As a songwriter and worship leader I am constantly searching for ways to mobilize the church to accomplish the great commission through the songs I write. I found a comrade in Matt Papa. Matt and I are a part of the same team at Centricity Music and we were paired together for a co-write by his A&R guy. We started from scratch searching for missional worship ideas around my favorite piano in room 6 at Universal Music Publishing in Nashville. On my list of titles was “Open Hands.”
The idea was born from a story my pastor told in a sermon. His daughters were finally reaching the age that he was realizing how powerless he was becoming in their spiritual journey. As an exercise he began praying over them each night with his hands open and his palms up. He was physically representing a spiritual posture of surrender. In the middle of his sermon I opened Evernote and typed in the phrase “I am learning how to live with open hands.”
I remember hearing Matt playing through the piano progression and I was struck by the power of the movement. We finished the song that day…kind of. The record label decided the verses were right but the chorus had not arrived yet so a month later we met together and gave the chorus another shot. The melody Matt created was powerful and by the time we finished I couldn’t wait to play this song live. For a year people would ask “what CD has Open Hands on it?” and I would answer Matt Papa’s CD Your Kingdom Come. We came close to selling Matt’s CD at our merch table but never went that far. I’m so proud to have finally recorded this version of the song. I’m hoping this song continues to be used in the church for years. We’ll see.