Ken Spence Releases Debut Single "I Give It All Up for You" with Homegrown Worship

UK worship leader and songwriter Ken Spence has released his debut single "I Give It All Up for You" with Homegrown Worship. The song manages to remain beautifully intimate even while soaring for the musical heights, aided by heavy drums, intricate guitar, and subtle synths and percussive sounds. 

Spence tells the story behind this new worship song: "The more I discover about God the more I am amazed by the depth of love and freedom the LORD gives us. I also realise how we carry around a great deal of baggage emanating from what I call 'bad church'; our received cultural heritage of "what the bible says" rather than a true understanding of what it really does say and mean. This song is about one particular issue that we may carry some hang-ups about - confession.

"Being brought up as an Ulster protestant it is not surprising that I might see confession as a ritual to keep us feeling bad and fallen and under the thumb of a controlling church, I couldn't have been more wrong."

"Confession is a fantastic gift from our loving God who only wants us to be set free. There is nothing we can do that could make God love us less, we just think there is. We carry hurt, self-loathing, all sorts of pain, and Jesus simply says, "Give it to Me, I will take it away and release you from it". That is what confession is for, to release us. We never have to be 'good enough' because Jesus is. Give all the rubbish you carry up to him, He'll take it all and it is gone. And it isn't a contractual arrangement where we have to confess it for Christ to take it away. We are forgiven already, the confessing is for us to surrender the hurt, pain, and wrong, so that we can let it go too and be released from it. So whatever it is that you are carrying, give it up to Jesus and just bask in His love."

Ken Spence has been writing songs since he was 14; that's a long time and a lot of songs ago! He released a guitar rock album in 1984, but in the intervening years, has been more involved in playing in and leading worship bands.

He continued to write songs and started writing worship songs about ten years ago when he discovered that the way to unlock these was simply to worship. 'Sometimes the most obvious things are the hardest to grasp.'

Spence is now a Worship Leader at Trinity Church Rawdon, Leeds, UK, with many of his songs being used in his local church. His first release, 'I'll Give It All Up To You' is a good example: 'My songs are very personal because they come from my own worship - I hope you find them personal to you too'. 

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