Beyond The Music: Who You Are

I am especially proud of the origin of this song. As you may or may not know, I have spent most of the last seven years serving on staff at various churches working with teenagers and college students. My ministry in the local church has never been a separated area from my music. "Who You Are" is a great example of this.

In June of 2010, I took a group of students and adults to Birmingham, Alabama for a week of mission work at an M-Fuge student camp. Early on in the week, I encouraged my group to write down what God was showing them each day and I would take these thoughts and put them in a song. Each night, I would recieve little slips of paper with various thoughts, verses, and phrases. Some people actually wrote rhyming lyrics and poetry. It blew me away to be reminded of how big and creative our God is. Each idea submitted was unique to that person and completely different from the others.

At first, I was overwhelmed with the task of making all of these individual parts come together in one song. In fact, it seemed impossible to do so. And that was when it hit me...that this was the point. God reminded me that He knows each of us intimately and is moving in each of our lives personally. From this thought came the idea for the chorus that is repeated over and over throughout this song..."Who You are is making me who I am." My identity is tied up in who God is in me. I am literally defined by Who He is! I am not just a number to Him. Instead I am His child...fearfully and wonderfully made for His pleasure.
Even though the individual written responses were different for all thirty-something of us, we all could identify with this truth. We are who we are...because of who He is.

A few days, after returning from camp, I wrote this song using as much of their material as possible in the verses. It is basically a list of who God is in our lives: Healer, Forgiver, Savior, Friend... All of this was ultimately tied together with the "who You are/who I am" theme.

Within a few weeks of returning from camp, I was joined onstage by my youth group to share this song with our church. It was a very cool thing!

FUN FACTS:
- written on July 8th 2010
- features a killer guitar solo by the legendary Will McFarlane (http://www.willmcfarlane.com/bio.html)
- written with the help & support of the ONEWAY Student Ministry of Central Baptist Church in Henderson, NC