{"id":1697,"date":"2020-02-28T06:10:00","date_gmt":"2020-02-28T11:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kenpulsmusic.com\/blog\/?p=1697"},"modified":"2020-02-27T20:22:52","modified_gmt":"2020-02-28T01:22:52","slug":"o-spirit-now-we-thank-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kenpulsmusic.com\/blog\/2020\/02\/o-spirit-now-we-thank-you\/","title":{"rendered":"O Spirit Now We Thank You"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Open<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

O Spirit, now we thank You
For giving us Your Word.
Please bless its proclamation,
The truths that we have heard.
Indwell us and empow\u2019r us,
And cause us to obey;
Shine now the light of Scripture
On all we do and say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Great Artist of the Scriptures,
In beauty You have made
God\u2019s Word to shine in glory
That cannot fail or fade.
In poetry and proverbs,
Through narrative and line;
In prophecy and hist\u2019ry,
God\u2019s truth in splendor shines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You, down through many ages
Inspired men to write,
Progressively revealing,
You brought God\u2019s truth to light.
O Spirit, come illumine
This truth for us today;
And guide us in sound doctrine,
The straight and narrow way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wield now Your Sword, O Spirit,
The quick and living Word,
And rend our hearts asunder
With truths that we have heard.
O search us now and know us,
Expose iniquity;
Conform us to our Savior,
And holy we shall be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Words and Music \u00a91998 Kenneth Puls
In\u00a0Hymns of Grace<\/em>\u00a0(1998) by Ken Puls
And\u00a0Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs<\/em>\u00a0(2004) Founders Press, Cape Coral, FL<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This hymn is a prayer addressed to the Holy Spirit, who inspired and crafted the Word of God. It is written to serve as a closing hymn following the preaching of the Word. In the hymn we respond to the preaching by asking the Spirit to \u201cbless its proclamation\u201d and apply it in an effective way to our lives. The final verse is based on Hebrew 4:12. Scripture is the sword of the Spirit, who skillfully and lovingly lays bare our hearts with truth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFor the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart\u201d (Hebrews 4:12).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The idea for the hymn came in October 1995 during a Sunday School class taught by Steve Garrick at Heritage Baptist Church. Steve was teaching a series of lessons on the person and work of the Holy Spirit. During the lesson on October 22nd, he compared the Spirit\u2019s work in bringing us God\u2019s Word to that of an artist. When God revealed His Word to us, he did not package it as a \u201csystematic theology.\u201d He chose and inspired men to write from their own experiences in poetry, proverb, narrative, history, and prophesy. The Bible is a great work of art crafted by the Spirit \u201cthrough many ages\u201d as God-breathed revelation. I thought during the class that the comparison would work well for lyrics to a hymn. I finally wrote the hymn several months later. I finished the lyrics on July 8, 1996 while driving to Dallas Baptist University, where I was teaching Classical Guitar during the summer semester. The hymn tune is named for Pastor Steve Garrick.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Download the lyrics and free sheet music<\/a> for this hymn, including an arrangement of the tune GARRICK for classical guitar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More Hymns and Songs by Ken Puls<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

O Spirit, now we thank YouFor giving us Your Word.Please bless its proclamation,The truths that we have heard.Indwell us and empow\u2019r us,And cause us to obey;Shine now the light of ScriptureOn all we do and say. Great Artist of the Scriptures,In beauty You have madeGod\u2019s Word to shine in gloryThat cannot fail or fade.In poetry […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[21,22,102],"tags":[50,85,98,258,99,159,248,26],"class_list":["post-1697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hymn","category-music-for-worship","category-songwriting","tag-church-music","tag-holy-spirit","tag-hymn","tag-illumination","tag-prayer","tag-preaching","tag-scripture","tag-word-of-god"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4lLgO-rn","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpulsmusic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpulsmusic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpulsmusic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpulsmusic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpulsmusic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1697"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kenpulsmusic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1697\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1699,"href":"https:\/\/kenpulsmusic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1697\/revisions\/1699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpulsmusic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpulsmusic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpulsmusic.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}