Since its debut in 1990, Don Moen’s song “God Will Make a Way” has topped the charts as one of the most well-known Christian worship songs of all time, and to this day, the eminent songwriter is still learning the impact of the truth wrapped in those words.
To those who hear him perform, Moen told Faithwire, he just wants to “let them know that God is working in ways they cannot see.” Above all else, he continued, he longs to bring people “a message of hope.”
“The song says, ‘God will make a way where there seems to be no way, he works in ways we cannot see.’ And that really is the key statement there,” Moen said. “To let people understand that, despite what they see … God is working in ways they cannot see. That’s enough for me. If they can just understand that, they won’t take the pills to take their life, they won’t pull the trigger.”
Moen revealed he’s heard from people who were considering suicide before hearing “God Will Make a Way” — a worship ballad built around Isaiah 43:19, which reads, “Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert” — and reconsidered.
Because of the song, Moen said, they decided, “I’m gonna give God one more day, one more chance.”
“That’s the power — it’s hope,” he explained. “If you can have hope, that will lead you to have faith.”
Hope is the bedrock of Moen’s first-ever book, which shares its title with his chart-topping song, “God Will Make a Way.” In the book, releasing Oct. 16, Moen chronicles personal anecdotes and Scripture passages, intending to point readers to God’s constant faithfulness in a constantly changing world.
With desperation, people are clinging to hope.
Moen’s music — particularly “God Will Make a Way” — has reached so many people because of its positive, faith-filled message. In fact, Moen and his wife, Laura, were recently in downtown Nashville when the singer-songwriter saw an ad for a band performing Motown hits.
The singer and his wife made their way to the concert, where they sat quietly in the back of the venue. But someone noticed him, and before too long, the band invited Moen onto the stage.
“What kind of an awkward situation have I gotten myself into,” Moen said, recalling he initially rebuffed the band’s request. “So I sat down at the piano, and I said, ‘This is an inspirational song,’ and I began to sing, ‘God will make a way when there seems to be…’”
To Moen’s surprise, the band not only knew the words to his song, but they also knew the music. “They played the key change, they played the bridge. This Motown band knew the song all the way through,” he remembered.
After the concert, a cattle farmer came up to Moen and told him the audience he was singing in front of — a crowd of people the Christian recording artist never intended to sing for — were mostly cattlemen in town for a convention.
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“The head of the convention was flying in a private plane and the plane crashed and he died along with his family,” Moen said. “And [the farmer] said, ‘All week long, we’ve been trying to figure out how do we even move forward, why did this happen?’ And that is the reason I came tonight because I had to hear that song.”
To this day, Moen doesn’t know much about that cattleman. But he knows “God Will Make a Way” gave him hope in a dark time, and “maybe, just maybe,” it cracked open a door for him to encounter the God of the Bible.
That experience is what prompted Moen to finally write his new book, “God Will Make a Way: Discovering Hope in Your Story,” which is available now wherever books are sold.