The Music and Life of Brian Doerksen, Part 2

We hear the music of Christian song writers but rarely get to hear their life story. Christian musician Brian Doerksen has a story worth telling and that’s what he’s going to share in the next few minutes. I’m Charles Morris and welcome to Haven Today for Part 2 of “The Music and Life of Brian Doerksen”.

Song: Come, Now is the Time to Worship
Performed by: Brian Doerksen

That’s a song we got to hear yesterday on Haven Today but we heard it again today, this time from the “You Shine” album by Brian Doerksen. I’m Charles Morris and I want to welcome you. We’re in the Genuine Music Studio in Abbotsford, British Columbia and Brian thanks for taking time to join us again on the program.
BD: Oh, it’s great to be here.
CM: It’s great to have you back just because you don’t mind sharing how God has broken into your life at appropriate moments and called you to himself and the same for your wife Joyce as well. You shared with us yesterday. And if anybody missed that program you can go to our website, haventoday.org, and can give it another listen. Brian, we talked yesterday how the Lord brought you back to your home, what, at one time was a small Mennonite town. You couldn’t call Abbotsford small by any means today. You grew up in a Mennonite home. Your dad was a song leader at church and you found yourself to become a worship leader as well as a song writer. Why did you want to come home? Why did you want to come back to Abbotsford?
BD: Well, I think I’m also a person of roots and so we came back. But I also came back because by this point we had 6 children.
CM: Amazing.
BD: And we had found out that, you know, that some of our kids were affected with a syndrome called “Fragile X Syndrome”
CM: You want to describe that a little bit for us?
BD: Well, yeah, I mean if you have Down’s Syndrome, it’s the most common and known syndrome that, you know, brings about sort of global mental and paramental disability. Well, Fragile X is the second most common. We have a 13 year old boy right now, Benjamin, and a 6 year old boy named Isaiah, who are the most severely affected. And one of our twin girls is mildly affected. But like our 13 year old, Ben he’s, he’s awesome. But he’s just putting together basic phrases now, he’s not fully toilet trained yet, you know, there’s those kinds of challenges. So, you know, coming back to moving back, part of it I was looking for a real solid family. I wanted to be near their grandparents, my parents. Both sets are here in the Abbotsford area.
CM: God works even when you find out that some of your children have this Fragile X, doesn’t he?
BD: Absolutely. I mean the thing is, there are lots of things in life where we wouldn’t necessarily sign up for, you know. It’s not like, you know –
CM: Right, yes, yes.
BD: Pick Me! Pick Me! I want to have, you know, a disabled child, but through it, God works his grace and he shows you things that you would have never seen if you hadn’t gone through this circumstance. I was getting really frustrated with the ongoing toileting issues and everything. You know, my wife jokes, she says I should get an award for changing the most dirty diapers because I’ve been doing it for 17 years and I try to do as many of them as I can.
CM: Yes.
BD: But I was getting frustrated in myself saying, “You know, when is this ever going to end?” And all of a sudden I realized that in it was a gift and the gift was intimacy and relationship and dependence, because see, my son is dependent on us in certain ways. And so that means as a father I get to spend a little bit more extra time being close to him and showing him unconditional love.
CM: That’s a pretty big picture of another father/son/daughter situation.
BD: Yeah, and so I can get close to him. And I think of, I mean, how many dads who have 13 year olds who, their sons are already, you know, “Dad, it’s OK, I don’t need you anymore. I already know the score.” You know, and -
CM: Teenage hood has hit, yes.
BD: Yeah, they get on with their life, and I thought to myself, “Wow, I get these times.” And it’s just really helped me see the gift in it.
CM: You know, there are probably people listening to Haven Today right now who have written songs, who would like to write songs, and they think your life is glamorous. It’s not always glamorous from what you’ve been sharing, but yet God’s at work. God’s in charge. And God has given you a family where you can love each other and I’m sure that the bond between you and your 13 year old son is just forged because of what he has, and may God be glorified in that.
BD: It’s a wonderful gift. And so I try really hard to stay faithful with my family first and do the ministry stuff second. I get lots of invitations that I turn down.
CM: You’re not on the road a couple hundred nights a year like some Christian musicians or other musicians and artists.
BD: And I hold no judgment for people that have to do those things. For me and my house, you know, I’ve made a decision that family is first and that we’ve got to figure out other ways to do that. And I’m blessed that through the writing and recording I can serve people that I don’t have to physically go to them all the time. I mean, I love the chance to go to a certain city, gather the church
CM: Yes.
BD: and do an evening of worship music. It is, I mean it is exhilarating to watch God at work. And so I go out about once a month for a few days a month. So that results in maybe 20, or 30 dates in a year, not a hundred and fifty. You know, it’s like our youngest is 6, so maybe things will change. Maybe I will be released to be a little bit more on the road later on, though I have to say that my wife and I are so head over heels in love with each other after 20 years of marriage that we can’t imagine being apart. And that, I think is a testimony too, and it’s a testimony to my wife. You know over 80% of marriages of special needs kids end in divorce, over 80%. Often the father just can’t handle it and he just –
CM: It’s usually the dad who leaves.
BD: just walks out. And I’m determined to stay right in the picture, stay right in there.
CM: Brian you have a song that everybody knows and you did a new version of it. And as you were talking, I was thinking about this song that’s on the “Today” album. And it’s called, “Refiner’s Fire” and God, just part of his plan for all of us, his children, is that he’s got to refine us.
BD: Absolutely, and I know both as a son and as a father, that there’s times where we have to learn to submit our will to our fathers, natural fathers and our Heavenly Father. And so, this song is really about that, about that process of being purified.

Song: Refiner’s Fire
Performed by: Brian Doerksen

The song, of course, is “Refiner’s Fire” and it’s from the “Today” album. Brian Doerksen our special guest here on Haven Today, I’m Charles Morris and thanks for being with us. And we’ll tell you a little later on how you can get a copy of this “Today” album which has won a number of awards. And Brian, I know we talked last time together about how there’s a story behind every song, but there’s a lot of meaning. I mean, I’m getting meaning out of “Refiner’s Fire” and I didn’t even write it. But the Lord is using that in my heart as I was listening to it. So you must have an even deeper story of how that came to be.
BD: Here’s how it happened –
CM: OK.
BD: I had gone home for lunch, you know, as I would often do at this time. I was a worship pastor at a church so I would go back and see Joyce and the kids, young kids, who were in preschool at this age, for lunch. Driving back to the office after lunch, pulled up to a red light. No other cars around at this junction, window rolled down, it’s summer. And all of a sudden, there was a presence, a Holy presence, right beside my car. And the presence was so strong, this has happened I think twice I can recall in my life, it was like an electrical current started racing up and down my body. And I thought, “Woe is me! Like, God is coming to visit me.” And I’m at a traffic intersection and it was like, instantly it was like the presence came. It was love but it was also conviction and I saw stuff in my heart that I didn’t like, that I knew God wasn’t pleased with. And then this, it was like, it just, the presence just started to sing almost like. Now that sounds strange, but it was all happening inside, internally and it was –
CM: Right.
BD: And it was, “Purify my heart. Let me be as gold.” Even that word “Gold” at the end, it was like there was this ache in this cry like, that’s what we were made for, to be pure, to be set apart, to be precious to God, to have fellowship with God. And here’s me, and I’m kind of selfish and unclean and, you know the song was birthed out of that experience. And there was a lot of tears in private and then all of a sudden when we started teaching it in public there was a lot of tears for other people, you know, it just seemed to be like, “This is what I wanted to say to God. I want a pure heart too.”
CM: Now, I don’t know. There are other songs of course you’ve written many songs. Can you think of another song that maybe you could share with us how the Lord led you to birth a song?

BD: Well, I’ll share something about “The River”, which is a song from “Today”, but it is related in the sense that coming out of that whole “Refiner’s Fire” experience, I realized how often I need to come back to the river for forgiveness. And I wrote, I co-wrote this song with a couple of my friends. And we had withdrawn to a little island near Vancouver here, and you know life is incredibly busy. All of us have little kids, so we just had this gift of a couple of days where 3 really good friends, Brian Theisen, Michael Hansen and I and we just spent time, just talking, sharing, worshipping. And we pulled out our guitars one day and I said, “You know we need a fresh song about forgiveness. A song that pulls us in, but a song that we can hold out to others that invites them in, you know because it’s a gift. This gift of forgiveness, we can’t live without it.” So one of us picked up our guitar, I can’t remember how, and this song just sort of tumbled out.

Song: The River
Performed by: Brian Doerksen

What a blessing. Brian, we’ve been to the River together today. And thank you for blessing me and for blessing everybody who’s with us.
BD: You’re welcome.
CM: You know Brian, before we go, could I ask you to just pray?
BD: I’d love to.
CM: You’re a worship leader and not just a song writer. Would you pray for Haven Today listeners, that God would lead us all to the River?
BD: Father, thank you so much for the gift of life you’ve given each one of us, each one of us that are listening right now, Lord you have called a son or a daughter. And you don’t abandon us when we go through a dark valley. You promised to stay with us. I pray right now that as you’re reaching out your hand to each listener, that they would, each of them, each son, each daughter, would take your hand, and let you lead them to the River. To that place in their life where they can be fruitful for you and where they can know simply that they are loved by you. And so, the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord turn his face toward you and give you his peace, amen.
CM: This is Haven Today and I’m Charles Morris for part 2 of, “The Music and Life of Brian Doerksen”. I want to thank Brian for taking the time and also his willingness to share his life story with us. Before I tell you about his album, “Today” that you can get from us here at Haven Today, I just want to say that Haven is a listener supported ministry. And so when we offer something like Brian Doerksen’s wonderful album and then the 2 programs of his life story to go along with it on another CD, what we’re really saying is, thank you that you’re standing with us, thank you for your financial support. We want to minister to you and we want to keep ministering to you and others. So if you would like Brian Doerksen’s “Today” album, go online at haventoday.org. There you’ll see the CD cover. That’s haventoday.org. Or give us a call now at 1-800-65-HAVEN, that’s 1-800-65-HAVEN. You can get the album, and along with the “Today” album we’ll also send you an accompanying CD of his 2 interview programs on Haven Today. So I hope you’ll call 1-800-65-HAVEN, that’s 1-800-65-HAVEN. And when you get in touch with us would you also include the name of the station that you’re listening to. That would be very helpful. Get in touch with us and if you can, give more than the $30 that we’re asking for. I’m Charles Morris and thank you for being with me. Thank you for letting us be part of your life. Come back again next time when again, Jesus Christ will be who he is, number one, here on Haven Today.