A few evenings ago, while driving in my car, I had the most precious and profound worship time, and I thought I would share it with my readers because it illustrates the raw power of real worship, and its ability to change the hearts of those worshipping. This was a very special worship experience for me, and although it will probably not have the same effect on other people, I wanted to share it also because I want to try and show just what happens when the Spirit orchestrates worship – even on an electronic mp3 player – for the building-up of the heart of the believer.^[1] Plus of course it will probably bless my readers anyway 😀 For me, Her ‘playlist’, and the order in which the songs appeared on my player, were a deliberate setup in order to maximise the blessing for me. And it was absolutely wonderful! So I am sharing the story, the individual tracks, and (later on) the tracks all spliced into a single continuous piece in order hopefully to let you experience something of the profound time I had the other evening, and to hear how all the tracks flow together. This is worship leading at its best; thank You, Holy Spirit!

So, on this particular evening, I was driving up to Exeter (no, not to go flying! 😉 ) and, as is my usual custom, I had some worship music playing. I’ve done this for years, just so long as there’s no-one else in the car that the music will annoy 😀

Well, my iPod was set to random play, and the first song to come up was ‘Jesus we enthrone You’, segued^[2] into ‘Ascribe Greatness’, from the Dales ’82 tape ‘Praise God in His Sanctuary’. These songs, and the way in which the ‘worship session’ went, are the reasons why I have included this piece in my series about my lovely late wife Fiona. These two songs, especially, held great meaning for us in the early part of our lives together and, on this particular day, they led to a tremendous time of healing for me, right there in the car.

Not long after we’d first begun dating, in 1982, we went to several worship evenings together at the Dales Bible Week in Harrogate. These two songs therefore have for me a lot of deep meaning and personal identification, and they bring back many happy memories of those days. In particular, I found that on this journey they actually recreated, in small measure, the feelings I had when we were first dating.

It was Fiona’s first Bible week, and she loved it; the worship especially. Fiona always had the heart of a worshipper, and those were the days where she first experienced what it was like to worship in a huge congregation of 8,000-plus people, using new and exuberant songs like these.

Lyrics are here, in case you want to join in^[3]

The sound of the ladies’ voices, when they sing without the men, sounds very much like Fiona’s voice, and whenever I listen to these Dales ’82 songs, I always fancy I can hear her voice. Of course, that’s highly unlikely, given that there will have been about 4,000 ladies singing there each night, but, well, because we were there for most of the meetings that week, we are likely on the recording! Anyway, we learned these songs at Dales, and brought them back to our home congregation at Guiseley Baptist Church. We had them both at our wedding, and Fiona came in to the tune of Ascribe Greatness. Nearly thirty-three years later, we also sang it at Fiona’s funeral.

At this point, then, gratitude and worship were flowing, and the iPod segued into the perfect intro of Terry MacAlmon’s ‘Worship Interlude‘. Even the key transition was seamless, and Terry’s first words on the track, ‘Thank You Lord’, were just what I was feeling: an immense gratitude for Fiona’s life and for all the great times we’d had together. Time for me to sing in my Spirit language, because words were simply not enough to express what I was feeling^[4].

The song followed into a mild key-change and then, to my complete amazement, into one of the most healing songs I have ever heard – and in the key that the (unconnected) Worship Interlude had just changed into. Honestly, the transition was simply seamless. But this song? It was My God and King, by Shauna Chanda, accompanied by Terry MacAlmon, and this particular piece holds so much meaning for me, because it was involved in the healing of deep hurts not long after I lost Fiona. Can you see how perfectly these songs were ‘set up’ for me? 😀

Lyrics^[5]

Wow. Just, wow. And as you can imagine, at this point I was well aware that the Spirit was orchestrating the randomisation on the iPod!

Next, along came a Vineyard song from our early days as worship leaders and my being Director of Music at my church – again, perfectly seamless with regards to the key (stayed in the same key) – I worship You (I give You all the Honor) by Carl Tuttle:

Lyrics^[6]

For so much of our lives together, especially when we lived in Yorkshire, we spent a lot of time living ‘on the breadline’, where we often had to search the house for the last two coins needed to buy a loaf of bread or whatever it was we needed. And I have to say that God has never seen us go short; He has always provided for all our needs – physical, emotional, spiritual. He’s been faithful (a God of faithfulness, as we have already seen above), and this song was the next up – the classic hymn ‘Great is Thy faithfulness‘, and this one is the Hosanna Music version:

Lyrics ^[7]

…and then leading into the very next song, Brian Doerksen’s Faithful One, another early-90’s Vineyard song which I introduced and led at my old Church in Leeds:

Lyrics^[8]

And then, to finish, and perfectly timed as I was reaching my destination, my favourite worship song of all time, When I look into Your Holiness, in its original form (to me, at any rate), from the Harvestime tape ‘Let Your Spirit Rise‘, and preceded, as on the tape, with the classic song ‘As the Deer’. This was how I learned these songs, and this tape, again, was pivotal in my early development as a worship leader, and with Fiona by my side. We used to play this tape all the time when we were decorating our first house 🙂

Lyrics^[9]

Well, I mean wow. What an amazing song set, and so well put together with transitions, keys, relevance and dynamics. It was obviously set up to minister healing in me from more of the damage I took when I lost Fiona – and it worked. I arrived at my destination feeling more whole than I have in a long time, and refreshed by the Presence of God^[10]. And that night, I dreamed about her again, with yet another healing dream 🙂 This, again, is all part of the healing, which is progressively and each time bringing deeper and deeper wholeness to my shattered soul, to levels I can only guess at. I am definitely in the hands of the Master Physician, and the Spirit is doing Her work through the worship, orchestrated as only She can do it.

Here, for your edification, is the entire set, combined as a single track, with all the transitions left in place just as they were that evening.

While it isn’t possible, nor indeed desirable, to try to recreate the worship experience I had, still I wanted to share the set with you because, at the very least, it shows just how songs can be woven together to produce a remarkably relevant worship experience. And, anyway, this is great music! I hope it blesses you 😀

Grace and Peace to you

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