The Story

I wrote this in October of 1990, during an interesting time in my spiritual journey. I had been out of college for a year and a half and had just started my second "real" job post-graduation. I was happily and heavily involved at Risen Savior Fellowship, a charismatic non-denominational, independent, tiny church in Milwaukee which I had joined about three years prior to that.

A question had formed in my soul, a niggling, a prayer, a desire. (Deliciously dangerous, these kind are.) I truly adored the worship music and more so worship experience at Risen Savior. It was truly healing, and it was the deepest thing I'd known at the time. Certainly it was deeper than my experience with liturgy in my Lutheran church before that, which had come to feel like chains holding me down. But the niggling in my soul that would not be silent said to me that we were following a formula with our worship music, too. There was a predictable progression, and what was more, it was just as possible to go through the motions in this type of worship without any deep encounter with God.

That really bothered me.

Just a short time after I wrote this song, a matter of a few weeks, really, I was met with the impossible situation of three friends of mine converting to the Catholic faith. This made me begin to question all sorts of things. But for the moment, this song came to me as a series of questions about what it really means to follow the Holy Spirit. What would be left when self-effort was left behind? This song therefore was like an advance warning to me that the presence of questions in my life meant there were Answers to be discovered that I didn't even know how to imagine at that point.

Musically, what I've tried to capture is that while the Holy Spirit challenges us essentially to die to our own selves and our own ideas, He leads us to the fullness of life and joy. So this is a fun song. For me this means it is in the pop style of the 1960s. It reminds me of Linda Ronstadt's version of "Different Drum" written by Michael Nesmith.
The Lyrics

How long have you tried to keep yourself steady
How long have you tried to manage it all
There’s a new day comin', I wonder are you ready
To leave your soul, your life behind

Do you know what it means
Do you know what it requires
To be led by the Spirit of the Lord
To be led by the Spirit of the Lord

Can you give up your notions of what you will do for him
Or give up your thoughts of what you should be
Are you willing to come to him naked and needing
Him to show you who you are

Do you know what it means
Do you know what it requires
To be led by the Spirit of the Lord
To be led by the Spirit of the Lord

(bridge)

The day has dawned it’s on the horizon
The light breaks forth, it’s the glory of God
It’s rising in my heart, it’s rising in his people
We won’t be still till it covers the earth

Till we know what it means
Till we know what it requires
To be led by the Spirit of the Lord
To be led by the Spirit of the Lord

We will know what it means
We will know what it requires
To be led by the Spirit of the Lord
To be led by the Spirit of the Lord