Image by Reuben Mcfeeters from Unsplash

I’ve really enjoyed this song by legendary worship songwriters Brandon Lake, Brian Johnson, Matt Redman, and Phil Wickham. It’s an exciting, empowering, uplifting call to worship that we’ve been singing with our congregation for months. But as I’ve been digging into what songs mean, and what we think they mean when we sing them, this song’s chorus has started to bother me. Will we really see God break down every wall? And does praising God really do all the things this song says it does? Is “We Praise You” biblical? Take a look with me.

Focus

“We Praise You” is directed at God, and uses “we” language, so it’s designed to be an expression of a congregation’s praise to God, not just an individual. The focus of the song is on praising God and what happens when we praise. In the chorus we get a little explanation for why God deserves that praise; in this song, it’s mostly because he overcomes obstacles.

Lyric Analysis

VERSE 1
In this verse, we ask God to make our praise into a weapon that silences the enemy and conquers all anxiety. Praise is used to fight literal battles in the Old Testament (2 Chron. 20:22, potentially Exodus 17:11) and spiritual ones in the New Testament. It’s hard to find word-for-word examples, aside from maybe Paul and Silas’ musical prison break (Acts 16:25-26), but in Ephesians 6:17-18, Paul talks about a sword that is connected to the word of God, the Holy Spirit, and prayer. Those three things come together when we praise God in Bible-based song. Our enemy the devil flees when we resist him (James 4:7), and Paul’s answer to anxiety sounds a lot like praise (Phil. 4:6).

I’m having trouble finding anywhere in the Bible that depicts praises actually rising (Comment any examples you know of!), but it’s not much of a stretch, since God is envisioned on a high and exalted throne, (Ps. 7:7) so anything that we offer him would have to arise in some sense. This could also be connected to the idea of incense and its pleasant smell rising up before God, which is an image used to describe our prayers in Revelation 5:8. I think the “let it rise” line is meant to depict our praise as growing and getting stronger and louder as much as anything else.

VERSE 2
For singing God’s name in the dark, see Acts 16 again, and numerous Psalms. It doesn’t always change everything in the sense of changing our circumstances, but it changes everything in the way we perceive our circumstances.

Singing with all we are could be a shallow exhortation to put our whole physical effort into singing or a description of the kind of life of worship that Paul calls being a living sacrifice (Rom 12:1). I appreciate that when we claim victory here, it’s God’s victory. He doesn’t need our praise weapons to win a fight that he’s already completely won (Col 2:15). So our fighting and singing are just an outgrowth of his victory.

CHORUS
“We’ll see You break down every wall // We’ll watch the giants fall”

Here we go. Every wall? There are plenty of figurative walls and giants in my life that God isn’t going to topple. He doesn’t promise to break down the wall between you and your next promotion, slay the giant of cancer in your life, or even necessarily break through to your wayward daughter, brother, or spouse. God can and does break through a lot of those barriers. He still heals, provides, and mends relationships. I just object to the use of the word “every” because I think it creates a big opportunity for misunderstanding and misapplication, and then someone may well feel that they’ve been lied to by God or the church when a loved one dies of an illness or some other tragedy occurs in their life.

If we take this verse in a purely eschatological sense, it becomes more accurate. None of those walls and giants will exist in eternity in God’s presence, so maybe that’s what the authors intend? Sadly, taking the song this way detracts from the exciting immediacy of the lyrics. “We’ll see you” and “we’ll watch” sound like descriptions of things that will happen here on earth in our lifetime.

When we sang this song in church recently, I reframed the chorus to the congregation a little bit, pointing to the barriers that sin builds in our lives to separate us from God (Isa. 59:2) and the walls of hostility between us and other people (Eph. 2:14-15), and talked about how these walls can keep us from praising God and hearing from him. I emphasized that those are the walls God is promising to break down this morning. I’m not sure if that’s what the authors intended, but it made the song singable and meaningful for me.

Regarding the line, “Fear cannot survive when we praise you,” it’s important to remember that the Bible talks about fear in two different ways. The first is awe and reverence before a holy and all-powerful God who holds our lives in his hands. The second is fear of man, or fear of trouble in this life. Luke 12:4-5 mentions both types. We are to fear God and not man. I think this song is clearly referring to this second type of fear, not saying we shouldn’t fear God. It’s clear from Scripture that God’s presence, his power, and his love drive out fear. If praise brings those things to light, it follows that it too would serve to powerfully combat unhealthy fear.

INTERLUDE
Some people don’t like ohs. I don’t mind them. Here they’re basically just part of the instrumental. The ohs also add emphasis to the words sandwiched between them: “we praise You.”

VERSE 3

Peter walked with Jesus on rough waters until he let his fear overwhelm his faith (Matt. 14:22-33. This line is praying for a faith that doesn’t falter in the face of fear. Trusting in the Lord also gives us the kind of peace that calms our inner storms (Isa. 26-3-4).

BRIDGE 1
What is real living and freedom? What does heaven sound like? This! But what is “this?” Is it this song? This worship service? Praising God?

My best understanding is that “this” refers to the act of praising God. By extension, it is encompassing the worship service in which the song is being sung, declaring that our worship gatherings are a foretaste of our afterlife with Jesus. That should be true, but it isn’t always. This bridge challenges me to make sure that my church is a place that paints a picture of what kingdom life should be like. No one wants to sing “this is what heaven sounds like” if what they hear at church is judgment, legalism, politics, cliques, or materialism.

BRIDGE 2
“I can’t hold back my praise // I gotta let it out!” (x10)
The extensive repetition of this bridge offers some time to meditate on a related quote from C. S. Lewis, who agreed that Christians who really delight in God simply can’t hold back their praise.

“We delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed.”

Accessibility

Most of the song is simple. It’s easy to sing and learn, and it’s an energetic introduction to the idea of praising God. Someone uninitiated might not understand where some of the references come from, but they make clear enough metaphors that the newcomer will still get the gist of what is being said. (Everyone knows what it means to watch a giant fall, even if they’ve never read 1 Samuel.)

My concerns, as explained above, are that a new-or-not-yet-believer will not understand what kind of walls God does and does not promise to break down, and that they will not understand what is meant by “this” in the first bridge.

Music

This song has excellent opener energy. It starts out with an exciting drums-and-guitar intro before dipping down into a more-chill-but-still-driving verse and then launching into the chorus. The little instrument dropout before each chorus is a really effective way to give an extra explosion of energy. The bridge drops down abruptly in typical worship song fashion, but then takes another step down to kick-drum-only before starting to build up again, which is fun and slightly different. The we do the big chorus two more times and wind it up with the catchy oh-oh-oh part. And then the song ends.

But wait, there’s more!

That’s where we always end the song in church, but it’s actually a fake-out ending. Brandon starts into a secondary quasi-improvised bridge which builds through several (maybe 8? or 30?) repetitions into another bridge 1 and then the chorus. This part of the song isn’t bad, but it takes it to 7 minutes long, and I think it would get tiresome if you did it that way every time. In my opinion, it’s better to kill it at the first ending 90% of the time and maybe do the elongated version once in a while to spice things up.

Chords and drum parts aren’t too tricky. Just make sure you nail the dropouts and keep the energy up on all the choruses, and watch the odd rhythmic groove on the bridges. This song definitely benefits from the use of a multitrack for those fun background synth sounds and extra electric guitars. I hope your bass player likes 16th notes! Melody is easy to pick up but it stays up pretty high during the chorus so I typically transpose the whole song down a few steps.

Conclusions

Will it worship? Maybe.

I still like this song, but I’m not sure if we’ll continue singing it in church. If we do, it will be with some explaining. I just think the chorus is too vague and the bridge too ambiguous to present them to a congregation without additional context.

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), Copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. May not copy or download more than 500 consecutive verses of the ESV Bible or more than one half of any book of the ESV Bible.