My song for Sunday a week ago got me totally in to an Andrae mood. So, I pulled out all my Andrae Crouch and the Disciples LPs and played them this week, sang along! He is just one of the voices of my life, one of the greatest musical infleunces. I am begging Luka to book him for Heaven Fest for me (and everybody else!). I found this interview he did online at www.oneway.org where he explained how young and “green” he was, even when he wrote the song I shared last week, “The Blood Will Never Lose its Power,”
“When I first wrote ‘the Blood’ I was 14; I didn’t even know what the song meant…(The Blood Will Never Lose Its Power, Take the Message Everywhere, Light Records, 1969)…it just came. …Didn’t know what it meant; wasn’t driving a car; I was totally green to what was going on.”
Interviewer: And it (the Blood…) has meant so much to people all of these years.
“It’s the Word, so it was really a prophetic message that lives on forever that, “the Blood Will Never Lose Its Power.” Many songs came that way. Those early days were exciting and adventurous. Everything was new. Just like I don’t know what God has in store for me, now. It’s that same kind of excitement.”
Another of his songs I so love, one I find myself humming or singing quite regularly, is one which reminds me that what I have, I need to share. “Tell Them” is the good news that THE God of the universe, while they are yet sinners, loves the people around us – just the way He did with us. And He came to give them life. I find it appropriate to kick off this “season of good will” with the joyful message of a Father who loves us~
Tell them even if they don’t believe you Just tell them, even if they don’t receive you Tell them for me Please tell them for Me That I love them And I came to let them know.
Tell them When it seems you are forsaken Just tell them though it seems your earth is shaken Tell them for Me Please tell them for Me That I love them And I came to let them know
Tell that lonely man who walks the cold streets all alone Tell that crying child who doesn’t have a home Tell those hungry people dying lost and in despair They don’t even know that I care
Won’t you tell them on the streets and tell them on the highways? Compel them, even on the byways Tell them I can mend the broken hearted Restore the ones who have parted And I came to let them know And I came to let them knowIt is appalling to think how long I often go, rushing here and there in the busyness of life, full of the great news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, yet neglecting to share it. Neglecting to go and compel…
Here is a version you can listen to (click), though the rendition from the “Live in London” album is the track that plays in my head, the one I am singing with…