The story behind Declare Your Glory:
In 2002, while living in Northern Arizona, I had to travel
to
I got nothing, only increasing frustration.
That weekend I stayed at the home of our friends Larry and Stephanie Lawrence. My wife and kids came down for the weekend.
That Saturday afternoon, I had my guitar out, and was sitting in the living room, flipping through their large family Bible on the coffee table. I started reading from Psalm 19 and immediately words and music began to form in my mind. I began strumming and thought “Hey, this is kind of cool.”
In less than ten minutes, I had the complete song. The
The song sounded even better!
Their pastor came over for dinner, heard the song and asked us to sing it the next day in church.
The really funny thing was that a week of my efforts produced nothing, but in a few moments, God in His grace gave me something beautiful. Sometimes, when we keep hitting a brick wall that blocks our way, it’s because God has something better for us.
Since that time, Declare Your Glory has been used in numerous churches.
The next week of training, I took my recording equipment over to my good friend Dustin Boston’s home. He is an absolute creative wiz. He recorded several electric guitar tracks and a bass line all in one night. I did the acoustic guitar track in my hotel room. Later, I arranged the drum track using Sound Forge’s Acid Pro music program. Larry, Steph and Helen did the vocal harmonies.
Click here to hear the results.
But… there’s more to the story.
In 2003, I did a phone interview with Jude Del Hierro, the composer of the song More Love, More Power. I was working on a freelance article for Worship Leader magazine.
I had a great time interviewing Jude, and we ended up talking about songwriting. He said “I’m putting together an album project for the March for Jesus celebration. Why don’t you send me some your songs and let me hear them.”
A year later, the article had not been finished, due to various reasons, but in the meantime, Declare Your Glory had been selected for the album For Your Glory. They did an awesome job on the arrangement and the recording, with worship leader Tom Ewing (I actually attended Christ for the Nations at the same time as him, but never met him there) on the vocals. Stan Sinclair, worship pastor at Faith Bible Chapel, Denver played acoustic guitar. He also played on John Tesh’s Worship at Red Rocks album.
When I first heard the preview mp3 of the song, I listened to it about twenty times.
I could hardly believe it.
It wasn’t anything I deserved, or could have engineered on my own. It was something that God had graciously orchestrated.
The article for Worship Leader was eventually published on the Song Discovery website. You can read it here.
What is really cool is how Christians can help each other fulfill their callings from God.
I have tried to help other musicians with the resources I have available to me, and God used Jude Del Hierro to open a door which would have been otherwise closed to me.
Declare Your Glory continues to be one of our most widely-used songs.
We will update you as new developments occur.
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