Review: Your Grace Finds Me – Matt Redman

Your Grace finds Me is the new live album from Matt Redman, releasing next week (September 24th). Matt has been going against the trend in Christian music – a lot of worship groups that used to do live albums have started doing studio albums, whereas he has moved to doing live albums. And while many live worship albums are just re-recordings of studio songs these are all new songs.
If you have ever been to any sort of even semi-contemporary worship service you will probably have sung at least one Matt Redman song – from Blessed be your name, The Heart of Worship, Our God, Once again, and more recently 10,000 Reasons (Bless the Lord), Matt’s songs have a tendency to become favourites with the church.
This new album is full of songs that keep Jesus central. This is an album that celebrates the grace given to us through the cross, and boldly declares that all that matters is Jesus. This is an out and out praise album, with anthemic songs such as This beating heart and Jesus, only Jesus that you will soon find yourself singing along with. There are also slower, more reflective songs such as Mercy in which Matt addresses himself, urging that he never stop singing Hallelujah to Christ for what He has done for us. It is a song that could easily become the prayer of those singing along.
On Your Grace Finds Me Matt Redman has excelled at writing songs that are new and fresh; yet at the same time sound instantly familiar. This album doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it does provide worship songs that are passionate, Christ exalting and
For me stand out favourites include This beating heart which with its catchy chorus and bridge makes it a candidate to be this album’s 10,000 Reasons, One name alone which is a powerful reminder that what we spend our lives on testifies to who or what we are really living for, Let my people go – a song that starts off about the Exodus, but then moves to address the issue of modern day slavery and trafficking, and the final closing song Benediction which is a soft musical version of the closing Benediction which will be familiar to those used to liturgical services, and provides a nice ending to the album.
Your Grace Finds Me is a must have for existing Matt Redman fans, and for anyone involved in leading worship, as within the next few months some of these songs are going to be worship regulars.