For KING & COUNTRY is adding a new member, for at least one of their songs. The duo, made up of Joel and Luke Smallbone, just announced that a new version of their recent No. 1 hit, “For God Is With Us,” will be out on Friday, July 15, featuring Lady A‘s Hillary Scott. The song is from their latest What Are We Waiting For? album, released in March.
For KING & COUNTRY shared the news of the collaboration on social media.
We’ve got something special coming for you🤫 with quite a lovely guest…. coming FRIDAY!https://t.co/RKg6AERf97 pic.twitter.com/pAc4bMflSs
— FOR KING + COUNTRY (@4kingandcountry) July 12, 2022
For KING & Country wrote “For God Is With Us” with Josh Kerr and Jordan Reynolds, originally intending to write a song for their A Drummer Boy Christmas project, released in 2020.
“We originally penned ‘For God Is With Us’ as we were working on our Christmas record,” Joel shares (via JubileeCast). “We started writing this song from the perspective of a baby boy, and then into adulthood and the great sacrifice of Jesus and then how it impacted humanity. And somewhere along the way, we looked back and Luke and I called one another and said, ‘Hey, maybe this is not just devoted to Christmas.
“Maybe this is a thought, an idea, that could carry with us through the whole year, through Christmas, and Easter, and beyond,'” he continues. “Maybe this is a good reminder after so much loss, and so many questions about where God is in the midst of a pandemic, and where God is in the midst of racism or political division.'”
The message of “For God Is With Us” is one that both Joel and Luke believe is important for everyone, regardless of their spiritual beliefs.
“It’s kind of an offering and a celebration of the fact that we still believe that both religion and science point to this reality,” Luke says. “It’s continually pointing back to this reality that there is a Creator, that there is creative design, and that it’s not just an abstract thought, but God is actually amongst us and with us and that this earth has been endowed with life and beauty that comes from God.'”
What Are We Waiting For? is For KING & COUNTRY’s fifth studio album, and their most personal. Recorded largely during the pandemic, the brothers worked hard to highlight their strong faith in God, especially amid so much global turmoil.
“With songs like ‘Benediction’ or ‘For God Is With Us,’ it’s more overt,” Joel tells Everything Nash. “I feel like even in some ways more than in the past, I think that God’s been sort of put on the stand a little bit in the pandemic of, where is God in great tragedy? So we kind of did a bit of a deep dive in looking back through history and going, ‘Where was God in the darkest days of humanity?’ You see him in retrospect show up in these radical ways. Namely, obviously, 2000 years ago, He literally showed up.
“I think that all of that, coupled with the fact that again, we were home. We weren’t in the back lounge of a tour bus with a studio on the road,’ he adds. “We weren’t in a dressing room. We were home writing and recording this. So there’s a sort of stillness that that created.”
The new version of “For God Is With Us,” featuring Scott, is available to pre-save here. Find all of For KING & COUNTRY’S music by visiting their website.
