Psalm 40:5 vs. “Million Little Miracles”

Elevation Worship & Maverick City Music (feat. Joe L. Barnes) · checked 2026-08-21

What we checked

PassagePsalm 40:5 chapter ↗

Translation shownBSB (Berean Standard Bible)

Presents itself asinspired-by

Categorynot a quote

AlbumOld Church Basement · 2021

Words addressed toGod, person unspecified

Teaching or experienceexperience (the singer’s story)

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

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
It enumerates. Naming particular things God did is harder and more checkable than a general thanksgiving, and the psalm itself sorts its wonders into named categories rather than one lump
Nothing is quoted and nothing is presented as scripture, so there is no verse here to misattribute
God is addressed directly the whole way through, which keeps the gratitude pointed at a person rather than at good fortune

⚠ Cautions

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
Psalm 40:5 counts God's plans as well as His deeds, and counts them "for us". The song's list is retrospective and personal, so the psalm's forward-looking half and its corporate half are both absent
"Miracle" carries the whole song and is never defined in it. The psalm says wonders and gives two categories to sort them into. Here the listener supplies the definition
In Psalm 40 the counting is done aloud to an assembly. Sung on headphones, the same total is reached with nobody told
The section-by-section reading behind the list above comes from one review plus two lyric transcriptions, which agree on what is enumerated but label the sections differently

Verse Proof

Psalm 40:5

The text in BSB (Berean Standard Bible)

“Many, O LORD my God, are the wonders You have done, and the plans You have for us— none can compare to You— if I proclaim and declare them, they are more than I can count.”

Psalm 40 carries the heading "For the choirmaster. A Psalm of David," and it begins in a pit. The opening lines describe waiting, being lifted out of the miry clay, having the feet set on a rock and a new song put in the mouth (Psalm 40:1-3, BSB). Verse 5 is where the psalm looks up from that one rescue and tries to take stock of everything. It counts two things, not one: the wonders God has already done, and the plans He has ahead, and the plans are said to be for "us" rather than for the singer alone. The counting is also done out loud. Later in the same psalm the singer says he proclaims righteousness in the great assembly and has not concealed God's faithfulness and salvation from it (Psalm 40:9-10, BSB).

What the song says, described not quoted

A testimony of gratitude, sung in the first person and addressed to God as "You" throughout. The singer looks back across their own life and hands the credit for what they find there upward. The chorus gathers all of it into one figure, a total too large to hold, and the later verses do the actual enumerating: particular things that happened to particular people close to the singer, including a healing, a household changed, comfort after a death, freedom from sin, and ordinary provision. God is never named as Father, Son or Spirit; the address stays general. No verse is cited, quoted or alluded to by reference, and the song never presents any of its words as scripture.

Nothing shifted, because nothing was taken. The song cites no passage, and its publisher's own song page lists themes but no scripture reference for it. What Psalm 40:5 and the song share is one move: an accounting of God's goodness that gives up on the arithmetic. Two things separate them once they sit side by side. The psalm's uncountable total is God's deeds and God's plans for a people, and the song's is a set of events in one life. And the psalm reaches its total while declaring the items to an assembly, where the song reaches its total in remembering. Neither difference makes the song wrong. It makes it a different kind of counting.

· Not a quote: The song never says it is quoting. Its publisher cites no scripture for it. The miracles it says cannot be counted are the singer's own remembered circumstances. But the uncountable wonders of Psalm 40:5 are God's deeds and His plans for a people, declared aloud.

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

Psalm 40 runs out of numbers in the middle of telling somebody. That is where the total came from.

Why it matters

Counting God's goodness until you lose count is a biblical instinct, and Psalm 40:5 is the verse where it happens. What is easy to miss is that the psalm hits that limit in public. Verses 9 and 10 say the singer proclaims righteousness in the great assembly and has not concealed God's faithfulness from it, so the uncountable total is what the declaring produced rather than a reason to skip it. A song that arrives at the same total privately is doing something real and something different in kind, and it helps to know which one is in your mouth.

Is it safe to dwell on?

Sung on repeat, this song moves between God and the singer.

What repetition plants here is the habit of crediting. The chorus is a number, and the number's whole job is to point away from the singer and toward the one being thanked, so singing it on a loop drills in the reflex of assuming a giver behind a good thing. That reflex is healthy and the psalm shares it. The dwelling tag is mixed because the specific content is one person's history rather than God's dealings with His people, so what gets rehearsed is your own life read gratefully. That is a real discipline, and it is not the same discipline as rehearsing what God has done for everyone. If you want both, sing this and then read Psalm 40 through to verse 10, where the counting is carried into the assembly. The private total then has somewhere to go.

Sources

PraiseCharts — Million Little Miracles · (rights holder's chart page: writers Chris Brown, Steven Furtick and Brandon Lake; CCLI 7171580; publisher line; themes listed and no scripture reference given)
Wikipedia — Million Little Miracles · (album Old Church Basement, released 30 April 2021, Joe L. Barnes featured; writer credits agree with PraiseCharts)
Elevation Worship — Million Little Miracles (official upload) · (the recording checked for this proof; oEmbed returns the Elevation Worship channel)
The Berean Test — Million Little Miracles · (section-by-section reading; the enumerated items are personal circumstances, and the reviewer's own scripture support is James 1:17 and Hebrews 12:2, not Psalm 40)
Letras — Million Little Miracles · (transcription consulted for section structure and for the direct address to God; no divine person is named)
BibleHub — Psalm 40 (BSB) · (the psalm's heading, and verses 1-3 and 9-10 quoted in the context section)

Corrections

No corrections to this proof yet.

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