I love rivers — always fresh, bringing life wherever they flow. They just seem to be one of the most powerful pictures in nature of God’s love and forgiveness. The concept of this song is not original with me but for some time I have longed for a simple and fresh river song about coming to meet with God to receive his forgiveness anew. Three good friends withdrew to a cabin on a small island during a recent summer just to re-connect, encourage each other and see if we could write something out of that friendship. All of us are worship leaders, once all in the same church, now dispersed in different places of the world. And yet the bond remains. The song just flowed as we played our guitars and sang in harmony with each other.

When I first tried out the song, I was surprised at the strong response because it’s not a typical song for me. I had both elderly and young leaders ask for the music; it just seems to be a song that people love to sing!

I hope this song encourages you to release your sins into the river of God’s mercy, letting him wash them away into the sea of forgetfulness. Let’s also release the sins of those that have wronged us into the river of God’s love. Forgiveness is one of the great keys of the Kingdom of God that enables us to bear fruit that will last.

Matthew 3: 5,6 People went out to him from Jerusalem and all Judea and the whole region of the Jordan. Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River.

Revelation 22: 1, 2 Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.