I am watching over my word to perform it: “gift from within the Church for the Church”
Some of the differences between a human construction and a God-given commission is that one relies on human wisdom and understanding, requires you to put in more to get out more, comes and goes in fleeting moments — here one moment and gone the next; while the other requires you to lay down your own might and your power in order to rely on the Holy Spirit, and just as rain and snow come from heaven and do not return but water the earth and bring forth seed and bread — His word from His mouth will not return to Him void but accomplishes what He pleases, and prospers in the purpose for which He sent it.
From the very start, vssls has been an uncomfortable obedience to His word. But if we believe that God wants to fill us to the measure of all the fullness of God, and is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask, think or imagine — then obedience to His word will always require faith, and obedience will often come with discomfort.
In January, as we stepped out with vssls in faith and obedience at His word, a pastor said of vssls that it's “a gift from within the Church, for the Church”.
We had just taken stock of our songs, felt a conviction to not bury them in the ground and hide the light under a basket, pivoted in response to reading 2 Kings 4:3 — and received a public confirmation of this passage along with Isaiah 54, from the first sermon we sat under in 2026 — from gathering a few friends into a recording studio to hosting a worship night on Australia Day. It would turn out to be the hottest day in South Australia in seventeen years, and our faith goal to release the grace and truth of "no greater love, what a Friend to me" on Valentine's Eve meant it was a short two-week turnaround from recording to production to distribution.
Every step of this journey had its own level of discomfort. But just as growth from physical training comes through repetition, every step of our vssls journey has been a stretching of our faith, putting down the stakes of our obedience, enlarging our capacity, and a commitment to not hold back our obedience and live out His commission.
The first fruit
This month, the first fruit of that word arrived — quietly, into our inbox, which led us to the CCLI SongSelect portal.
CCLI began in 1984, when a pastor in Portland, Oregon learned of a pending multi-million-dollar copyright lawsuit against a diocese in Chicago. Concerned to make sure his own church was acting lawfully, he asked his music minister, Howard Rachinski, to look into it. What began as one church's diligence grew into a "permission of use" concept — a way for churches to obtain blanket permission for non-commercial copying — and by 1988 it had become Christian Copyright Licensing International. Today, CCLI SongSelect is where churches, schools, and other organisations can legally access and reproduce chord and lyric charts for the songs they'll sing, with CCLI handling the legalities.
Our first CCLI SongSelect report showed Sit At Your Feet had been accessed in three countries: the United States, Canada, and here at home in Australia. It's on SongSelect along with our other releases, and across the ocean — somewhere in Canada and the United States — someone accessed our offering from the Adelaide Hills, along with others in the Great Southland, because it was never crossing to strangers; it was the sound of heaven looking for a resting place.
We don't know their name. We don't know their church. But right from the start, our obedience was simply to hold it with hands open, to release what was in our hands — not to bury it in the ground, not to hide a lamp under the basket — and when we brought our Amen to His resounding Yes, His Word begins to fulfil its purpose, for glory to ascend to the Father. The exceedingly abundantly more that we could not see — it was purposed in His word from the beginning.
Aaron's staff and the almond blossom
One aspect that we walked through in the final devotional of My Life Your Vessel was the three items carried in the Ark of the Covenant: manna, the tablets of the covenant, and Aaron's staff. All three items carry a concurrent grief for the reality of fallen human nature, but their inclusion in the vessel of glory, in a way, gives us hope by pointing beyond human failures to the redemptive nature of God — one who does not demand perfection, but puts His precious treasure in broken vessels of clay.
In Numbers 16, a challenge arose in the wilderness over who could stand and minister before the Lord. What God spoke through Moses went to the heart of it: "Isn't it enough for you that the God of Israel has separated you from the rest of the Israelite community and brought you near himself to do the work at the Lord's tabernacle and to stand before the community and minister to them?"
He had already drawn them near — and He is the one who answers for those He has drawn near.
In the days that followed, God told Moses to have each tribe bring a staff, to be left overnight in the tabernacle beside Aaron's. As dawn broke after a long night, it was Aaron's staff that had sprouted, budded, blossomed and borne almonds. Life returning to what was undeniably dead, fruit for all to see in the moment, and enduring beyond the generation. Not fruit anyone manufactured. Fruit that arrived overnight, in a place where nothing should have grown.
It's the same tree God shows Jeremiah at his call. A young man, unsure of his own voice, is asked what he sees. He says: the branch of an almond tree. And God answers, you have seen correctly — forI am watching over my word to perform it.
Seed in the ground; word that achieves its purpose
The almond doesn't produce itself.
The dead staff that budded was the one left in the presence of the I Am — the one brought to life by the God who declares: "I Am the resurrection and the life."
The almond branch in the vision was a branch connected to the True Source.
In Wrote Out My Days Before Existence, we sat with Jeremiah's call, which included the commission to build and to plant. It's what words can do, and we pray that our releases and our devotionals continue to sow words that would bring thirty-, sixty-, and a hundredfold return in the hearts of good soil.
Some seed is sown near, and some is carried further; the wind blows wherever it pleases. Whatever grows was always meant for the whole body of Christ, and we need the wider body every bit as much in return. One body, one faith, one baptism. It's the only reason a song can cross an ocean.
"Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin." (Zechariah 4:10)
The word came first. The fruit came after. And the fruit was never ours to make.
Was this you?
If Sit At Your Feet — or any of our songs — has found its way into your gathering, we'd love to know where it's being sung.
All four of our songs are on CCLI SongSelect: search vssls, or click the links for these songs — Friend to me, CCLI #7278099 · Sit At Your Feet, CCLI #7278152 · All My Life (To You I Bring), CCLI #7283197 · peace for tomorrow CCLI #7283198
