Song Story:  Oh Crimson Flow

© 2009 Josh Hickman and Matt Birkenfeld / CFN Music (all adm by CFN Music) / ASCAP / CCLI#5427116

            The clock in my truck read 7:39 A.M.  The morning trek of thirty miles from my home to school had seemed to drag into eternity this morning.  I had spent the drive as I usually do, partly in prayer, partly singing along with worship music, and partly wishing I was still in bed.  I wish I could say that most of the time had been spent in the prior two, but unfortunately, this morning I was focused more on my last few sips of coffee than on the things of the Lord.  But as I exited the freeway, lyrics suddenly began to fill my mind.  “Oh Crimson Flow, once shed for me.  My life I owe, my saving King.”  My first reaction was to grab the nearest piece of paper, which happened to be a random receipt, and write down these words.  But to my amazement, they kept coming, “His blood did pay my ransom fee, Oh Crimson Flow that set me free.”  As I wrote, thankfully I was at a stoplight, I began to be overwhelmed once again at the blood of Jesus, through which, according to the writer of Hebrews, “obtained eternal redemption.”  Just a few weeks earlier, one of the worship leaders at my church had been teaching on the blood and how important it was to a worship setting.  Without the blood, there is no coming to the Father in worship.  As I kept these thoughts in my heart I couldn’t help but wonder if there would be a completion to these lyrics.

            Fast forward a couple of hours, I went to Matt Birkenfeld and told him about this hymn-like verse that I had written.  As project for school, we were to write a song.  Matt said that he liked what I had written, but we needed much more to write a song.  I agreed and from there we went on our way.

            The next day I was making my daily drive to school.  I had been thinking about the song all morning.  I knew what I wanted to say with the song, and in what order, but lyrical flow was not coming.  But, as I exited the freeway, again, lyrics began to form in my mind.  Again I grabbed the nearest piece of paper and began to write down the following lyrics, “Oh Crimson Flow the scarlet key, by which my soul at last shall see, the King above in all glory.  With God Most High, for eternity.”  This was it!  The third verse!  In my excitement, I ran up to Matt and explained that I had written the third verse to the song.  The look on Matt’s face was a humorous mixture of excitement and confusion as he asked, “Wait, what about the second verse?!”  From this point, the song began to take on a rich nature, describing the work of the blood, the continuing work of the blood, and the future work of the blood.  And from here I’ll let Matt explain how the rest of “Oh Crimson Flow” came to be.

            As Josh said, he showed me the two verses that he had written, so we decided to sit down and figure out the rest of the song.  We sat down at a piano, and as Josh played the verses, I followed along on the piano and just messed around with ideas.  From that came the chorus “Oh the blood of Christ, Oh the blood of Christ, Oh the blood of Christ, it washes over me”.  Now all that was needed was the second verse.  Josh ended up writing out a second verse for the song, which was “Oh crimson flow this solemn creed, Of which in Christ I must take heed, To show the lost his word and deed, Power to live in Christ my King”.  From there I added some tweaking to it as well as some to the third verse—we ended up changing the last line to “With God most high, I’ll ever be”.   

But as most songwriters know, that is never the end!  After that we had one of the worship leaders from our church critique the song and give us some advice.  After the help, we got together again and worked on the third and fourth line of the second verse and what ended up coming out was “Oh crimson flow this solemn creed, That in my life I must take heed”.   And finally the song was complete! 

It was an amazing experience to write the song with Josh, and it has been such an honor to see how God has used what we had written for a school project as a tool to show the power of Christ’s blood working in our lives each and everyday!