Single · 25 April 2025
Our Father
The Lord’s Prayer as techno house — and the note he wrote about it contains the plainest statement of what this entire catalogue is for.
No email, no account, no catch. It is yours to keep and yours to pass on.
The storyMatthew 6:9–13Isaiah 64:82 Chronicles 7:141 Chronicles 29:11Psalm 86:15
Our Father arrived with the YHWH EP on 25 April 2025, completing it, and it is deliberately the odd one out on it. Four of the songs are contemporary Christian; this one is techno house, with an instrumental version alongside it. Putting the Lord’s Prayer in the most energetic room available is the point rather than an accident.
Most of the lyric is Matthew 6, and it was written during a study of how to pray and how to seek God’s will rather than one’s own. But it does not stay in that chapter. It picks up Isaiah 64:8 — we are the clay, you are the potter, the works of your hands, the same verse DNA is built on. It picks up 2 Chronicles 7:14, almost word for word: humble ourselves, pray, turn from our wicked ways, heal our land. It ends on 1 Chronicles 29:11, which is where the traditional closing of the prayer comes from in the first place. Four prayers, stitched into one, over a dance beat.
What makes the song matter more than that is the note he wrote to go with it. He is unusually blunt in it about what kind of father he means.
Heavenly Father is not a deadbeat father. He is near. He is present. His concern for us touches our biggest problems and smallest details. He hears our cries before we ever speak a word.Yemi Alafifuni
That is not devotional language. Deadbeat is a word with a specific accusation in it, and he uses it to say what God is not, in a catalogue where the first song was about a father who was present and not there.
And then the sentence underneath everything he has released since 2018.
Heavenly Father fills in all the gaps where earthly fathers fail.On what he has been writing about for twenty years
He has spent twenty years circling that idea in songs — Padre, Prodigal Father, Found, Home, Deep, DNA — and here, in the sleeve note of a techno record, he simply states it.
We are not praying to a distant, uninvolved, abstract thing called god. We are praying to the living God. And His answer is always: I’m here. I’ve got you.On what the prayer assumes
The EP ends on a loop of the doxology, and then on two words: never end.
In his own words
Yemi on Our FatherHow God's will answers prayer.Film3:59Lyrics
Our Father who art in heaven Hallowed be thy name in heaven Your kingdom, Your will be done here Our Father who art in heaven
Our Father who reigns forever Creator, Master, Ruler Captain of my heart Redeemer, Lover of our soul
We are the clay You are the potter We are the works of your hands
You are supreme Awesome in wonder
Our Father Good Father Great God
Your people called by your name We humble ourselves and pray Turn from our wicked ways Our Father, come and heal our land
We are the clay You are the potter We are the works of your hands
You are supreme Awesome in wonder
Our Father Good Father Great God
Our Father Good Father Great God
Our Father Good Father Great God
For yours is the glory Dominion and power Worthy of all our praises
Yours is the glory Dominion and power Kingdom will never end
For yours is the glory Dominion and power Worthy of all our praises
Yours is the glory Dominion and power Kingdom will never end
never end
Credits
- Written by
- Yemi Alafifuni
- Produced by
- Ian Copeland Green
- Released
- 25 April 2025
- Length
- 3:58
- ISRC
- TCAIU2412850
- Label
- Yemi Alafifuni — self-released
- Versions
- Our FatherOur Father (Instrumental) · Free, alongside the MP3Our Father · Track four of the YHWH EP
Scripture
“Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.”
Matthew 6:9–13
“But now, O Lord, thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand.”
Isaiah 64:8
“If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will heal their land.”
2 Chronicles 7:14
“Thine, O Lord, is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty.”
1 Chronicles 29:11
“But thou, O Lord, art a God full of compassion, and gracious, longsuffering, and plenteous in mercy and truth.”
Psalm 86:15
