Christ Is Risen - An Easter plan by Matt MaherSample

Because He Lives

 Early in our walk, when we don’t know God well, we pray, ‘I’m headed toward disaster. I need a different course for my life." We reach a point where we mature in our faith, and we realize God already has the course of our life taken care of. It’s a hard thing when you fully surrender to the present, and you give that to God, and then you turn around and you are able to slowly trust the mystery of an uncertain future and know that the certainty in it, is God. Part of the beauty of the Gospel is the resurrection. Sometimes things have to die in order for them to come to life.

I wanted to share a little more about how we wrote this song. The title “Because He Lives” is not new - it was a song written by Bill Gaither. I was writing with a couple of people and someone brought up “Wouldn’t it be great if we could write a new song with the title ‘Because He Lives’?”

It’s an interesting thought that in our lives as Christians, everything comes after the resurrection. Because Jesus lives, fill in the blank...

So we started writing the song with a fragment of another song I was working on with a couple of other writers with the lyrics “Amen” and “Let my song join the one that never ends.” We realized that the lyric “I’m alive, I’m alive because He lives” was a natural fit and I ended up showing the song to a friend of mine, Chris Tomlin. It was then we realized that the lyrics “I can face tomorrow, every fear is gone” which were in the original lyrics of Bill Gaither’s song. We went to Bill Gaither and he gave his blessing. 

So what we have is a song that is the result of a lot of people’s efforts. I think that’s always been a bit part of my ministry - unifying the church and bringing voices from different streams together.