Discography
Holy
Filled with deep devotion and worship, Matt Gilman and Cory Asbury’s debut album, Holy, reflects the believer’s longing for the King of heaven.
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Every Captive Free – Single
Matt Gilman sings an earnest declaration of deliverance for the oppressed in this single, which offers a foretaste of his upcoming full-length album.
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Matt Gilman has been leading worship since he was fourteen years old, having grown up in ministry with his father, a Lutheran pastor. In 2002, when Matt was a senior in high school, he arrived at the International House of Prayer of Kansas City thinking he was just attending a conference about music, his favorite subject. “As soon as I walked into the building, I knew this was different. It was not at all what I was expecting. God began to shake me to the core as He opened up a whole new understanding of worship with the Word of God. I knew right away this is what I was made for,” Matt explains. “Something was awakened in my spirit and I knew I had to have more.”
He returned to join the One Thing Internship, a six-month program for single young adults between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five, which is designed to be a season of consecration unto the Lord. Matt says the internship, which included up to twenty-four hours a week in the prayer room, was like a new world opening up to him: “The Lord would meet me there. I was searching out the heart of God and giving myself to concentrated effort to pursue God. The best part is that I was joined with a community of young people who were seeking God with the same wholehearted abandonment.”
Matt’s musical creativity stems from one source, but comes in a variety of ways. He says many times when leading in the prayer room, certain lyrics or a melody will just come to him, providing the basis for a new song; but other times he’s had to sit for hours to write them. He believes it’s crucial for songwriters to have time set aside in their schedule to simply sit with their instrument and their Bible, and just sing the Word of the Lord back to Him. Sometimes, it’s as easy as sleeping: “The Lord may reveal a melody in a prophetic dream and I’ll wake up singing it. That’s what happened with my song ‘Closer.’ The first line was given to me in a dream; I sat down at the piano to play it, and the rest of the song just flowed.”
Matt is motivated by a desire to see people grasp the reality of who God is, and believes this is crucial in order for them to continue in the faith. “It’s imperative that this generation becomes fascinated with who God is. I want my music to provoke my generation to search out the attributes of God—for example, His awesome beauty, radiant glory, boundless mercy—and grow in the knowledge and love of God all their days.”
