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Psalm 62:5-8 vs. “King of My Heart”

John Mark & Sarah McMillan · checked 2026-08-02

What we checked

PassagePsalm 62:5-8 chapter ↗
Translation shownBSB (Berean Standard Bible)
Presents itself asinspired-by
Categorynot a quote
AlbumYou Are the Avalanche · 2015
Words addressed toGod, person unspecified
Teaching or experiencemixed

Graded against the standard

Quotation criteria not graded: this song never presents its words as scripture

Applies to every song the Name held holy · God shown holy · true of God · the standard

✓Reverent treatment

✓ What's good

  • The chorus states one thing about God and states it plainly, and it is the thing the psalter states most often: the LORD is good. The publisher's own page lists Psalm 100:5 and Psalm 136:1 as the song's references
  • Never says it is quoting and cites no verse, so nothing is misattributed
  • Naming God by figures is the psalter's own method. Psalm 62:5-7 does it four times in three verses, and a song that answers the same question the same way is doing something the text models
  • The centre of attention stays on God. God, or “You,” is the grammatical subject of nearly every line, including the verses, where each picture is a statement about what He is
  • One of the figures is a doctrinal word, not a mood. Mark 10:45 (BSB) has the Son of Man giving “His life as a ransom for many,” and the song puts that word at the end of the first verse

⚠ Cautions

  • Not one of Psalm 62's words appears in the song. If someone tells you this song is Psalm 62, take that as our pairing and their impression, not as a citation
  • The bridge's assurance reaches further than any one verse does. Psalm 62 promises a rock, a fortress, a refuge, and that the one resting there will not be shaken, inside a psalm about being pushed at
  • The publisher lists two references, Psalm 136:1 and Psalm 100:5. Both are about God's goodness enduring, which is what the chorus states, and neither speaks to the bridge's assurance. The page ties no reference to any section, so that pairing is ours and not the publisher's
  • The figures are collected rather than drawn from one place, so no single chapter checks all eight. The shadow image is nearest Psalm 91:1, the fountain nearest John 4:10 and John 7:37-39, and ransom nearest Mark 10:45
  • The song is widely sung in Bethel Music's 2017 live version, and a different song of the same title by Leeland exists from 2016. Check which one a service is listing before you look up writers or references

Verse Proof

Psalm 62:5-8

The text in BSB (Berean Standard Bible)

“Rest in God alone, O my soul, for my hope comes from Him. He alone is my rock and my salvation; He is my fortress; I will not be shaken. My salvation and my honor rest on God, my strong rock; my refuge is in God. Trust in Him at all times, O people; pour out your hearts before Him. God is our refuge. Selah”

Psalm 62 carries the heading “For the choirmaster. According to Jeduthun. A Psalm of David.” The speaker begins by talking to his own soul, and the word *alone* runs through the whole psalm. He is under pressure while he says it: verse 3 pictures him as a leaning wall and a tottering fence with people intending to push him off his place, and verse 4 says they bless with their mouths and curse inwardly. Verses 5 to 7 repeat the opening refrain almost word for word, after the attack has been described rather than before. Then the address widens. Verse 8 turns from his own soul to “O people” and gives them an instruction: trust at all times, pour out your hearts before Him, God is our refuge. The verses immediately after name what cannot be trusted instead, that men of every rank weigh out as vapor and that increasing riches must not become the heart's resting place, and the psalm closes with what the psalmist heard twice, that power belongs to God and loving devotion belongs to Him, and that He repays each man according to his deeds.

What the song says, described not quoted

The song is built as a bank of figures. Each verse repeats one frame, built on the song's title, and fills it four times, so the two verses name God with eight images between them. The first verse's four each have a nearest scriptural neighbour, and those are laid beside their addresses below. The second verse's four are the writers' own, with no fixed scriptural address at all. The chorus leaves the figures behind and states one thing about God, that He is good, and repeats it. The bridge states one thing about God's disposition toward the singer, that God will not fail him, and repeats that. All three published charts we checked agree on this structure and on the count of figures; the CCLI SongSelect chart writes the bridge's assurance out nine times. God is addressed as “You” in the chorus and the bridge and is never named beyond the word King, so who is being sung to is left unspecified. No verse is cited in the song or on any of the charts.

The pairing with Psalm 62 is ours. The song names no passage and no translation. What the two share is a method rather than a vocabulary: both answer the question of what God is by piling up figures instead of arguing. Psalm 62:5-8 uses rock, salvation, fortress, strong rock, and refuge, and the song uses eight figures of its own, none of which is one of those. Mountain sits near the psalm's rock without being it, and the shadow image is nearer Psalm 91:1 (BSB), “He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty.” What the psalm attaches to its figures the song leaves off. Each of the psalm's figures arrives with a stated consequence, that the speaker will not be shaken, and verse 8's instruction is followed straight away by a limit, that men and money are the things not to be trusted.

· Not a quote: The song cites no passage and quotes none. It shares Psalm 62's method of naming God by figures and its instinct that God alone is refuge. But not one of the psalm's figures or clauses appears in it. The bridge's assurance is the song's own wording rather than the psalm's.

▸ Official upload. Now listen with the proof in mind.

Psalm 62 promises footing, not weather.

Why it matters

The bridge is the part people carry out of the room, because it is the shortest line and the most repeated one. Scripture does say something in its neighbourhood. Romans 5:5 (BSB) says “hope does not disappoint us,” and the ground it gives is God's love poured into us by the Holy Spirit. Psalm 62 gives its own ground, and the ground is not that nothing will press. The psalmist says his refrain while people are working to topple him, and what he claims is that he will not be shaken, which is a claim about his footing rather than about his circumstances. Sung without that, an assurance can be heard as a forecast, and then a week that goes badly starts to look like evidence against God instead of the setting the psalm is actually singing in.

Is it safe to dwell on?

Sung on repeat, this song fixes your attention on God.

What repetition plants here is a stack of pictures of God and one short sentence about His goodness. The subject of nearly every line is God, and every picture is of what He is for someone who needs something, which is why this song turns up in hard seasons. The bridge is what gets planted deepest, since it is the fewest words repeated the most times, and it is worth planting alongside its psalm rather than alone. Sarah McMillan has said publicly that she wrote the song while processing her parents' divorce and the joy of having children of her own at the same time, and that she wrote it to remind herself that no joy or sorrow could dilute God's goodness. Psalm 62 makes that move in the same order: the soul rests in God, the wall is described being pushed at, and then the resting is said again. If you loop this song, loop verses 5 to 8 with it, and let verse 8's instruction come along: trust at all times, pour out your hearts, God is our refuge.

Helpful comparison

Laying the figures beside addresses is the only way to check a song built this way. The mountain has no single home; the psalter's nearest habit is the rock of Psalm 62:6-7, where the BSB reads “He alone is my rock and my salvation; He is my fortress,” and adds “my strong rock” on the second pass. The shadow belongs to Psalm 91:1. The fountain belongs to John 4:10 and John 7:37-39 rather than to the psalms. Ransom belongs to Mark 10:45. The second verse's four images have no fixed address at all, which is where a listener has least to check against. One published review takes issue with the last of them, reading it as running the wrong way round, since scripture has the person reflecting God rather than God reflecting the person, and the review cites Genesis 1:27 for that. That is one reviewer's reading of one image and we note it as documented discussion, not as a finding of ours. The point that holds either way is structural. Psalm 62 fences its figures with the verses that follow, and a song that ends on a bridge rather than on verses 9 to 12 leaves the fencing to the singer.

Psalm 100:5 (BSB) says “the LORD is good, and His loving devotion endures forever,” and Psalm 136:1 (BSB) opens “Give thanks to the LORD, for He is good.” The publisher's own resource page lists exactly those two verses as the song's scripture references.

Psalm 62's promise of a refuge sits inside a psalm about being pushed at, and verses 9 and 10 warn that people and money are precisely the things that give way.

Sources

Corrections

  1. This proof originally embedded and cited the official lyric video (YouTube id VUW3tl4-5h8, JohnMarkMcMillanVEVO). That upload is no longer playable on YouTube, so the page rendered a dead player. The entry now embeds and cites the live Stabal session on the artist's own channel (H9hEMHT1i7A). No finding here rested on a particular recording: the song's structure and its eight figures come from the three published charts cited below, and they are unchanged.
  2. The cautions originally said the publisher's two scripture references "cover the chorus" and that "nothing on the page is offered for the bridge." The Worship Together page lists Psalm 136:1 and Psalm 100:5 without tying either one to any section of the song, so that pairing was ours, not the publisher's, and it now says so. The two references and the point about the bridge are unchanged.
  3. What this proof says about the writer's own account of the song was rewritten earlier the same day without a correction line, which it should have carried. The for-meditation section and the Facebook source label originally said she wrote the song "while carrying her parents' divorce and new motherhood" and that "what she was reaching for was" that neither sorrow nor joy could dilute God's goodness. That was our loose paraphrase. Her post of 6 July 2015 says she was processing her parents' divorce while experiencing the joy of having children of her own, and that she wrote the song to remind herself that no joy or sorrow could dilute God's goodness. Both places now follow the post. The source and the point it supports are unchanged.
  4. This entry argued from "the publisher" when it meant worshiptogether.com. That site is the song-resource platform Capitol CMG Publishing runs, not the song's publisher, and it carries songs Capitol CMG does not publish, so a scripture list on it is the platform's rather than the songwriters'. The site had already corrected this wording on the Ephesians 2:4-6 entry on 2026-08-07. The finding is unchanged; only who published the reference.

Think we got something wrong? Tell us what and where, and we will check it against the text. Real errors get fixed here, dated, in public. Every correction on the site →

Where the text survives the song

Not a ranking, and not a swap. If what you came for is the passage sung whole, these proofs found it kept: word-for-word verified, or paraphrase that says so and names its source.

✓ VERIFIED “Psalm 16” The Corner Room (Adam Wright) Psalm 16:1-11 You can sing this one straight through. It is all eleven verses of Psalm 16, in order, in a named version. What you repeat is the psalm.

✓ The printed sung text carries all eleven verses of Psalm 16, in order, with no line printed twice and no refrain added

⚠ The track title alone will not tell you which Bible you are singing. On Apple Music and Spotify it is just "Psalm 16". The version is named on the album page and in the video description.

 ✓ VERIFIED “Psalm 11 (English Standard Version)” The Corner Room (Adam Wright) Psalm 11:1-7 Sing it straight through. It is all seven verses of Psalm 11, in order, in a version the track title names. A reviewer says one verse comes back as a refrain, and it is the psalm's own verse.

✓ All seven verses, in order. We set the printed sung text beside an ESV and compared it word by word: 131 words, all matching, nothing added and nothing dropped

⚠ The printed text under the video lists each line once. It is not a map of the song. A review of the album says verse 4 comes back as a refrain

 ✓ VERIFIED “Psalm 53 (English Standard Version)” The Corner Room (Adam Wright) Psalm 53:1-6 Yes, you can sing it. All six verses of Psalm 53 are here, in order, from a version the release names. The words you repeat are the psalm's own.

✓ The printed sung text carries all six verses of Psalm 53, in order, and every one of its 142 words matches an ESV of the psalm

⚠ The printed text is not a transcript. A review of the album calls the psalm's opening line the song's refrain. We did not listen through to count repeats, so that rests on the review

More songs like this

NOT A QUOTE “Million Little Miracles” Elevation Worship & Maverick City Music (feat. Joe L. Barnes) Psalm 40:5 Sing it as testimony, not as a psalm. Nothing is quoted and nothing is misrepresented. Know only that the miracles counted here are one life's, not the deeds Psalm 40 counts for a whole people.

✓ Every item the song counts is credited to God rather than to the singer's own effort, which is the direction Psalm 40:5 runs

⚠ The publisher's page lists themes but no scripture reference, so any verse a listener hangs on this song is the listener's own. Psalm 40:5 is the nearest text, not a cited one

 NOT A QUOTE “House of the Lord” Phil Wickham Psalm 122:1-4 Sing it. Nothing here is quoting, and the joy it names is real. Just know that Psalm 122's house of the Lord was a place with gates at the end of a road; the song sings that gladness of the gathered church.

✓ Both verses are built from checkable acts of God: a sea parted (Exodus 14), prison doors opened (Acts 16:26), the cross and the empty tomb, and nothing sung of God here is something the text will not support

⚠ Psalm 122's house is a place: one city, real gates, tribes going up by command. The song's house is the gathered people, and the song does not mark the transfer

 NOT A QUOTE “God Only Knows” for KING & COUNTRY Psalm 139:1-6 Sing it. It quotes no verse, so hold it as a true sentence about God rather than as scripture. What it says about God knowing you is true, and Psalm 139 is where you can see how far that knowing goes.

✓ The song's central sentence about God is true and checkable. Psalm 139 says God knows the sitting and the rising, the thought from far off, and the word before it is spoken

⚠ The song stops where the comfort stops. Psalm 139 says the same knowing is inescapable, and the psalm ends by asking God to search the singer and lead him

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