“For the Lord is great and greatly to be praised; He is also to be feared above all gods.” 1 Chronicles 16:25

How Great Thou Art

Walk His Way Revisited
First Posted in 2014

When I was a teenager in the late 1960’s, my church’s youth group attended a summer camp at Forest Home in Southern California. This is when I first came to know Jesus as Savior. The tradition in those days was to sing the camp rally song, How Great Thou Art, at every meeting. It was considered an old-ish hymn even then, since it was written about 1949. But the camp director, an older gentleman, loved the song and wanted it sung morning, noon, and night.

“O Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder

Consider all the worlds
 Thy hands have made,

I see the stars,
 I hear the rolling thunder,

Thy pow’r thru’out
 the universe displayed…”*

 Contemporary Christian music has gone through numerous changes since those days, and it is hard to imagine 14-year-olds today singing this song. But we sang with gusto. I remember the words ringing through the rafters and beams of the log cabin-style lodge, with hundreds of young voices lifted in praise. That camp director knew something we teenagers didn’t: repetition results in memorization. Those powerful words of praise got deep down inside of us.

 “And when I think
 that God, His Son not sparing,

Sent Him to die,
 I scarce can take it in,

That on the cross, 
my burden gladly bearing,

He bled and died
 to take away my sin…”

 That song taught us theology. Almost all the old hymns teach theology—those great biblical truths on which we stand.

“When Christ shall come
 with shout of acclamation,

And take me home, 
what joy shall fill my heart.

Then I shall bow 
in humble adoration,
and there proclaim—

My God, how great Thou art!”

This particular hymn taught us kids to stand in awe of a powerful Creator; it taught us that Father God had not spared His Son but sent Him to die for our sins, and that He did it gladly; and it taught us that one day Christ will come again to take us to be with Him. It taught us to be joyful, and to bow before God, and to proclaim His greatness. This is the message of the Bible, pared down to just a few sing-able lines.

“Then sings my soul, 
my Savior God, to Thee…

How great Thou art!
 How great Thou art!

Then sings my soul,
 My Savior God, to Thee…

How great Thou art!
 How great Thou art!”

 As for me, my young heart was filled with praise for a God I had only just met. I vividly remember weeping at the thoughts filling my mind: that God is great and powerful, loving and giving, a compassionate burden-bearer. I could scarcely take it in. I wanted to shout and proclaim His greatness. It was the beginning of giving God His proper place in my life.

Oh God, we proclaim Your greatness. Words fail us.

*Stuart Wesley Keene Hine © 1949 and 1953 Stuart K. Hine Trust