Song Story: Make Your Glory Known
“Make Your Glory Known” was written to sing in times of seeking God through the Spiritual disciplines (Verse 1), Gifts (verse 2), asking the Lord to make Himself known to us (Chorus), confessing that we often live out of our own strength instead of seeking God’s help (Bridge 1), and confessing our desire for God to outshine the things of this world in our everyday lives (Bridge 2).
One morning in California with my family, I was up early with my guitar and wrestling through this song in particular. We didn’t have a bridge yet and it seemed like something important was missing. So far the lyrics addressed how we are pursuing Christ, what we are doing, and how we want to see and know more of God. I wa starting to get frustrated that I couldn’t figure out what the song needed. I was disciplined and working hard to write this song, and God had led us so clearly in the verses and chorus, but I felt like we were hitting a wall. In my mind, he wasn’t “making his glory known” to me yet, which was the whole point of the song. I started praying and sharing this with the Lord, but the the Spirit interrupted me and then I said these words, “The hardest part of waking up, is knowing I need you.”
It wasn’t said with disdain for needing God. It was a confession. A confession that I had woken up and thought that I could do something without him. Not theologically. But practically. I could pick up my guitar and need to write a song. I could get in my car and need to get coffee. I could get to work and need to knock out tasks. I could minister to people and need to serve them. I could go through my day and need to do a lot of things. That’s easy. What’s hard is remembering each moment that the thing I need most is the Spirit of God. To see God not just as my eternal savior, but also my present help and breathe of life. Throughout the psalms, we see the significance of our posture towards God in the morning. This isn’t a head issue. It’s a heart one. That’s what this line addresses. It gives us a song to sing that reminds us of our wandering. A song of repentance. One that quickly turns from an awakened soul to a desperate one... “come and steal my heart, come and lift my soul, I am yours and you are mine!”
Similarly, in Mark 9:24, we see a desperate Father call out to Jesus and say, “I believe, but help my unbelief.” We aren’t saying in this song that it’s hard to believe theologically that we need God, or that we hate that we need him, but that we often forget, act as if we don’t, or fail to see how we would need God for “even this.”And it’s important that we confess these things corporately because they aren’t just private struggles, but sometimes familial ones as well.
It’s helpful to know, that for some of you this is not an “I feel this way all of the time,” type of line. But nothing we sing is how we feel all of the time. Instead, we sing about what we know. What we know to be true about God, what we know to be true about man, and what we know to be true about our relationship with God through Christ.
Our hope is that wherever you are (in the song), you can lift your voice in praise of Jesus with those who are in other places (in the song), testifying to one another the beauty of the whole gospel together, with one voice to our one God.
Matt Shelton
Pastor of Music & Arts
The Paradox Church