You Can’t Write Beyond What You Know

I wonder at times if people understand that you can’t write about something that you don’t know, haven’t studied, or haven’t experienced.

Songs reveal the spiritual understanding, knowledge, and experience of the writer.

So if you haven’t read God’s Word, haven’t consumed it and allowed it to consume you because you’re too busy, then when you write songs, your ignorance will show.

Yes, we’re all on a journey in our spiritual growth, and we will always be learning. But, as songwriters, we should first be students of God’s Word. Our songs, that we ask others to sing in worship, should not be written from a place of hurt or even healing.

Worship is about God.  It is worship of God. Worship songs should be about Him and to Him. Not about us or to us.

A great worship song has its base in Scripture and its core in an experiential knowledge of who He is.

The best songs, the ones with an anointing on them, are written when a songwriter understands a revelation of who God is as revealed in the Bible, and that songwriter has taken the time to glorify and honor God privately in worship, speaking those scriptural words about His character to Him. The experience that the songwriter will have during that time of worshipping in that scriptural revelation of God will be the catalyst for songs born from his or her spirit in adoration of God.

Read the Bible, study it, live it, speak it, praise it, and worship God with the revelation of the Scripture that the Holy Spirit gives you. Then, write the song that’s in your spirit. It won’t be about you; it will be about and to Him. And it will be powerful.