What Do Hillsong Worship and Hank Williams Sr Have in Common?

By Timothy Yap Mar 18, 2021 01:56 AM EDT

What does Hillsong Worship have in common with the late country music legend Hank Williams Sr? Hillsong Worship has currently recorded the country music veteran's ballad "How Can You Refuse Him Now?" The song is taken from the Australian mega-church's latest EP At Easter (Extended Play). Listen HERE.

The song was first released posthumously two years after Williams' death in 1954 by MGM Records. Recorded sometime in 1950, the song describes the suffering of Jesus Christ on the cross. And it encourages us not to turn away from the Lord.

The ballad reflects Williams' first musical experiences in church, with the singer revealing in a 1952 interview with Ralph Gleason that was reprinted in Rolling Stone in 1969, "My mother was an organist at Mt. Olive, Alabama and my earliest memory is sittin' on that organ stool by her and hollerin'. I must have been five or six years old and louder than anybody else."

Listen to Williams' version HERE.

This is not the first time Hillsong's Brooke Ligertwood recorded this song. In the year 2006, Ligertwood recorded the song for Hillsong's Songs for Communion. The album included songs presented to Hillsong Church during times of communion.

Here are the lyrics:

There's a story old, that has often been told,
Of how our savior died, as they nailed his hands,
He cried they don't understand,
As the blood flowed from his side.

How can you refuse him now, how can you refuse him now,
How can you turn away from his side,
With tears in his eyes, on the cross where he died,
How can you refuse Jesus now.

As he hung there on the tree, he prayed for you prayed for me,
There was no one his pain to ease,
Before he died, he faintly cried,
Father forgive them please.

How can you refuse him now, how can you refuse him now,
How can you turn away from his side,
With tears in his eyes, on the cross where he died,
How can you refuse Jesus now.