The unwavering plans of God are possible, not by might, not by power, but by the inner-workings of the Spirit of God. Your Spirit is a collection of five worshipful arrangements and recordings featuring the inimitable Christ Church Choir. Immerse yourself in these songs as they masterfully combine traditional choir and gospel elements with modern worship to create a deep and moving worship expression.

August 1st, 2019

While it cannot be overstated how vital our personal worship experiences with God are, there is something uniquely powerful about joining together in worship with a community as we hear all of the different voices come together to sing the truths of our Christian songs as one. Those of us who get to serve with a choir in any capacity especially understand the gift of this coming together in song. Each voice brings something slightly different to the sound, but hearing the end result of this unity within diversity, or this unison sound of praise, is a mighty thing that simply cannot be achieved alone.  

Perhaps this gives us a glimpse of what the Israelites must have experienced in 2 Chronicles 5:12-14 after the momentous occasion of the ark of the covenant being brought to the temple of the Lord. We see that “it was the duty of the trumpeters and singers to make themselves heard in unison in praise and thanksgiving to the Lord,” and the text says "when their song was raised…the house of the Lord was filled with a cloud, so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled the house of God.”  

Can you imagine this moment? Do you notice that the glory of the Lord appeared “when” their song was raised in unison in praise and thanksgiving? It shows how much power can be contained in our corporate praise, and this is why we need songs like “Our God” that focus on being a part of the body of Christ in community.  

A Christian singing “my God is greater” and “our God is greater” are both true and needed statements, but when we sing the latter in community, it reminds us not only are we connected to our brothers and sisters in faith sitting next to us in our choirs and churches, but we also are connected both with Christians all around the world and to the patriarchs and matriarchs of our faith whose stories are found in our Scriptures.  

One thing I love most about our choir is we are a diverse group of people across generations spanning over 75 years with our youngest member at 12, and our oldest is 87. We have a diverse and vibrant range of socioeconomic status, cultures, and even political viewpoints, but we come together week after week to serve the same God and lift up our song that is made more powerful by every different voice and different story behind each voice singing together in community. This is not always an easy thing to come together in the midst of such differences, but I would argue that wrestling for this unity within diversity is a necessary and important picture of the body of Christ.  

And maybe songs such as “Our God” and “How Great is Our God” have become some of the most enduring modern worship songs of the past decade because in a time where our differences, even in our faith communities, seem to want to divide us, lyrics focusing on “our” God remind us that we can still join together in unison in praise and thanksgiving to the Lord.

July 31, 2019

I will never forget the first time we sang the song "Your Great Name - Awesome God" on a Sunday morning. We knew our choir loved it because it is such a fun gospel anthem to sing declaring the name of Jesus. But I did not quite expect such a response from the congregation once we got to the “Awesome God” chorus. As soon as the people heard that first line, young and old alike could not help but join their voices with the choir in this simple but timeless and powerful lyric. It is such a unifying declaration of praise uniting the people of God with one voice, that evokes a response in almost anyone who hears it.  

As this song says, “there’s something we cannot explain that happens when we proclaim Your great name!” We have all hopefully experienced that unexplainable shift in the atmosphere when we join with the people of God in praise. Certainly this happens as we sing the much needed theologically layered and lyrically rich hymns and modern worship songs that deeply engage our mind as well as our soul and our voice. In the same breath, may we not miss the power of the seemingly simple repetitive statements of praise that are still bathed in truth, which invite us to sing the same line over and over as we remind ourselves and others of who our awesome God is.  

What a gift that the Lord has given us as His children the language of music as a medium for our praise and worship. And this language has so many different genres from which to pull that we see not only modeled throughout Scripture but also across our churches around the world. In our worship services, we see that it only strengthens us as a church and as believers when we incorporate these different genres in our musical expression of worship from our beloved Christian hymnody, choruses in different languages, modern praise songs, black gospel music, Southern gospel music, instrumental songs, silence, rich lyrics that could be a sermon themselves, repetitive declarations of praise, and so on.  

Indeed, regardless of style or genre, we believe wholeheartedly that things change when we call on the Name above every name!  

July 30, 2019

This song, and specifically the lyrics of the bridge, have become a powerful anthem for our church as a whole over the last year. We have found ourselves singing these truths over our individual circumstances either in response to how God has brought us through something or in faith over a current trial we are facing. We have also found ourselves singing this timely message as we look back on God’s provision for our church since its founding 70 years ago and even the way He has continued to provide for our Christ Church Choir over the last 40 years.  

Even for those of us who have not been around all of those decades for the life of our church or our choir, we are keenly aware that we are standing on the shoulders of those brothers and sisters who believed in a God who will make a way even when there seems to be no way. And we continue that message not just for the present life of our church but also for the future.  

You can hear the power and belief in the truth of who God is as our choir breaks out in unison declaring, “You move mountains. You cause walls to fall. With Your power, perform miracles. There is nothing that’s impossible. And we’re standing here only because You made a way!”  

The power can be felt because these are not idle words for us.  

We are recounting the faithfulness of our God for whom nothing is impossible, knowing we stand in the story of the people of God who have witnessed His faithfulness not only in our church but also in The Church across the centuries. And we recount the faithfulness of God in our own story and the stories of our brothers and sisters singing with us because we have walked in community long enough to witness first hand the times God has made a way when there seemed to be no way in our very lives. And still, some of the same voices declaring this powerful truth are also leaning on these stories of faithfulness to declare in faith that God will provide a way even in the midst of the current struggle they are facing.  

When we sing, “We are standing here only because You made a way,” we not only remember the past provision of God, but we remind ourselves and others that God will make a way in the present and the future as well. These songs seem to be a form of our “stones of remembrance” like the Lord instructed Joshua to place after crossing over the Jordan River in Joshua 4. Those stones and these songs serve as a witness not only to what God has done in our lives but also to continue to tell our stories from generation to generation that the same God who made a way for us can make a way in their lives as well because there is nothing that is impossible for our God.

July 29, 2019

The choice to worship and still believe in the faithfulness of God often becomes most difficult when the answer to our prayer does not look like we expected or we are in a season of waiting or suffering and the healing has not yet come.  

The oft-quoted line from Romans 8:28, “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose,” is certainly powerful on its own. But one could argue that we miss the depth of the meaning when we forget these words come after Paul’s honesty with his own suffering and understanding that “the Spirit helps us in our weakness” (v. 26). Furthermore, Paul continues reminding both the early church and us today that we can have this hope even in the midst of trials because ultimately nothing can separate us from the love of God (v. 39), and this love is more powerful than even the grave and will see us through the darkest of nights.  

It is in this lens of the whole of Romans 8 that the authors of “All Things” wrote this declaration of hope that is victorious but also knows that, just as Paul did not gloss over the reality of the night seasons, neither do we need to pretend that this road with Christ is always perfect and free from trials or grief. And somehow in the mystery of this relationship with Christ, it is often in these very wilderness seasons that we find the deepest communion with this Christ, who fulfilled the prophecy in Isaiah 53:3 as “a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.”  

There is strength that comes from understanding that the One who will journey with us in every season and will indeed work all things for good is this man of sorrows, acquainted with grief, whose love has already conquered the grave. This reality leads us to even greater hope as we remember the words of our Christ in John 16:33, “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”  

Our prayer through this song is that we as The Church would have the courage like Paul and Christ Himself to not feel as if we must minimize the reality of suffering in our own lives or the lives of those we are called to lead. But we do not stop at simply acknowledging these night seasons, for we know that there is no despair so deep, darkness so overwhelming, or place so far removed from joy that God has not been before us, and where He will not meet us and lead us home through a love that has already conquered all.  

And it is out of this confidence we are able to declare this anthem of hope: “I see it breaking on the horizon, the dark of night giving way to the dawn. The day is coming, and hope is rising. Your joy will be my strength. Your joy will be my song!”

July 28, 2019

Not by might. Not by power. By Your Spirit, God. Send Your Spirit, God.  

There is both comfort and conviction in this truth taken straight from Zechariah 4:6, which reminds us that our God is bigger than our weaknesses or our inclination to believe we can only do something in our own strength.  

We read in our Scriptures time and time again of our God moving in miraculous ways beyond human might or power in events such as the Red Sea crossing out of bondage into the promise, the positioning and courage of Queen Esther to save her people in another powerful story of deliverance, the birth of the Messiah through a young virgin who believed that anything was possible with her God, and the witness that remains today through the apostles willing to risk everything to share the Good News with the world. Each and every one of these stories and the countless others contained in our sacred text serves as a reminder that nothing stands against our God, even when we, like Moses, might be blinded by our own fears and inadequacies when facing what seems to be an insurmountable obstacle.  

In our church, this song has helped give voice to our praise as we declare that the Spirit of God is still working miracles in our midst that reaches far beyond human might or power. It has also given voice to our prayers for those of us facing unexpected circumstances, in which we have needed to sing these words in faith to remind us that the God we serve knows no bounds.  

Personally, “Your Spirit” has become an anchor for me because our church began singing this powerful song soon after my husband and I experienced two back-to-back miscarriages last year. This ancient Old Testament text was made new in me as I declared this prayer in the midst of grief that only by the Spirit of God could I be made whole and had the courage to pray for His Spirit to breathe life into this situation. And this song continued to anchor my praise and my prayers when we became pregnant again a few months later with a healthy baby girl due in October, and I declared all the more that it is not by might or power, but by the Spirit of God that we will meet this child.  

It is our desire that this song and this project will help give voice to your praise and your prayers just as it has done for our church. May we all be strengthened in the reminder that the same God who worked miracles far beyond human capacity in the Scriptures is the same God who meets with us individually and collectively as the people of God, and may we be confident that the Spirit of God is surely working in our midst.

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