, and cries out to God to act – in the way that only He can – and not to be limited by the times when we as His church feel that things can’t and won’t change. The chorus attempts to stay true to the thrust of the prayer that inspired it.
And then 2017 happened – Hull was City of Culture. A song of this nature remained unwritten until something captured that part of the story. The year started with a mesmerising light show, projected onto some of the most iconic buildings in the city culminating in the statement “We are Hull”. Hull folk are proud – proud of their history, and proud of their heritage. This song captures something of the journey that we as a city have been on – and continue to go on, where people choose to visit and are open to having their mind changed about Hull.
I hope you enjoy the song!
When I am broken (With me through it all)
This is a tough one.
Bodmin Road Church is a family – a close family. When one of us celebrates, the rest of us celebrate – when one of us is facing a difficult situation – we all want to be there to support.
2018 was a very difficult year for the church. One of our leaders, and a much loved member not just of our church community but the wider community, died following a battle with very aggressive brain tumours. As a church, we had pulled out all the stops to pray for healing – believing in a God who could do miracles. We encouraged each other to be full of faith and stood with the family as they held on to hope.
I remember the last time that I visited Andrew at home. As I walked out of the house – the words of the first verse and chorus pretty much landed straight off. I quickly noted them down in my phone, not really sure what I was going to do with them. I didn’t touch them again until months later – and in the two weeks between his death and the funeral sat down to finish the song.
When a situation like this happens in a church – there are a range of emotions / responses / reactions that so often don’t get talked about. I wanted to find a way of giving voice to some of these – allowing us to open up to recognising how we were reacting, and taking that journey together. We may all have questions, we may all struggle to understand why God can heal but doesn’t always, we may all know that there is a better place that exists beyond what we see – but it hurts when we lose someone we are close to. God longs that we would involve him in those questions and involve him in those uncertainties – because he can be relied on. The chorus says this:
“One thing I know is You are good
Your grace has always been enough
I will bring my cries before Your throne
Knowing You are near, I am not alone
You are my Saviour (My hope is in you)
This song is an attempt to capture something of the way in which each person of the Trinity has a direct impact on our lives. From the recognition that Jesus, who was God, stepped down to become a man so that my sin could be forgiven, through the Father God who doesn’t get scared off by the giants that we face, finishing with the Holy Spirit as our Comfort, who guides and speaks to us.
CHORD CHARTS
LYRIC VIDEOS
With Your breath (I will be still)
As we look across our city (Lord will you act)
When I am broken (With me through it all)
You are my Saviour (My hope is in You)
Songs by David Brackenbury 