The Booth Brothers - I Love To Tell The Story Lyrics

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Charlotte Ritchie, Ivan Parker - Tell Me the Story of Jesus/I Love to Tell the Story (Medley) [Live]

Meaning & Inspiration

There is a peculiar tension in a medley like this, performed by Charlotte Ritchie, Ivan Parker, and The Booth Brothers. These hymns are so familiar they risk becoming wallpaper—part of the church architecture rather than a living, breathing reality. Yet, there’s a persistent insistence in the lyric: "What seems each time I tell it / More wonderfully sweet."

It’s a bold claim. Most things in life lose their luster with repetition. We burn out on songs, we grow bored with routines, and we eventually tune out stories we’ve heard a thousand times. But the text suggests that the Gospel operates on a different frequency. The repetition isn't a glitch; it’s the engine. It implies that the more you dig into the character of Christ, the less you actually know, which makes the next telling even more necessary. It isn’t about reciting facts; it’s about discovering new angles on a light that is already blinding.

Look at the line: "It satisfies my longing / As nothing else can do."

That is the Power Line.

It works because it sidesteps the usual triumphalism of religious music and lands on a raw, human ache. It admits that we are perpetually hungry, constantly reaching for things that don't quite fit the shape of our internal void. By placing this admission next to the story of Jesus, the singers aren't just performing a hymn; they are testifying to a specific kind of hunger that only one thing can fill. It turns the act of telling the story into a survival tactic. We tell it because we need to hear it as much as anyone else.

Scripture often speaks of this hunger. In John 6, Jesus identifies himself as the bread of life, the only thing that actually keeps the soul from starving. When the writers say this story "satisfies," they’re tapping into that specific biblical promise—that the Gospel isn't just moral instruction or a historical account, but a source of life that keeps the spirit from becoming malnourished.

Sometimes, hearing these voices blend, I wonder if we’ve stopped telling the story because we’ve assumed everyone already knows it. We treat it like a completed book on a shelf. But the lyrics describe a process—a "pleasant repetition." There is a vulnerability in that. To keep telling a story as if it’s fresh requires a humility that admits we still need to be told.

There’s a slight discomfort in admitting that my own "longing" isn't always satisfied by my environment or my routine. I find myself looking for things that don't satisfy, then circling back to this old, old account to see if it still holds up. It does. And yet, the end of the song leaves me looking forward, focused on a "theme in Glory" that I haven't reached yet. It remains unfinished, a loop that needs to be run again tomorrow.