Composition
"10,000 Reasons (Bless the Lord)" was written by Matt Redman (b. 1974) and Jonas Myrin and released on Redman's album 10,000 Reasons in 2011. The song won the Grammy Award for Best Gospel/Contemporary Christian Music Song in 2013 and spent multiple weeks at the top of Billboard's Hot Christian Songs chart. Its combination of Psalm 103's direct address language and Lamentations 3's affirmation of God's faithfulness under suffering gave it a range across different contexts of worship - from celebration to lament - unusual for a single contemporary worship song.
Biblical Text
Psalm 103:1 - "Praise the LORD, my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name" - is the direct source for the song's refrain. Psalm 103 is a meditation on divine forgiveness, healing, and steadfast love (hesed), and its opening self-address - the soul commanded to praise - models the kind of intentional, willed praise that the song calls for.
Lamentations 3:22-23 - "Because of the LORD's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness" - provides the content of the final verse's commitment to praise through darkness: "When the tears are falling, when the sickness comes, in the final moments." The song's bridge explicitly echoes Habakkuk 3:17-18's "though the fig tree does not bud... yet I will rejoice in the LORD."
Creator and Legacy
Matt Redman has been one of the most significant figures in British contemporary worship music since the 1990s, associated with the Soul Survivor movement and subsequently with a global audience. "10,000 Reasons" achieved the unusual distinction of being a commercial success and a genuine devotional text simultaneously - the kind of song that congregations sing in worship and individuals sing privately, that reaches across the boundary between the market and the sanctuary.