In the Spring of 2004, I went out to a friend’s house on the Wando River for a couple days to pray, listen, study the Bible, and worship, hoping to get a clear grasp on the vision for the album and maybe get a new song or two. Very early that morning, my wife, Bethany, was up praying and in the Word on my behalf, and she put some notes in my Bible for me to read on my retreat. Included in her notes was a reference to Jeremiah 1:5, which this song is based on.

As I drove down the road to the river house, I began to have this spiritual sense of motion. I started thinking about the hurricanes that have swept through the Lowcountry of South Carolina. When I got to the house, I felt the Spirit leading me to go stand by the river and just look and listen. As I stood there, I thought of the systems that come together to make a river flow, pressure systems, tides, etc. I felt like the Lord was telling me that He had been putting these systems in place and He had released a river that is flowing through the nations and is unstoppable. If anything stands in its way, it will flow over it or around it, but it will not be stopped. I thought of the river from the temple in Ezekiel 47.

I went into the house, put all my books, papers, pen, and tape recorder on the table and opened up my wife’s note. It began by saying that she felt an inner excitement about this project and along with that was a “sense of water flowing, or something flowing without impediments.” I was amazed at how God was confirming this idea to both of us so specifically.

I turned to the passage in Jeremiah and after reading it, I just began singing it. It flowed out just like the river I am describing and just like it was recorded. I was weeping by the time it was over. It wasn’t until months later, literally the night before we had to send the mix out to get mastered, that the last few lines were added: Rise with me, as we cover the earth, like a mighty flood, flowing through the nations; O let go of lesser gods.

I must say that the last phrase, “lesser gods,” made me wonder if it was alright theologically. Would it make people think that I felt that Yahweh was one god among many others but some were lesser and some greater? I figured people would understand, but I am a stickler for Truth and I do not want to mislead anyone with a lyric. I knew I had heard the phrase before—not just the film title, Children of a Lesser God—but I couldn’t find it, and the Bible never uses that phrase. Finally, when I thought I should ask my Rector, Steve Wood, about it, I remembered he was the one who used the phrase. It was in the liner notes to our first worship CD, Up. He wrote, “for too long we have settled for a life of lesser gods … worshiping inferior and transitory things.” The church in the West must deal with this if it is going to be a part of this river at the end of the age.

Before I formed you in the womb,
I knew you.
Before you were born,
I set you apart.

And appointed you a prophet;
A prophet to the nations.

So come and see what is waiting in my heart,
Rise with me as we cover the Earth.
Like a mighty flood flowing through the nations,
Oh, Let go of lesser gods.