Josephine Grace has released a Christian Contemporary Music (CCM) track called Higher Than the Heavens.
Josephine shared her story behind this song:
Some songs come quickly, some come slowly. This one was definitely the latter! It was way back in 2011 when I made a home demo of the first version of this song - it was moodier with completely different chords, melody and lyrics - and then it sat on the shelf (or more literally, on an external hard drive full of archived files) until the back end of last year.
I’ve done some studying online with Hillsong College this past year and a half and at some point I’d explored what being wholehearted towards God means. Bits of the old song (it was called ‘I Will’ at that point), written quite directly from Psalm 108, started coming back to me beginning with Psalm 108:1 (NIV) “My heart, O God, is steadfast”.
I followed the melody in my mind to the chorus based on Psalm 108:4 (NIV) “For great is your love, higher than the heavens; your faithfulness reaches to the skies.” which remains the case in this new rendition. I took it as a bit of prompting by the Holy Spirit to take a fresh look at it.
I dug out the old hard drive, rediscovered the original demo, opened my Bible to Psalm 108 and then played around with it on piano. I landed on a chorus reworking, almost put a ‘4 to the floor’ dance like beat to it, rewrote the verses, changed the tempo and scrapped the mad beat, rewrote the verses again and added the bridge. And Bob’s your uncle I felt like I’d cracked it!
I kicked off this year by heading to the studio with my producer, James Andrew (we both serve on Worship Team at our church), with a dream in my heart of putting an EP together this year. We listened through the collection of songs I’ve written largely since last summer and I felt pretty strongly that I wanted a full out worship song to be the first release. And here we are!
The time I’ve spent dwelling on the lyrics of ‘Higher Than The Heavens’ has helped remind me to take in another glimpse of God’s expansive love and faithfulness and to look up to Jesus - this is what we hang our hope on. Especially through these past two years of deep uncertainty and grief I’ve realised how much we need solid foundations to build our lives on and it doesn’t get any more solid that God’s love.
My hope is that ‘Higher Than The Heavens’ brings hope to others like it has for me.
Lyrics:
Oo, oo
O Lord my God
I will let my heart sing
I will give You everything
And I won’t stop
Lifting up my heart’s song
You have been so faithful
For great is Your love
Higher than the heavens, oh
Reaching the skies
With all Your faithfulness, mm
O God as we praise You now
Let Your glory fill the earth
You send Your Word
And by it You deliver
Every son and daughter
And we’ll keep on
Walking out our freedom
Enemies defeated
For great is Your love
Higher than the heavens, oh
Reaching the skies
With all Your faithfulness, oh
O God as we praise You now
Let Your glory fill the earth
Let Your glory fill the earth
You surround us with Your love
You’re our defender
With You we will overcome
You bring us freedom
You surround us with Your love
You’re our defender
With You we will overcome
You bring us freedom
For great is Your love
Higher than the heavens, oh
Reaching the skies
With all Your faithfulness
For great is Your love
Higher than the heavens, oh
Reaching the skies
With all Your faithfulness, oh
O God as we praise You now
Let Your glory fill the earth, oh
O God as we praise You now
Let Your glory fill the earth
Written by: Josephine Grace Wilcock
You can listen to the track on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/track/1AT0emC2q8yHwHbGDz1SWR
Here is a link to the video on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buXVkW29iHg
Would you like to hear more CCM music? Then check out our Christian playlists on: https://www.christiandance.eu/playlists