This is a song by Rich Mullins that I have heard about for years but never actually heard until now. In Mullins’ sadly short life he wrote some pretty good songs, some of which come up soon, but I doubt this is one of them. Mullins’ songs haven’t been heard of where I have played and so I missed the debate on whether this song was suitable for liturgy because of its popularity with young people back in the nineties.
It wasn’t — it is a solo vehicle with far too many notes crammed together for an assembly (OK it’s meant to be call and response), the text is a scatter gun of images from all over the place and the chorus sounds like a hair metal singalong — but that makes it fine for some P&W settings. Stealing lines from Irving Berlin is one way to highlight a poorly written lyric if that was the intent, but I somehow doubt this song was tongue in cheek. I love rock music and think it can be used liturgically, but am not a fan of this style so I am probably biased against this song. This document tiptoes around the issue.
The text is at spiritandsong. You can buy an SATB version at sheetmusicplus but since this is a guitar song you probably don’t need more than the chords which are all over the net.
This clip shows Michael W. Smith just getting the crowd singing along the chorus and dispensing with the verse altogether.
This is the original with the call and response verse.