Jenn Johnson - Chasing You Lyrics

Video

Chasing You (Official Lyric Video) - Jenn Johnson | Tides

Meaning & Inspiration

My hands are spotted now, the skin like thin parchment, and the joints ache when the rain rolls in off the valley. I spent a long time sitting in hard wooden pews, thumbing through hymnals where the edges were soft and frayed, back when the singing was slow and we didn’t much talk about "chasing."

Jenn Johnson sings about running. She sings about the thrill, the rush, the "wild, crazy adventure." And I find myself leaning back in my chair, looking at the dust motes dancing in the afternoon light, wondering if I have any running left in these old bones. When the nights are long and the house is quiet, "the rush" feels like a strange language, something from a country I visited a lifetime ago but can’t quite map anymore.

There’s a line here that catches in my throat: “You hide, I want to find You.”

We are taught early on that God is a steady presence, a rock, a fortress. But there is a particular kind of grace in the hiding. I’ve known years where He felt absent—not because He had left, but because He was drawing me into the quiet, dark places where words stop working. When you’re young, you want the adrenaline, the feeling of the pursuit. But when you’ve buried friends and watched your own strength diminish, you realize that the “chase” isn't always about sprinting. Sometimes, it’s just staying put when you don't feel anything at all. It’s the persistence of a soul that refuses to leave the room even when the Master of the house seems to have gone upstairs.

Psalm 27 says, “My heart says of you, ‘Seek his face!’ Your face, Lord, I will seek.” I used to read that as a command to get busy. Now, I see it as a sigh of relief. It’s the only thing left to do.

The song talks about being "captivated," and I think about the martyrs and the saints who didn’t have a "rush" to keep them going, just a grim, beautiful necessity. If you’re young, maybe you need this song to give your legs some fire. You need to believe that your affection is the thing that keeps the universe spinning. That’s fine. Let the young run. They have the breath for it.

But for me? The words don't feel like a sprint anymore. They feel like a tether. I don’t know if I’m "chasing" Him as much as I’m just trying to keep my eyes fixed on the door where He exited, waiting for the floorboards to creak. Maybe that’s what it means to be "in love" after the adrenaline fades—it’s just being unable to look at anything else.

It leaves me with a quiet, lingering question: when the "thrill" inevitably dips, when the heart isn't racing but just beating slow and steady against the ribs, is that enough? I think it has to be. I think that’s where the real mystery starts.