Maverick City Music has taken the worship world by storm over the last few years, and “Rest on Us” is one of a string of worship hits that have charted on CCLI. The song is a corporate cry for the experience of God’s Spirit and its easy melody and repetitive lyrics carry the listener along on a tide of prayer and longing. But is it the kind of prayer that we want to sing with our congregations? Is it the right kind of longing? Is “Rest on Us” biblical? Let’s see.

Focus

This song is a plea for the presence of God’s Spirit. It asks the Spirit to move, to fill the worshipers, to let Heaven in, and (as indicated by the title) to rest on the worshipers. It declares that the Spirit is all the singer wants.

Lyric Analysis

SONG TITLE

What does it mean for the Holy Spirt to rest on us (or fill us)? This is the central line of the song, so let’s make sure we understand it well before we look at the rest of the lyrics.

The Old Testament doesn’t use this language often, but it tells us that the Spirit rested on the elders of Israel and that they temporarily prophesied as a result (Num. 11:25-26). Isaiah also prophesies about the Messiah in Isaiah 11:2, saying, “the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.”

The OT says that the Spirit rushed upon David (1 Sam. 16:13), Saul (10:10), and Samson (Jud. 14:6). In each of these cases, the individual engaged in one or more miracles of prophesy or divinely empowered violence. In Exodus, a man named Bezalel is filled with the Spirit in order to craft the tabernacle and its furnishings (Ex. 31:2-3). Micah is also filled with the Spirit in order to declare Israel’s sin (Mic. 3:8), a typical task for OT prophets. I think these three words are interchangeable in the Old Testament, describing the Spirit acting with and through a human being to accomplish a miraculous purpose and usually to prophesy.

The New Testament uses all three words in Acts 2:2-4, when a sound like rushing wind fills the room, tongues of fire rest on the believers’ heads, and the Spirit fills them. It also says that the Spirit rests on Jesus in the form of a dove at his baptism (Matt. 3:16) and that those who are mistreated for the name of Jesus have the Spirit resting on them (1 Pet. 4:14). The NT more often refers to the Spirit filling a believer. This happens to John the Baptist and both his parents (Luke 1:15, 41, 67), the disciples at Pentecost (Acts 2:4), Saul/Paul (9:17), Paul and Barnabas (13:50-14:1), and is commanded of believers in Ephesians 5:18. In every one of these cases, those who are filled with the Spirit speak the words of God afterward, whether through prophesy, tongues, proclaiming the Gospel, or singing.

To sum up! When we ask God’s Spirit to rest on us or fill us, we are not just asking for a feeling or experience. We are offering ourselves up as vessels so that God can speak and act through us. Being filled with God’s Spirit means I am committed to speaking God’s words.

VERSE 1
“As the Spirit was moving over the waters // Spirit, come move over us”
When did the Spirit move over the waters, and do we want Him to move over us in a similar fashion? This is a reference to Genesis 1:2, where the Spirit of God is hovering over the face of the waters. These waters are the unformed chaos of the pre-creation world, and God is about to fill them with light and then create the whole world out of this inhospitable blank slate. This is actually my favorite line in the song, though I suspect many listeners miss it. I think this line is a way of submitting to the transformative and creative power of God’s Spirit, offering our chaos and our unformed lives up to God as a canvas for Him to create something beautiful that suits his purpose and his pleasure.

CHORUS
“You’re here and I know You are moving // I’m here and I know You will fill me”
Asking the Holy Spirit to come down is perhaps unnecessary, but not harmful. Yes, the Spirit is already here; God is omnipresent (Jer. 23:24, Col. 1:17). In asking for the Spirit to come down, we are asking for his presence to be made evident in some way, not saying that he isn’t already present. This also applies to the later line “when you fill the room.” It’s referring to the visible or felt activity of the Spirit, not his actual presence versus his absence.

The next line, which says the Spirit will “make my heart pound” when he moves, is not my favorite. It could mean that the singer gets excited (heart pounding) when he or she sees evidence of the Spirit’s activity. That’s fine and good. I’m concerned that most people will take a simpler and less helpful approach to this line. Either A) If the Spirit is moving in your life, he will cause a palpable physical response. If your heart isn’t pounding, the Spirit isn’t moving. or B) “You make my heart pound” sounds like very romantic language, so we think our relationship with the Spirit is like a romantic relationship. “Jesus is my boyfriend songs” are problematic not just because they make worshipers uncomfortable, but because the individual Christian is not the Bride of Christ; the Church is (Eph. 5:31-32, Rev. 19:7-8).

This song refers continually to the Spirit moving. This isn’t a phrase that I can find in Scripture anywhere, but I don’t think it’s inherently problematic. Movement is activity. So if you believe the Spirit does anything today—from raising the dead to quietly prompting the heart of the believer—then you believe the Spirit moves. However, it’s very nonspecific. So each individual who hears or sings this song will import their understanding of what constitutes a movement of the Holy Spirit.

What does it mean for the Holy Spirit to fill us? See the above note on the song title.

VERSE 2:

This verse specifically references Pentecost, when there was a rushing sound of wind and tongues of fire rested on the believers (Acts 2:1-4). What’s not clear is which aspect of Pentecost the singer is asking the Holy Spirit to duplicate. If it’s the literal fire, wind, and tongues-speaking, I think this line is misguided. If it’s the manifest presence and activity of God that lead to proclamation of the Gospel and a turning of many hearts toward Jesus because of the Spirit’s ministry through the church, then yes, let’s pray for that! (I recently reviewed “The Dove,” another Holy Spirit song, which references Pentecost differently, and I think more helpfully!)

The gates come from Psalm 24:7, where they are opened to welcome in the King of Glory. This song refers to letting heaven in instead of God, but I think it’s clear from the context that this is a way of welcoming God’s presence so that he can make our world more and more like heaven, establishing his Kingdom in and through us.

BRIDGE:

“You’re all we want,” is a frequent refrain in worship songs. It’s not a statement of fact (we all want lots of things besides God). It’s an aspirational prayer. In singing “You’re all we want,” we are training our hearts to long for God like the deer longs for water in Psalm 42:1.

Accessibility

Clarity and context are big problems for this song. The Spirit’s activity is described through different biblical word-pictures, and an emotional response is articulated in modern language. What’s missing is any concrete explanation of what the Spirit is doing or what exactly we are asking him to do. This deprives the song of meaning for those who don’t know what the Spirit is doing in the referenced passages. And it leaves open a big hole into which anyone could insert their own poor understanding of what the Spirit’s ministry looks like.

As indicated above, I am concerned that the repeated line “when you move you make my heart pound” is likely to be interpreted in harmful ways. I have the same concern for the line “fire and wind, come and do it again.”

Music

This song has a powerful, slow-build, dynamic arc. I love the drums and the chord progression. The lyrics and melody are so catchy that it would be hard not to learn this song after hearing it once. I honestly enjoy the song, which makes it difficult to be so critical of the lyrics.

Conclusions

Will it worship? Not for me. This song is supposed to be a powerful emotional response to and plea for the moving of God’s Spirit, but those emotions need to be grounded in scriptural truth, not left adrift to anchor themselves to each singer’s vague idea of what the Spirit does.

Image by Maxim Medvedev from Unsplash

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.