When we worship, we’re not telling God who He is for His good, we’re doing it for our good. We are declaring to our own hearts the truth of who God is and trying to capture in song how our hearts feel in response to His glory, to His power and majesty, to His sacrifice, and to His redemption - to let the truth of what He has done through the power of Jesus penetrate a little bit deeper into our hearts.
I don’t share this song story lightly, or with the expectation of it being viewed as some personal victory after struggle. This story is not about me overcoming anything in my own right, because I didn’t. This is a story of submission and surrender, and of a God who paves the way for healing and victory when all we have the strength to do is kneel at His feet.
I remember driving home after the final rehearsal for our recent album, Live at the Black Box Theatre. It was early May 2019 -- the trees were just beginning to bloom, and life was returning to the world after the coldest Wisconsin winter I’d ever experienced living here in nearly eight and a half years.
It was a Monday.
I just rolled into work at our Winona campus, ready to start another week of ministry. The start of my week usually begins with some kind soaking prayer and worship (it helps after a weekend of pouring out, to start your week getting poured into) and pacing the chairs of the worship center to pray over them. Then I got a phone call.
It was my Mom. My sister just had a miscarriage.
When myself, Justin, Cody, and Elizabeth first sat down to write Fire In The Night, we didn’t know what it “was” as a starting point, or what it was “going” to be. We almost never do. Co-writing with the FFM collective (or family, as we call it) has always kind of been like finding an old, rusty car buried out in the backyard, and then meticulously taking the time to clean off the dirt, and restore it to its former glory. As with most creative pursuits, it’s truly like an archeological dig; there’s an excavation of theme, allegory, and metaphor, and then we must sort and ascribe context to these things lyrically.
Awake // Alive is the first studio/live recording from First Free Music, a worship arts collective of songwriters, musicians, worship leaders, and creatives founded out of First Free Church in Onalaska, WI. The album features 11 new songs that First Free Music hopes will draw people closer to the Father and inspire others to dig deeper into seeking Jesus with wholehearted abandon.
First Free Music's newest album, Live at the Black Box Theatre, was recorded live at the Weber Center for the Performing Arts Veterans Studio Black Box Theatre in downtown La Crosse, WI, surrounded by their worship arts family and friends. The project captures seven powerful new songs on film which echo the heartbeat of First Free Music.
It's been more than 100 years since First Evangelical Free Church of La Crosse was founded, but in many ways, the church is behaving like a brand new movement.
Now known as First Free Church, the Wisconsin-based gathering of believers has exploded with new believers and the spiritually curious in recent years. And in the midst of the many stories and displays of God's presence there, a community of service-minded psalmists have risen up to put songs to their life in faith.
