TO OUR GOD (Song story)

Ian Yates

To Our God is a real simple song that Sam Blake and I wrote. Even though it’s simple we were really international about the idea.

Before Sam and I sat down and wrote the song I had been pondering about the Trinity for about 12 months. Meditating on the Trinity, exploring the relationship between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

As always I was thinking how can we sing about this and I’ve wrote a number of songs over this period about the Trinity.

‘To Our God’ is pretty simple but I think it takes a well known truth and delivers it in a new and fresh way.
 

I had the chorus idea for a while after singing the hymn ‘to God Be The Glory’ in a prayer meeting and just loving singing the main refrain. From that moment the chorus idea came.

I know many people say we need to say things in a fresh way but when Sam and I started working on the chorus it felt like it brought new life to these words that we say and sing in so many songs. Adding to our praise, the picture I wanted to paint was that we join all of creation and all the angels praising Him.

It’s awesome to think we join with people from all over the world, all of creation, all of heaven and praise Him.

A lot of our praise is one directional to God (as a whole) but actually we can praise all three parts of Him. Praise to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit - I think we can even sing different types of praise to each part of the Trinity - but thats not for now.

Sam came up with the melody idea for the verse, again with a really simple message, well used and well sung, but again we really felt that these well known truths felt fresh sung in this new way.

As we began singing over and over lots of ideas flowed out and one was the bridge. This is a simple response that came out spontaneously and felt right.

It’s been great seeing many connect with this song. I think the mix of the hymn feel with the powerful truths we sing connect with many. We’ve had some great feedback from people saying it’s theologically strong and that it’s great to sing to the trinity. Which is great to see.

For me I want this song to bring us into this place of WOW! That we have the honour to join all of creation, all of heaven, praising the Father, praising the Son, Praising the Spirit. Praising our God.

We can never praise Him to much.