Lyrics Page
Just Doin' Your Thing
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Oct 3, 2026 updated
Verified editorial review
Song Meaning
Josh Garrels builds this track around a before-and-after testimony: a self-described poor boy with sickness in his bones, rejected and unprotected, who is met by a father figure who makes him wealthy and healthy instead. The imagery stays physical and unglamorous — cliff diving, capsizing, hitchhiking through the wilderness, bearing consequences as a stranger — until the singer is picked up and greeted with kindness rather than anger. The chorus keeps the theology plain: freedom and baptism arrive not through the singer's effort but through God simply doing his thing, and the only fitting response is to sing. The song's second half shifts into a rapid-fire warning, clock hands and lightning, a tightrope walk over chalk-white hopes, the devil as a friend who leaves poison in your blood. Garrels stacks images of a smoke stack, a heavy train rounding the bends, and a levee that will eventually break, urging listeners to get on board before the flood. It's a conversion narrative that refuses to stay sentimental, ending on escape from mud and a one-way departure rather than a tidy resolution.
Lyrics Verified by Editorial Team
I was a poor boy, Papa, when you decided you would make me wealthy
I had the sickness in my bones I was sure enough far from home
You made me healthy
I was rejected, dejected, uncorrected, unprotected, defected from my people
I was contriving, cliff diving, capsizing, no freedom rising from that deep hole
But you made free, and I must sing
You baptized me, just doin' your thing
I had the feeling all along that there was something peering strong over my shoulder
And it got closer through the years through abandonment and tears as I got older
Hitchhiking through the wilderness and bearing all my consequence I was a stranger
You picked me up on sixty six, met me with love and kindness instead of anger
And you made me free, and I must sing
You baptize me, just doin' your thing
Now it's a quarter 'til the clock strikes, and hopefully the shock might
Hit you like a rock fight or like a butcher's block might
Quick as lightning shock kite comes the key to lock tight
The door on which he knock right now until it's not night
Everybody walk tight rope until their chalk white hopes
Are wiped away by the wind
If the devil's your friend you got a burden on your back
And some poison in your blood
It's a burden to unpack, leave it behind in the mud
Click clack goes the old smoke stack and when it leaves
It ain't never coming back
So you best be ready when the train comes steady
It's rollin' heavy 'round the bends, get on board my friend
For the land of Lord cause the levee's gonna break, in the end
You made me free, and I must sing
You baptized me, just doin' your thing