Blessing And Honour - the story behind Aaron Keyes' great new song

A few years ago my band was leading worship someplace and we began to flow into singing prophetically, singing new songs, and this chorus spontaneously came out, “Blessing and honour, glory and power, be unto your Name oh Lord.” I kept singing it over and over, and the presence of God was really stirring in the room. Sometime weeks later I was meditating on Proverbs 18 where it talks about the Name of the Lord being a strong tower, and I was also looking at Psalm 22:22 (which speaks of declaring the Name of the Lord in the great assembly) and Philippians 2, how the Father has given his Son the Name that is above all other names.

I started noticing how a lot of my praise, worship, and thanks to God had to do with things He’d done, as opposed to simply who He is, so I wanted to write a song that was simply about who He is. His myriad Names give us great revelation into his nature, and I’ve clung to each of those names in that song at different points in my life.

For example, we’ve gone through seasons where we desperately needed God’s provision in our life, and to call upon his Name as Jehovah Jireh is a powerful prayer, not only because God does indeed provide, but in fact He is, Himself, the Provider! So then prayer becomes praise, moving from asking God to do something, to blessing God simply for being who He is.

On and on I could go through the names in that song, but suffice to say, I was only able to write about a dozen or so in that song. There were so many others I’d have wanted to include, but Jehovah Tsidkenu turned out kind of tricky to fit into a congregationally sensible meter!

So the idea of the song was simple, to sing through a few of his Names, meditate on what they meant, and then respond with that originally spontaneous refrain, Blessing and honour, glory and power, be unto your Name oh Lord!”

The bridge of the song came from a verse I saw in Job 38 (verse 7 I think), where God describes the morning stars singing for joy and shouting at the dawn of creation. Then recently I read that scientists have discovered frequencies and sound waves coming from stars out in space! So I liked the thought of walking through several names of God, but ending with an explosive declaration that all the heavens declare the glory of God, and that Jesus is the Name resounding throughout all the universe.

To start with his first name of Elohim (Genesis 1), to move through his eternal attributes (El Olam), his power and authority (El Elyon), his supreme sufficiency (El Shaddai), and to come to the end where we consider that He is all of these things (and so much more!) and yet still Immanuel, God with us ... It seemed almost too good to be true.