New Worship Song: Lord, Have Mercy!

June 14, 2025

I wrote this particular worship song way back in the mid-80s. This was a few years after Ingrid and I encountered Vineyard worship and the teachings of John Wimber. Although the Vineyard Movement has Evangelical roots that acquired a Charismatic flavor, my song actually derives from the Kyrie of the Catholic Mass. I'll explain why in a moment, but first here are the lyrics:

Lord, have mercy!

Christ, have mercy!

Lord, have mercy upon a sinner.

Christ, have mercy upon my soul.

Man of Sorrows!

Like a sheep I have gone astray.

May your wounds take my sins away.

Bread of heaven!

Feed me 'till I no longer hunger.

Let me drink 'till I thirst no more.

One of the things that attracted me to Wimber and the early Vineyard was how he often worked together with different denominations to advance the kingdom of God. An example of this with Catholicism is the conference that John did in the late 80s with Francis MacNutt, a Catholic priest who practiced and taught healing prayer and was widely regarded as a leader in the Catholic Charismatic Movement. MacNutt wrote several books including Healing (1974) to help equip other Catholics pray for people's healing, and Ingrid and I were blessed from reading this book and some other Catholic Charismatic equipping materials we learned about from the Vineyard's own magazine Equipping the Saints.

Also, because I had been an unreligious pagan before I became a Christian (read my testimony if you haven't yet) I was hungry to learn everything I could about Christianity. So as a new believer I visited many churches of different denominations and read all kinds of Christian literature from St. Augustine to John Bunyan, John Wesley, Charles Finney, C.S. Lewis, Smith Wigglesworth and many others. So I guess it's not surprising that some of the early worship songs I wrote were "seasoned" sometimes with the flavors of different denominations.

But this song is special. Because it's simple. And Biblical. We sang it many times in our early home fellowships, often as a communion song as we shared the bread and wine together in remembrance of our Lord's death, resurrection and coming return.

I hope you like it too. You can listen to a recording that I made of this song on SoundCloud, and you can download a PDF leadsheet that has the melody in musical notation along with lyrics and guitar chords.

One more thing: the song is dedicated to the Reverend Dennis Dickson, a priest of the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada who was a very good friend of ours and passed away some years ago.

Blessings in Christ,

Mitch

P.S. Be sure to subscribe to our newsletter so you can be notified whenever we put up a new worship song on our SoundCloud page.

[Update added on 24 July 2025] There's one more verse for this song and I've added it to the song's PDF leadsheet but haven't had a chance yet to add to my recording on SoundCloud. You can find this extra verse in this post on our blog.

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