The story behind the song…

It was over 2 years ago now that I had a bit of a download from God while on my way to Tenerife (I’m a pilot). We were out over the Atlantic ocean, a couple of hundred miles off of the Portuguese coast. The captain was busy and at the time I was looking out the window.  I asked God what was on His heart. It’s a question I’ve asked Him many times before but haven’t had a response quite like this!

As I was praying, I  noticed a low level cloud layer, the likes of which I hadn’t seen before. The way it was clinging to the surface of the water instantly reminded me of the Spirit hovering over the waters in Genesis 1, waiting for the Father to give the command. I had a sense of the Spirit’s eagerness to get cracking and create and give life, like He loves to do, but He had to wait until the Father spoke.

Then the words from Isaiah 43 came to me: “Behold, I am doing a new thing” and I felt that,  just like in Genesis 1, once again the Spirit is hovering, excitedly waiting to bring in that “new thing”, but He’s just waiting for the Father to give the go ahead and say the word. And when He does move, things will shift and we will see revival.

I started to write a song about it but as is quite often the case with me, I struggled to get anywhere with it! Eventually I gave up trying to write it. I actually spent most of the first lockdown trying to write a different song, but didn’t get anywhere with that one either!

A few months back I was reading the passage that we’ve all read hundreds of times, 2 Chronicles 7:14, and suddenly realised that I had been reading it wrong all this time! I had always thought that in terms of God healing our land here in the UK (or any nation) it required the nation, or at least a significant proportion of the population, to turn to Him and repent and seek His face, but that’s not what it is saying. “If my people who are called by my name…”. He was talking to Israel at the time, but it now includes us. So it’s us, the church, His chosen ones that need to turn and repent and seek His face. And I just love it when God confirms things to us…I had this revelation on a Wednesday, and then along comes Sunday, and someone at Grapevine, who happens to be preaching, picks up on the exact same misreading of that very verse!

I realised then that this is what God is waiting for, for His people to return to Him and seek His face, and when we do, that is when He will say the word and let His Spirit move. It makes sense really, every time Israel turned away from Him and judgement came upon them, it wasn’t until they turned back to Him and got rid of all of their idols that God stepped in and rescued them.

I’d forgotten about the song I’d started to write but suddenly it came back to me and by the end of the next day I pretty much had the chorus written, and an urgency to try and finish it.

So I believe that it is definitely for the here and now and we are on the verge of something big in the near future. So let’s turn our eyes back to Him, and pray for the church in the UK as a whole to do the same.

In the words of Melissa Helser, “Revival’s in the air!”

Sam Newman