“More Than You Think I Am” by Danny Gokey || Worship With Me #30

Welcome back to my latest music review series, “Worship with Me.” This series introduces you to new worship music that you might have heard before. I aim to connect with you through worship and build your relationship with God in ways you might not have tried.

Today’s song is “More Than You Think I Am” by Danny Gokey. If you know me, you know how much of a Danny Gokey fan I am. I have many of his songs on my Spotify playlist, have seen him in concert, have read his book, bought his merch, and have supported him overall ever since his days on American Idol. His love of God is shown through the high-energy dance, praise bops, and low, emotional prayer songs.

This particular song, however, stands out for its unique exploration of our perceptions of God and how they can limit our understanding of His true nature.

I found no articles or interviews with Danny Gokey about this song. This song talks about the questioning we do about God. We often hear about who God is and how God has interacted with other people and think, “God can’t do that for me.” We typically lower the standards and thresholds of who God is and what we can do. God doesn’t work by the boundaries we set for him. God works above all that, and it’s our responsibility to allow that goodness to seep into all parts of our lives. Let me share with you some of my favorite verses of this song.

The first verse says:

You always think I’m somewhere on a mountain top

But never think behind bars

You’d be amazed the places that I’d go to be with you

Where you are

So forget what you’ve heard

What you think that you know

There’s a lot about me

That’s never been told

This either really connects with what I’m wrestling with right now or this is amazingly powerful. The major part of what I want to talk about is the second half of that verse. A while ago, and even now still, we were in a period of a massive deconstruction movement! People have been unlearning a lot of what church and religion had taught them about God and the Bible and Christianity because of the toxic and damaging nature that was done to them. I’ve also had to do some of that with some of the conflict mindsets I’ve had between the teachings of the Bible and the Methodist/Baptist churches I’ve been a part of. Sometimes we see churches and pastors twist the teachings of the Bible to fit the structure of the denomination or the agenda of the pastor themselves. This song came out about 7-8 years before the massive deconstruction movement happened, which shows me that this has been a mindset for a while, not just highly publicized. It’s a struggle that many of us can relate to, and this song has been a source of comfort and guidance for me in navigating these complexities.

What I don’t often see talked about is the idea of reconstructing. I’m sure it’s for a variety of stupid reasons like it wouldn’t garner clicks, insights, etc. Yet I believe reconstructing helps complete the circuit. God wants you to let go of the teachings, foundations, and principles are not from him, but he also wants you to go through study what the truth is, be willing to be vulnerable in this hunt, and work to strengthen the relationship he wants with you. Like the song states, we have this idea of where God is, how he works, and all that, but there’s so much more that doesn’t get taught in church or in Sunday School. Allow yourself to forget what you were taught, embrace the truth found in him, and use the gifts of discernment he has given you to strengthen what was right and what was not. This song is a powerful reminder that we have the power and the responsibility to shape our own understanding of God.

Listen to verse two:

Rumor has it there’s a gavel in my hand

I’m only here to condemn

But let me tell you secrets you would’ve never known

I think of you as my best friend

So much has been said

Even doubted my name

But I’m showing you now

Who I really am

We often picture God as the war-torn, angry, law-making, rule-abiding leader that we need to fear or else risk death, and that is not what it’s about. That’s a face-value teaching of hearing the laws, wars, anger, and frustrations of God that we take and apply to our human perspective. However, there’s love found in all of that. The literature found in the Bible is often not a face-value literature to read. It’s poetry, stories of battles, stories of laws, parables that Jesus taught, and teachings about the future. These are stories to look beneath what it says and ask: “Why?” We don’t think we can ask questions about that because the Bible contains no errors, doesn’t contradict itself, and is 100% accurate. If we look at the truth behind the teachings, I agree with that. Sometimes, we read something that contradicts itself, but if we look deeper into the audience, the setting, the context, and why things were said, we might find that the contradiction doesn’t exist anymore. It’s also important to recognize that some of the rules in place were specific to the Israelite/Jewish/Greek/Gentile culture and may not be an everyday thing today. When I’ve runrun into these, I think about what a modern-day connection is for it and how those teachings can be applied to that situation. Honestly, I’ve had to do a lot of unlearning/re-learning about the Bible through the studies for this blog and my ministries. Still, it’s connected me to God more profoundly than ever before.

This song is heavy for me this season, but I hope it resonates with you positively and reflectively. I’ll be back next week with another song. Until then, stay blessed!