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Psalm 63:1-4 vs. “Step by Step”

Rich Mullins · checked 2026-08-21

What we checked

PassagePsalm 63:1-4 chapter ↗
Translation shownBSB (Berean Standard Bible)
Presents itself asinspired-by
Categorynot a quote
AlbumThe World As Best As I Remember It, Vol. 1 · 1991
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

  • Never says it is quoting at all: no verse cited, no translation named, no scripture framing, and the publisher's own chart lists no reference
  • Opens where Psalm 63 opens, addressing God directly and personally, which is the psalm's own posture
  • Nothing it asks or promises is something the psalm denies. A lifetime resolve is exactly what verse 4 states
  • The writer credit is recoverable. The label's delivery metadata, the publisher's chart, and Hymnary all name David Strasser
  • Short enough to be learned in one hearing, which is why eighteen hymnals carry it

⚠ Cautions

  • Psalm 63 puts its reason before its resolve. Verse 3 gives the ground, that God's loving devotion is better than life, and verse 4 gives the lifetime promise. The song has the resolve without stating a ground for it
  • The song's step-by-step leading is not in Psalm 63 at all, and neither is the morning seeking in that wording. Reference indexes attach up to ten passages to it, which is a sign of echo rather than citation
  • Widely credited to Rich Mullins. The words are Beaker's, and the version with Mullins' verses is a separate copyright under a separate title
  • The psalm's own setting, a man in a waterless place with people hunting him, is nowhere in the song. Sung as a general morning chorus it will not carry that weight, and it is not trying to

Verse Proof

Psalm 63:1-4

The text in BSB (Berean Standard Bible)

“O God, You are my God. Earnestly I seek You; my soul thirsts for You. My body yearns for You in a dry and weary land without water. So I have seen You in the sanctuary and beheld Your power and glory. Because Your loving devotion is better than life, my lips will glorify You. So I will bless You as long as I live; in Your name I will lift my hands.”

The Berean Standard Bible prints a superscription above verse 1: “A Psalm of David, when he was in the Wilderness of Judah.” The words are one man's, spoken to God, from a place with no water in it. The thirst of verse 1 is bodily before it is a figure of speech, since the psalm names the body alongside the soul. Verses 2 to 4 look backward and then forward: the psalmist has seen God's power in the sanctuary, and on that basis he sets out what he intends to do for the rest of his life. Verse 3 supplies the reason before verse 4 supplies the resolve. The psalm keeps going past verse 4 into satisfaction, wakeful nights, and finally the undoing of the men hunting him. It is not a calm devotional. It is a decision made under pressure.

What the song says, described not quoted

The song is short, under three minutes on the album, and returns later on the same record as a reprise. It opens by addressing God directly and naming Him as the singer's own God, then states a resolve to praise Him always. What follows is a run of first-person commitments: to seek God at the beginning of the day, to learn God's ways, and to keep following for a lifetime. One line belongs to God rather than to the singer and says that the leading comes in increments rather than all at once. That line supplies the title. No verse is cited anywhere in the song, no translation is named, and nothing frames the words as a quotation.

The song's first line is Psalm 63:1's opening address in ordinary English, and after that the two part company. None of the psalm's distinctive material survives into the song: no thirst, no dry land, no body, no sanctuary, no power and glory seen, no loving devotion better than life, no lifted hands. What the song keeps is the address and a lifetime resolve, and verse 4 is where the psalm puts its own lifetime resolve. The song's other images are closer to psalms it was not assigned. Seeking God at daybreak sits nearer Psalm 5:3, “In the morning, O LORD, You hear my voice; at daybreak I lay my plea before You and wait in expectation.” Being led a step at a time is nearer Psalm 17:5, “My steps have held to Your paths; my feet have not slipped,” though even there the steps are the psalmist's own rather than God's leading of them. Worth noting who attaches the psalm to the song. Hymnary's text authority page lists ten passages behind it, Psalm 63:1-8 among them, and Word to Worship lists Psalm 63:1 first. The publisher's own chord chart at PraiseCharts lists a set of themes and no scripture reference at all. So the Psalm 63 connection is an indexer's reading of the song, not something the song or its rights holder points at.

· Not a quote: The song cites no verse, names no translation, and carries no scripture reference on its publisher's own chart. So it never says it is quoting. It shares Psalm 63's opening address and its lifetime resolve. It shares none of the psalm's distinctive images.

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

One of the choruses most firmly attached to Rich Mullins was written by somebody else, and the record label's own credit says so.

Why it matters

This chorus is in eighteen hymnals and is one of the pieces most firmly attached to Rich Mullins' name, and he did not write it. David Strasser, who published as Beaker, wrote it in 1991, and the label's own delivery metadata for the album track credits him alone as composer and lyricist.

That matters here for a practical reason rather than a moral one. A year later Mullins added his own verses and the result went out under a different title, with a second copyright year, a second publisher, and a second licensing number. Two works now sit behind one familiar tune. A church that looks up “Step by Step” and a church that looks up “Sometimes by Step” are not reporting the same song, and a listener who calls the whole thing a Rich Mullins song is crediting the wrong writer for the part that gets sung.

Is it safe to dwell on?

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

Count who the words are about and you get a split. God is addressed in every line, and He is the object of every verb, but the singer is the grammatical subject of most of them. What repetition plants here is a vow. Sung on a loop it rehearses turning toward God first thing, learning rather than arriving, and expecting guidance that comes one increment at a time instead of as a visible road. Those are good things to have worn into you, and the increment picture in particular is honest about how most people actually experience being led.

The one thing a vow cannot supply is its own reason, and that is where the psalm behind it does more than the song. Psalm 63 does not begin with what the psalmist will do. It begins with thirst, then with what he has seen, then with a statement about God that is worth more to him than staying alive, and only then does it get to a lifetime of blessing God. If you sing this chorus often, read verse 3 with it. The resolve holds better when the reason is underneath it.

Helpful comparison

The paperwork is unusually clean on this one, which is why it is worth laying out. “Step by Step” opens Volume 1 of *The World As Best As I Remember It*, runs 2:39, and is credited to Beaker alone; a reprise closes the record with the same credit. “Sometimes by Step” opens Volume 2 the following year, runs 4:53, and is credited to Mullins and Beaker together. The Kid Brothers of St. Frank album page prints the second song's copyright with two dates and two publishers side by side, 1992 for Edward Grant, Inc. and 1991 for Kid Brothers of St. Frank, which is the seam between the two writers made visible in a copyright line. The licensing numbers separate them too: CCLI 696994 for the 1991 chorus, CCLI 915125 for the 1992 expansion.

Hymnals have not all kept the two apart. Hymnary's tune page for the 1991 tune shows the credit rendered several different ways across books, some naming Strasser alone, some adding Mullins, and at least one adding a third name. The copyright line on that same page names only the two 1991 publishers. When editors disagree, the copyright line is the checkable thing.

Sources

Corrections

No corrections to this proof yet.

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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 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 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 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 “All Creatures of Our God and King” Sovereign Grace Music Psalm 148:7-10 Sing it. Nothing here is presented as scripture. Its resemblance to Psalm 148 comes from Draper's English, which turned Francis's praise of God for creation into a call addressed to creation.

✓ Says it is nothing but a song. No verse is cited on the recording, no translation is named, and the credit line points at the poem it came from rather than at a chapter of the Bible

⚠ The Psalm 148 resemblance belongs to the English. Francis's Italian praises God for the sun and moon and calls them brother and sister rather than ordering them to praise. A singer told this is Francis's Psalm 148 is being told two things, and only one of them is checkable

 NOT A QUOTE “Chain Breaker” Zach Williams Psalm 107:13-16 Sing it. It quotes nothing and never says it is scripture, and what it says God does is what Psalm 107 says God does. Read the psalm beside it, where the rescue starts with a cry.

✓ Everything it says God does is something scripture says God does. Broken chains and an opened prison are Psalm 107's own images, and a shaken prison is Acts 16's

⚠ Three worship catalogues list three different scripture sets behind it, and the song supplies none of them. Anything you hear about "the verse" behind this song comes from a cataloguer, not the writers

 NOT A QUOTE “Awesome God” Rich Mullins Deuteronomy 7:21 Sing it, and sing the verses. Nothing here is quoting scripture, and nothing in it is false. The chorus states a conclusion. The verses are where the song shows its working.

✓ Never says it is quoting: no chapter and verse, no translation, nothing framed as scripture

⚠ Sung as a chorus on its own, which is the common practice, the song keeps its conclusion and loses its grounds

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