Song Story: I Will Rise

Pastor Louis Giglio and singer Chris Tomlin discussed writing a song which would help people who were walking through the valley of grief and loss.

In a 2011 interview Chris Tomlin shared, “”We were sitting across a table at lunch one day and he said, ‘Man, I feel like there needs to be more songs for people who are really going through the hardest time in life. They’re struggling and maybe have just buried someone and they’re looking over a grave. And that sense of loss, that hurt of loss of losing someone. But what kind of words can you give people in that moment in worship, to worship God in the midst of it?’ And that song specifically speaks to that. I wrote down a little line that he said, ‘the grave is overwhelmed.’ That’s the line that he was carrying. I took that one line, ‘The grave if overwhelmed,’ and built the song around it. So, ‘Jesus was overcome/And the grave is overwhelmed/Victory is won/He’s risen from the dead.’ And that became a song of real hope for people who lose someone and know that this is not the end. That this life, the physical flesh is not the end, but God has given us life everlasting spirit, that’s our hope.”

The song reminds us Jesus overcame the grave first.