Photo by Kelly Repreza
Contemporary Christ artist Phil Wickham started in 2002 at the ripe young age of 18. He released nine albums, including:
- Give You My World (2003)
- Phil Wickham (2006)
- Cannons (2007)
- Heaven & Earth (2009)
- Response (2011)
- The Ascension (2013)
- Children of God (2016)
- Living Hope (2018)
- Christmas (2019)
He received a Dove award in 2019 for Worship Recorded Song of the Year for his song Living Hope.
Also, check out my reviews of Messiah / You’re Beautiful, Christ Is Risen, Your Love Awakens Me, Great Things, Living Hope and This is Amazing Grace.
Lyrics can be found at https://genius.com/Phil-wickham-the-secret-place-annotated.
Note to new users: This is a different kind of review site! Read About the Berean Test and Evaluation Criteria prior to reading this review.
1. What message does the song communicate?
Wickham begins by asking some important questions: when everything goes amiss, where will we turn? Wickham explains that “You” is where he runs to. “You” is a liberator that Wickham worships and spends time alone.
Who is “You”? Christians will be quick to cite God because of Wickham’s’s professed faith; However, the lyrics do not make this clear. It could be God, but it could also be a human savior, leading to idolatrous worship.
This song is standard format with the inclusion of Pre-Chorus that follows both Verses.
Score: 4/10
2. How much of the lyrics line up with Scripture?
I deducted two points for Wickham’s ambiguity. He does not identify “You”.
Under this assumption, the entire song agrees with the Bible.
[Verse 1]
Lines 1-4: Questions that Wickham asks his audience when trouble is near.
[Pre-Chorus]
Lines 1-3: God is faithful regardless of what befalls us (Numbers 23:19, Deuteronomy 7:9, Psalm 33:4, Psalm 91:4, Psalms 119:90, Lamentations 3:22-23, 1 Corinthians 1:9, 1 Corinthians 10:13, 2 Thessalonians 3:3, 2 Timothy 2:13, Hebrews 10:23, 2 Peter 3:9, and 1 John 1:9).
[Chorus]
Lines 1 and 2: Wickham follows Jesus’ example to pray alone (Matthew 14:1-13, Matthew 26:29, Matthew 26:42, Mark 6:30-32, Mark 14:36, Luke 4:1-2, Luke 4:14-15, Luke 5:16, Luke 6:12-13, Luke 22:39-44, and John 18:11).
Lines 3 and 4: How did God do that? Bridge explains that He restores us.
Lines 5 and 6: Based on Psalm 84:10, Wickham states that a small amount of time with God is greater than a large sum of time apart from Him.
Lines 7 and 8: Essentially repeats line 1.
[Verse 2]
Line 1: There is no other name than Jesus by which we may attain salvation (Acts 4:12).
Line 2: That is, God is Wickham’s foundation (Deuteronomy 32:4, 1 Samuel 2:2, 2 Samuel 22:47, Psalm 18:31, Psalm 28:1, Psalm 62:2, Psalm 94:22, Psalm 118:22, Isaiah 28:16, Matthew 7:24-27, Matthew 21:42, Acts 4:11, 1 Corinthians 3:10-11, Ephesians 2:20, 2 Timothy 2:19, and 1 Peter 2:6).
Line 3: God will lose none of His children (John 6:39).
Line 4: That is, God is Wickham’s refuge (Genesis 15:1, Deuteronomy 33:29, 2 Samuel 22:3, Psalm 3:3, Psalm 5:11, Psalm 12:5, Psalm 18:1-3, Psalm 20:1, Psalm 27:1-5, Psalm 28:7, Proverbs 30:5, Psalm 33:20, Psalm 34:19, Psalm 46:1-3, Psalm 57:1, Psalms 59:1, Psalm 71:1-6, Psalm 84:11, Psalm 89:18, Psalm 91:1-16, Psalm 115:9, Psalm 121:1-8, Psalm 140:4, Proverbs 14:26, Proverbs 18:10, Isaiah 41:10, 1 Corinthians 10:13, and 2 Thessalonians 3:3).
[Bridge]
Line 1: We express worship through lifted hands, knowing that God transformed us from our deadness in sin to alive in Christ (Romans 6:1-11, Romans 7:4-6, Galatians 2:19-20, 2 Timothy 2:11, and 1 Peter 2:24).
Line 2: God provides for our needs (Genesis 2:15-16, Genesis 9:3, Genesis 22:8, Exodus 16:1-36, Psalm 18:2, Psalm 34:10, Psalm 81:10, Psalm 84:11, Psalm 107:9, Proverbs 10:3, Malachi 3:10, Matthew 6:25-30, Matthew 7:7-8, Matthew 21:22, John 14:13-14, John 14:26, John 15:1-10, John 15:16, Romans 8:32, Ephesians 3:20, Philippians 4:19, 2 Corinthians 9:8, and 2 Corinthians 12:9).
Line 3: God breaks the stronghold of sin from us (Psalm 116:16, Mark 5:8, Romans 6:20, and Galatians 5:1) and restores us to life (see Scripture on line 1).
Line 4: God gives us more than we can ask (Ephesians 3:20).
Score: 8/10
3. How would an outsider interpret the song?
Those outside the camp of Christ will walk away with a good message about restored relationships without much clarity that Wickham sings about God. Though some may interpret it as such, there is plenty of room for a human messiah, leading to idol worship.
Score: 3/10
4. What does this song glorify?
Though Wickham glorifies God in his message when we assume “You” as “God”, God’s identity is not clearly shown throughout this song.
Score: 5/10
Closing Comments
Phil Wickham’s The Secret Place is ambiguous. If we assume it refers to God, his lyrics agree with the Bible and contains a decent message about Wickham’s returning to God, bringing Him glory. However, we can easily interpret this as human idol language, snatching some of His glory away. Wickham is not clear about the subject of “You”.
For these reasons, I cannot recommend this song for corporate worship.
Final Score: 5.5/10
Artist Info
Track: The Secret Place (listen to the song)
Artist: Phil Wickham (Feat. Madison Cunningham)
Album: Children of God
Genre: Pop
Release Year: 2016
Duration: 4:43
Agree? Disagree? Don’t be shy or have a cow! Calmly and politely state your case in a comment, below.
Comments
Michael Ramsey
I agree with this. A lot of Christian artist use vague language because they know seasoned Christians understand what they are saying.
Jeff
I think I would humbly disagree with this assessment. This song came into my life in College, and was deeply meaningful to me (yes, that probably skews my objectivity but still, maybe hear me out?)
The majority of point deduction rationale seems to revolve around some ambiguity in phrasing and the possibility that someone might choose to interpret it as a love song directed towards another person. I think I would start by asking if *anybody* actually believes that? My first exposure to this song was in a worship setting with 2000+ College Students – To my knowledge zero people were confused about whether we were worshipping God or worshipping human relationships. Personally, the song’s call to a quiet and intimate relationship with Christ in the midst of the storm of hormones and emotions and general chaos of the College lifestyle was deeply moving and stood in contrast to most of the music out there.
Biblically speaking, the intimacy between God and man is so often mirrored by, and compared to a marital relationship that to be totally honest there are multiple Biblical passages I’ve had to work much harder to reconcile and understand than the lyrics in this particular song.
Finally, I would apply the same Berean standard to the complaint that the author doesn’t call God by name. If this is the standard, must we start pulling the book of Esther out of the Old Testament by the same logic? Or at least demote the book of Esther to a “lesser status” and begin publishing Bibles with an asterisk on Esther? Do we demote Song of Solomon for having only one reference to God in the phrase “The flame of the Lord” (which is also believed to be open to ambiguous interpretation)?
I could understand knocking the song for being open to interpretation or never mentioning God’s name (“This song would be better if it explicitly named God” makes sense). I do have a hard time understanding the rationale that brought it down to sub-5 total rating and a 2 in the individual ratings, particularly when the point and purpose of the song are sufficiently obvious to not require explanation during the wide variety of corporate worship events where the song has been incorporated. Just my 2 cents?
Vince Wright
Jeff,
Thank you for your comments!
First, I was examining the lyrics in their own right, without the influence of the context by which this song was heard. I agree with you: if this song were sung in a church context, we’d think it was talking about God. However, what about those who haven’t heard it, and hear this song at Walmart, your local gas station, or at a football stadium? How will they know it’s Christian? That leads me to my second point.
I don’t just look for the name of God explicitly when I review songs. I also look for acts, attributes, or other sort of clues/hints that tell me that it’s about Christianity, as opposed to a human or another deity. In the book of Esther, a Jew by the same name as the book is fasting and praying for three days. It doesn’t say which deity she is fasting/praying to, but if we examined this book independently of the others, we could reasonably assume that she prayed to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In song lyrics, I look for things like the cross, the Gospel, alternate names of God, titles like “King of kings”, “Lord of Lords”, “Abba”, or “Prince of Peace”. Acts such as leaving heaven to become one of us, that He was without sin, and that He created the world in six days. This isn’t an exhaustive list, but I didn’t see any clues that would differentiate God from a human as the identity of “you”.
Finally, the low rating reflects a point that I made in section 1, that a song like this could be heard in Walmart, with its listeners, specifically those who haven’t heard this song before, will be more likely to conclude that it’s talking about a human than God. I realize that you have a certain interpretation of this song based on where you heard it and perhaps with information about the artist in question. However, this review reflects commentary on lyrics outside these contexts, to examine the lyrics themselves to see if it tells us these things in their own right. Sometimes it can be difficult to think this way, especially if you have an emotional experience as a result of hearing it. In my opinion, it’s ambiguous regarding the identity of “you”. However, that does not mean you can’t listen to it or worship with it during a church service. God can use anything despite my review.
-Vince Wright