Tag: 8th Street

AMY TURNER

On 8th Street in Sapulpa, Oklahoma, there’s a little church called Pentecostal Mission where three boys grew up learning about Jesus, and about harmony. Jonathan Thompson, Ivan and Byron came up singing together in that building before life pulled them in different directions. Careers, families, distance. The kind of things that quietly end a lot of groups before they even start.

But in early 2017, something brought them back. They found themselves standing next to each other again, singing the same songs they’d grown up on, and the group that would become 8th Street was born from that reunion, named for the road that led them to church as kids.

Their latest single, “Here Comes The Promise,” carries that same thread of return, of finding your way back to something solid when life gets heavy. Thompson wrote the song, and he says the meaning isn’t buried too deep.

“The second verse of this song kind of goes more into letting everybody know that we’ve all been there,” Thompson explains. He’s talking about the moments that knock people sideways, the ones that feel unmanageable in the middle of them. “We’ve all had those things in our lives that come up that just feel like something we can’t handle.”

The verse he’s describing speaks to a friend caught in a struggle, unsure what to do, trying to carry it alone. It’s a scenario Thompson knows from the inside. “I’ve been there,” he says. “I’ve done that.” He admits there’s something almost stubborn in how people, himself included, keep reaching for their own solutions. “Sometimes I don’t know why, when we’ve got an almighty God, that we just want to try to do it our way.”

The answer the song offers is simple, and it’s the whole point of the title. Cast your cares on the master, it says.

“That’s exactly what we need to do,” Thompson says, “because I think when we do that, we just feel those arms encircle us, and we know that he is there for us, and those promises are going to come through.”

That sense of promise fulfilled isn’t just a lyric for 8th Street. It’s the arc of the group itself: three friends from a small church on a small street, who walked away and found their way back to the same harmony they started with.

AMY TURNER

Jonathan Thompson did not write “Here Comes the Promise” in a moment of inspiration. He wrote it out of need.

Thompson, a member of the group 8th Street, recently released the song as his debut single, and the backstory behind it is as personal as the music itself. He has spoken openly about the fact that the lyrics draw from his own experience of hitting a low point and finding, as he describes it, the peace of God moving in.

The song opens in a place many listeners will recognise: a desperate situation, no clear path forward, and a cry for help. “There was a time in my life when I was so low, in a desperate situation, didn’t know where to go,” the lyrics begin, “so I cried out, ‘Jesus help me, I can’t make it on my own.'” What follows is not a resolution wrapped in easy comfort, but a declaration: the promise is coming, the victory belongs to God, even if the reason is not yet visible.

Thompson has described the song as partly his testimony and partly a message he believes applies broadly. “This is partially my testimony, but it’s a message that we all can learn from,” he said. “It’s a message, again, that God has told us to put all of our cares on Him, to make sure that we don’t… we don’t worry ourselves to death because he’s got it all under control.”

He was careful, though, not to position himself above the struggle he is singing about. He acknowledged that knowing something in faith and living it out are two different things. “I know I’ve caught myself doing that,” he said, referring to the tendency to worry despite believing otherwise. “You do have concerns and things, but we just need to remember that the promises of God are yea and amen, and he is going to come through for us.”

The song’s second verse addresses the listener more directly, shifting from personal testimony to invitation: “Friend, if you are in a struggle, you don’t know what to do, you try to handle it on your own, you feel so tired, you’re through, cast your cares upon the master, for he cares so much for you, just give it all to him, for his strength will carry you.” The language is plain and the sentiment is familiar to anyone raised in or near a Pentecostal or evangelical tradition, but Thompson delivers it without the triumphalism that can sometimes hollow out that kind of message.

The song closes with a lyric drawn from Isaiah: “They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall take up wings and soar higher than they’ve ever been.” It is a fitting end for a song that does not promise ease so much as endurance.

Thompson’s framing of the release itself reflects a similar kind of deliberateness. He indicated he spent considerable time thinking through what he wanted the song to communicate before putting it out. “I’ve thought a lot about this song,” he said. “What am I trying to convey to get across to people about this song? Being my first song that I’ve actually completed and recorded and released out, I want to make sure that people understand.”

The central conviction he lands on is straightforward, even if living it is anything but: “It doesn’t matter if the entire world stands against us. If God gave you a promise, it’s going to happen.”

For listeners who have been carrying something heavy, that may be exactly the reminder they needed to hear.