Father, we adore you

Phil Lawson Johnston’s song must be distinguished from the popular devotional chorus of 1972, Father, we adore you, lay our lives before you, and from the less-known Father, we adore you, you’ve drawn us to this place, 1982, both of which are in MP. These words and their music were published together in 1991, with the tune later named WE ADORE YOU in order to reduce possible confusion. The repeated phrase ‘Fountain of life’ comes in Psalm 36:9, with echoes in Jeremiah 2:13 and in John 4 and 5. Praise! appears to be the first main hymnal to include this composition.

b London 1950. Eton Coll (where his songwriting began), and Inchbald Sch of Design (History of Art). From 1971 he has worked as a self-taught professional glass-engraver; from 1972, when he experienced a filling of God’s Spirit ‘which launched me into writing songs for Jesus’, he led the worship-group ‘Cloud’, with a leading part at Holy Trinity Ch Brompton. From 1988 to 2002 he was a p/t leader at St Aldate’s Oxford, then transferring to St Andrew’s; periodically he speaks and leads worship for other groups and conferences in UK and USA. He has recorded 7 albums with Cloud and 4 solo ones to date, and an ‘accessible’ series of hymns and songs, Worship in the Room, for small groups with no other music. 15 of his 100 or so songs appear in Spring Harvest collections, MP, The Source etc. With Shelagh Brown he compiled Value Me (stories of people who had rediscovered their worth through the love of God), and in 2004 he published his partly autobiographical The Song of the Father’s Heart. He works from home in N Oxford, and his glass engravings have been exhibited annually in London and more recently in the USA; he aims ‘to create on glass designs that…reflect in some way the care and detail of the Creator that we observe in the world around us’. Nos.192, 304, 569.