Love, Come Into My Life

Oct.29, 1994

I think I've had the knack for oriental slants in some of my songs for a while, & this was one of them...

If you think about it, the sort of music Jesus listened to during His time on earth was probably a lot more oriental than what we're used to...

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Where Will It Lead From Here

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Written in our little apartment in the farm house near Bischofszell in Switzerland, our home at that time. My wife kept asking me, "Where do you always get those words for the songs from?" I guess it must be the wind that "bloweth where it listeth, and thou can't not tell..."

Love Doesn't Care What People Say

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Unfortunately, life as a missionary isn't always clear-cut and easy, and it's not like "We're the good guys, and they're the bad guys, and we're going to try to make'em good," but it's more complicated. We're all sinners, even if we're saved (if you don't believe that, you're kidding yourself) and the Devil can get ahold of each one of us sometimes in a weak moment. And so we have battles even with our fellow soldiers and brothers in arms sometimes.

This one was written in Thailand, which didn't turn out to be for us what we had expected at all, and consequently we only stayed a few months.

It's during those battles you learn how to stand up and speak up for your convictions. You can't just let people push you around all the time.

Of course, the song also talks about having the guts to love someone even when that someone may be a questionable match for you, or even if people may not approve of your relationship... Just bits and pieces of experiences and lessons I had gleaned along life's road up until that point...

(Millennial) Song of Freedom

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Based on the same lick and tuning as "You," basically. I had started writing this tune years earlier, when I was maybe 16, but only got it done a few years later, probably by the time I was back in Europe, where we were trying to turn the East Bloc right-side up for Jesus...

Again, the theme is freedom. Perhaps a concept we'll never really fully grasp until the events of which the song tells will have come to pass...

If You'd Only Reach Out and Touch Me

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I remember starting to write this one back in Mendoza, in front of the "Bodega del 900," there I was booked to play a few times on my own, after "Silver Lining" broke up. It was probably one of the first songs I got in which it's Jesus Who's speaking to the listener... I've since learned to accept it as part of my mission in life to get people to listen up to "What Jesus has to Say."

The Ambassador...

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...was actually first written in Spanish, and only much later, in Europe, translated into English. By the time I wrote it i was living in a large commune of mostly young people in the Congreso district of Buenos Aires, where I was having the time of my life, and where I also met my future wife.

We were witnessing up a storm there, and had meetings, house churches and parties every week, and lots of people decided to follow Jesus. It was a special time, and you really felt privileged, like an Ambassador for Jesus, our "Space King" (an idea based on a pamphlet comparing Jesus to a Space Prince Who came to earth) helping others to find their way to that great heavenly Country as well...

King of Love

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A little while later I moved into Tom's house, which is where I wrote "King of Love." Having played for all those rich people for a while, and seeing how unhappy they were still in spite of having everything going for them got me to write this song about the only One Who has the answer and can really set people free from the chains that have the strongest holds on us; our own desires and passions...

I Need Your Love

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The winds of change had blown me to Buenos Aíres, where I was living with a Christian couple from Switzerland that I had briefly met a year before near Appenzell in SwItzerland. Mary was a really good musician, and together with her and an American fellow named Tom Walk we formed the trio "Elixir" there & played the clubs and on high society parties is Buenos Aíres.

There in our little house in the suburb of Acassusso I wrote this love song to the Lord...

WE'VE COME A LONG WAY

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Song that came to me walking the streets of Mendoza... Man, that Jasmin scented air could really get you inspired and get your mind going. It's sort of a prophetic song about the God's coming Kingdom as foretold in the Bible.

SONGS OF COMFORT

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Written in a hotel room in Argentina, around 1982, at a pretty low point in my life (having just been kicked out of the band I was playing in, called "Silver Lining") when I needed the comfort of The Comforter. Back then I hardly knew what I was talking about... "Anthems sweet, prophecies..." Only many years later I would experience the privilege of being able to avail myself of the gift of prophecy and really hearing the Lord's voice when I wouldn't know what to do. But it was well worth the wait.

AS BRANDS FROM THE BURNING

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I liked that line from a Bible verse somewhere in the Old Testament, and so one night (in 1981), after a restaurant busking tour through Lausanne, Switzerland, I jotted down this song...