Gateway Worship artists/married couple Cody Carnes and Kari Jobe wrote this song with Elevation Church worship leader Chris Brown and Elevation lead pastor Steven Furtick. They penned the tune in a writing session on February 27, 2020, at Charlotte, North Carolina prior to premiering it at the church's Sunday service on March 1, 2020.
The song originated with Furtick singing Moses' priestly blessing from Numbers chapter 6 verses 24-26. The benediction is a generational prayer God gave to Moses in which the Hebrews ask for His divine favor. Brown explained to Apple Music that the pastor started humming a melody, singing around "the Lord bless you and keep you, make his face shine upon you." After 10 minutes of this, they decided to develop the idea, and from that point on, it "poured out rather quickly." After Elevation Worship rehearsed it as a band, they introduced the song at church, with Cody Carnes and Kari Jobe on vocals. That debut rendition was recorded for and included on Graves Into Gardens.
"The Blessing" immediately became popular on YouTube, so Elevation released the live audio recording to other platforms. It peaked at #4 on Billboard's Digital Song Sales chart, the highest-charting faith-based single on that tally since Jordan Smith's rendition of "Great Is Thy Faithfulness" peaked at #3 in December 2015. Brown attributed the tune's commercial success to the COVID-19 outbreak. "We weren't intentionally trying to write a song that centered around a priestly blessing that's found in the Old Testament," he told Billboard. "Within two weeks, this pandemic was a reality here, and so, to be honest, it's kind of hard for me to not think about how God just lined that song's timing up for exactly when it needed to be heard. The whole message of the song is to flood people with encouragement."
See your Spotify stats (with number of plays and minutes listened) and discover new music.
Music data, artist images, album covers, and song previews are provided by Spotify. Spotify is a trademark of Spotify AB.