Give to the wind your fear
Hope and be undismayed
God hears your sighs and counts your tears
God will lift up, God will lift up, lift up your head

God will lift up your head
God will lift up your head
God will lift up your head
Lift up your head

Leave to His sovereign sway
To choose and to command
Then shall we wandering on His way
Know how wise and how strong
How wise and how strong

God will lift up your head
God will lift up your head
God will lift up your head
Lift up your head

Through waves and clouds and storms, He gently clears the way
Wait because in His time, so shall this night
Soon end in joy, soon end in joy
Soon end in joy, soon end in joy

God will lift up your head
God will lift up your head
God will lift up your head

traditional words by Paul Gerhardt (trans. John Wesley, alt. by Jars of Clay) / music by Jars of Clay / © 2005 Bridge Building, a div. of Zomba Enterprises, Inc. (BMI) / Pogostick Music (BMI).

Behind the Song:
Paul Gerhardt (1607-1676) wrote this famous German hymn in the midst of the religious wars going on in his country during the 1600s. At one point, Gerhardt was kept from the pulpit because of the debates between Calvinists and Lutherans. Introduced to him by Moravian missionaries, Methodist founder and minister John Wesley was struck by Gerhardt’s hymn and translated it to English around 1737. More commonly known as “Give to the Wind Thy Fears,” the hymn illustrates the power of God’s comfort as it meets us in sorrow. Like Wesley, the band was affected by the lyrics and give it a kind of rock anthem treatment that’s energetic and stirring. “It presents with such confidence the idea that in the midst of our sorrow, in the midst of our pain, God will be the one to lift up our heads,” Dan Haseltine says. “We’ll always have suffering. We’ll always have pain. We’ll always have the poor. We’ll always have things that are confusing and hard to reconcile, and it will always be God that pulls us out of those places or helps us to understand why we’re in the middle of them.” (Jars Of Clay)