Songs

This song is featured in chapter 6, Thrilled. Of all the songs I’ve written over the years, this one is probably my very favorite. I wrote the first verse shortly after arriving in mainland China in 1999. The melody of the chorus came in 2005 when I was living in Argentina. Words for the chorus […]

This song is featured in chapter 6 of Keys in the Sand. When Jesus was baptized in the River Jordan a dove descended and a voice was heard from heaven saying “This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased.” But since “well pleased” sounds a little stuffy in our day and age,

Keys in the Sand features this song about praising God in difficult circumstances in Chapter 8: Wisdom from Above. I wrote it while living in Chengdu, China. Despite being situated in beautiful Sichuan province, Chengdu can feel like a grey, miserable industrial wasteland. It’s located in a basin surrounded by lush mountains, so clouds get

I wrote this song in 2018 while walking through the old city of Chiang Mai, Thailand. I was spending my second consecutive winter break there, enjoying the warm weather and soaking up the cultural and creative atmosphere. I think the verse and chorus came to me during one leisurely stroll and the bridge during another.

Written in Thailand in 2018, this is the most recent song featured in Keys in the Sand. It can be found in Chapter 3: Elevating Our Expectations. God gave me this song when things weren’t going as planned and I was entertaining a lot of worries about the future. He reassured me with His presence

A book with sand in the title that features music should probably include a a song about sand. I wrote this song in 2004 while living in southwest China. It was inspired by the following passage, which is also crucial to the book: How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God!How vast is

This is yet another song I wrote while living in Argentina. I had already been inspired to draw a picture of Jesus pulling a wagon. He was connected to the wagon with a yoke that He carried while a little girl swung from the other side. The song naturally flowed from the same mental image

Have you ever double-dog dared the Lord? The apostle Peter did, and Jesus called his bluff. I got the first 3 lines of the chorus to If It’s You in 2002, and wasn’t inspired to finish in until 2021, when I heard a Chinese podcast about Christian entrepreneurship from Taiwan. The pastor of Fight. K

I also wrote this song in Argentina – it seems that quite a few of the songs for the book originated during the short season I lived there over 15 years ago! The song Turn Around was inspired by the gospel story of the woman with the issue of blood, whose healing is detailed in