Treasure – Lou Fellingham

“Treasure” is a song by Lou Fellingham on her solo debut project of the same name.

It’s rich in content about God’s power at work within us. Here’s the first two verses:

We have this treasure from the Lord our God,
A gift of mercy from His hand
His all surpassing power at work in us
To show His Glory and His plan
For He has offered Hope to all mankind
Through sending Jesus to the cross
And now this light he’s shone into our hearts
We’re holding out to all the world

Now with His power in us we’ll reign in life
With eyes of faith we’ll move ahead
The Spirit helps and strengthens us each day
Confirming our eternal place
Our confidence is not our ability
Nor in the earthly strength that we hold
But in His grace He takes the fragile things
To show the greatness of His love

The full lyrics are available at the Kingsway Songs website, and the CD is available from a few places in the U.S., including WorshipMusic.com. The cover is unfortunately immodest, at least by what my eyes normally see, but otherwise it’s a great resource.

In Him I Have Believed – Kate Simmonds

In Him I Have Believed is a wonderful new hymn by Kate Simmonds. Kate for a long time was a part of Church of Christ the King in Brighton, England, and has since moved to Australia to serve a church there.

Here are two of the verses.

Verse 1
In Him I have believed, on this my hope now rests,
That Jesus Christ is risen from the dead!
The all-surpassing joy of knowing Christ my Lord,
The former things, I count them all as loss.
Called out of darkness into Your goodness,
We are Your children, chosen in Christ.
Now in Your family, heirs of the promise,
To Your purpose on the earth I give my life.

Verse 3
Whatever trials may come, in faith, Lord, help us stand
For righteousness and justice in our land.
What fear can hold us now? We run toward the prize,
Our lives already crucified with Christ.
Through every nation Your kingdom advances;
Who can extinguish this spreading flame?
Through tribulations we’ll stand on Your promise:
‘I will build My church and hell will not prevail!’

Verse 2 talks about our unity as the church in Jesus Christ and our call to serve the lost, and verse 4 is a celebration of the final day and the hope of heaven.

You can get all the text here and audio here.

The song is very long, and may take some time to get used to. The first time I listened to it, I thought it was a verse and chorus structure, but the chorus keeps changing – so it actually is just one long verse each time. In teaching it, though it’s usually good anyway to sing a couple verses before asking people to join in, it may be particularly helpful here so that people understand it’s actually a verse.