Lyrics - Come, Let Us Return to the Lord

[Verse 1]

All we have like sheep gone astray

Each of us has turned our own way

But God laid all our wrongs, our sins

Upon the Sinless one, His only Son

[Chorus]

Come, let us return to the Lord


Come, now all His mercies remember


How wide His love that waits to welcome us


Oh, come, let us return to the Lord

[Verse 2]

All who feel the sting of your sin


Come and lift your eyes once again


How great a price was paid to save the souls of us


Who stray, yet still we stray

[Verse 3]


God, we need Your merciful hand


Heal us from our pride, heal our land


As we turn from our ways, oh turn our hearts to You


In praise, endless praise

Words and Music by Matt Boswell, Michael Cochren, Matt Papa

Bible Memory Verse

"Come, let us return to the Lord; for he has torn us, that he may heal us; he has struck us down, and he will bind us up."

Hosea 6:1 (ESV)

Story Behind the Song

Matt Papa, Matt Boswell and Michael Cochren wrote this hymn together in 2024. There is a theme we see woven through the whole Bible of people wandering away from God and God calling them back. We so easily get lost in sin. We will only find rest and a safe and solid way for our life when we come to Him. And His mercy is always more than what we need.

This song picks up on that great biblical theme. It brings language from the Old Testament and the New Testament. Then it urges one another, sings in community, this calling to return to the Lord. 

The melody of the chorus follows a neat easy flowing pattern helping give the sense that this is our natural pattern, to keep coming back to the Lord. The melody goes higher on the big truth of the wideness of God’s love for us. We don’t need to be afraid. We can all freely come. 

It was first presented at the Sing Conference in Nashville and released in 2025 as part of a new collection of hymns for the Sing Hymnal (Hymn Number 101).

Something to Think About

When we go home in the summer to Northern Ireland the girls get excited to see green field after green field of sheep! We don’t have that in Nashville. 

Isaiah 53 says we are like sheep. Sheep need fences and shepherds to watch over them. They easily fall off steep places, wander dangerous roads, get stuck. Like us. Sin in our world and in our hearts tugs us always in wrong directions, we tend to go our own way. The problem is sin always hurts us. And God’s way, not our own way , is always are greatest good. For us and for our families and for our friends. 

Let’s use this song to encourage each other to stay close, to say sorry for our sin, to keep coming back to God’s way. Jesus described Himself as our Good Shepherd. Also the one who would lay His life down for the sheep. He has given Himself as a sacrifice for us so that we CAN return to the Lord and know forgiveness and joy forever. 

Come let us return to the Lord!

Prayer

‘At the Foot of the Cross’

(Number 102, the Sing Hymnal) 

Dear God, I cast myself at the foot of the cross, bewailing my exceeding sinfulness.

I plead your precious promises,

and earnestly pray to you to shed abroad in my heart more love, more humility, more faith, more hope, more peace and joy; in short, to fill me with all the fullness of God, and make me worthy to be a partaker of the inheritance of the saints in light.

William Wilberforce (1759-1833)

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