Lou Fellingham has just released an album called “This Changes Everything”. I cannot recommend it strongly enough. One day, when you are at your weakest, songs like these will give you strength.
Here you will find hope no matter what you are facing. The whole album is strongly gospel focussed, and expounds both the Cross and the Resurrection, and as a result I have added a number of them to my Gospel Hope playlist. I hope this article may persuade you to listen to this on Spotify and Apple Music. I have merged new songs like these from Lou Fellingham, and old timeless hymns. These kinds of songs are a direct gift from God to you to lift your spirits.
You can also watch the video of “This Changes Everything” at the top of this article.
Think of good worship songs as medicine for your soul. Take regularly and often.
The title track of Lou Fellingham’s new album is a glorious resurrection song. The subtitle of my book Raised With Christ is “How the Resurrection Changes Everything.” Let’s just say this song could be the anthem for that book. What hope! What encouragement! So uplifting!
So often we need songs to really ram home truths that we know intellectually and help them grip our emotions once again. Without question This Changes Everything drives home the implications of the resurrection, which is exactly what I was trying to do when I wrote my first book.
With words like the ones I am about to quote, a song needs an evocative tune that is appropriate and stirs the right emotions. I believe that you won’t be disappointed: it hits the nail on the head:
We are standing on the promise of the future
We have tasted of a life that’s yet to come
We have seen a glimpse of heaven in the darkness
And our hope is in the resurrected son . . .He is alive
Jesus is alive
This changes everything, everything
Now I’m alive
In you I have life
This changes everything, everything for usFull lyrics of ‘This Changes Everything‘ and sheet music is available at weareworship.com
Songs like these draw worship from us.
I’ve been listening to Lou Fellingham sing at worship events and her albums for more years than I’d like to own up to. I should point out she started her worship singing career when she was too young to attend the meetings she was helping to lead worship in at Stoneleigh Bible Week! Those conferences were hosted by Terry Virgo, who started a group of over a thousand churches and is an outstanding preacher. He has recounted often a foundational word he felt God gave him very early in his ministry:
“I’ve called you first to be a worshipper. Anything else you do is a bonus”.
A word like that resonates with Jesus words:
“True worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” (John 4:32-24)
Songs like the ones on Lou Fellingham’s new album are not only full of Truth, but they are also full of the Spirit.
There is an anointing on these songs which comes from the heart of the true worshippers who sing, play, and write them.
I do believe that the ability of a song to stir our emotions is one mark of this anointing of the Holy Spirit, but it is also more subtle than that.
Singing and listening to good worship songs changes us radically.
We are drawn into the experienced presence of God.
We begin to feel that we are not alone.
There is ONE who truly sees us in all our struggles and understands.
Songs like these install hope in us.
And more of God’s Holy Spirit is released into our hearts to do surgery there, transforming our emotions, impulses, and behaviour.
I firmly believe that worship is crucial in the Believers life. No wonder we were given a whole book in the Bible of spiritual songs (and a long one at that!)
But despite this for years I neglected private worship.
And as a direct result of this, I no longer felt the presence of Jesus as much as I used to. I became distant from God. And when significant suffering began to assail me for the first time in my life, I didn’t really have the resources to deal with it at all.
A very recent tweet from Terry Virgo sums up exactly what happened with me:
“If you drift from the enjoyment of God’s presence, burdens seem heavier, fears grow stronger, life is tougher. Abide in him and let his words abide in you.
Surely then we see that worship songs are one way we can get back to enjoying God’s presence and following Jesus’ command to abide in him.
I thank God that in recent months I have rediscovered private worship. I have made good use of my favourite headphones. And I spend a lot of time now with worship music playing either in the background while I do other things, or in focussed times of seeking God’s presence.
And it is beginning to work.
It is crucial that you listen to the right kinds of songs. For me at least, some worship songs are just too celebratory, and too up tempo to help me if I am feeling low or anxious. They definitely have their place. But, the songs that help me most are deeper, often slower, and focus on the hope offered to us in the gospel even in our darkest times.
If you drift from the enjoyment of God’s presence, burdens seem heavier, fears grow stronger, life is tougher. Abide in him & let his words abide in you.
— Terry Virgo (@TerryVirgo) 12 April 2018
As an Englishman I need help to unlock my emotions I have been taught to suppress. Several songs on This Changes Everything did just that. None more so than “Lord I need you” had me in tears in the first couple of bars the very first time I heard it:
“Lord, I need You, Oh, I need You
Every hour I need You
My one defense, my righteousness
Oh God, how I need You . . .Without You, I fall apart
You’re the One, that guides my heart . . .And when I cannot stand, I’ll fall on You
Jesus, You’re my hope and stay!”Full lyrics of ‘Lord I Need You‘ and sheet music is available at weareworship.com
Every song on the album is pure medicine for the soul, because they all preach truth to our hearts and breath hope. I will share just one more sample of the lyrics followed by a video of this song which also moves me deeply:
He lavishes grace as our burdens grow greater
He sends us more strength as our labours increase
To added afflictions He offers more mercy
To multiplied trials He multiplies peaceSo lean hard
Lean hard
Lean on the everlasting armsFull lyrics, and sheet music for Everlasting are available at weareworship.com
With words like these, a compelling tune and arrangmement, and a fantastic voice in song after song is it any wonder that I am enjoying Lou Fellingham’s new album so much?
Lou has also written a short devotional series which explains the personal behind the scenes story and Scriptural foundation of a selection of the songs.
The best way to support Lou and other Christian artists is to buy physical CDs direct from their own sites such as loufellingham.com or attend ticketed concerts. Working as a full time worship artist is certainly not a way to get rich these days in general.
I’m not going to apologise for mentioning again once more my “Gospel Hope” Worship playlist which includes several of the songs from Lou’s latest and older albums. There you will find a mixture of ancient and modern hymns and choruses. They are mostly slow music. Listen long enough and at least one of them may make you cry, and thats a good thing!
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