In 2000, when Shaun Groves and his new wife, Becky, moved to Nashville, he was an unknown songwriter. A year later, when Rocketown Records released "Welcome Home" to radio, Groves was acclaimed for his insightful lyrics that reflected the bare-bones honesty of a searching, passionate faith. "Welcome Home" shot to number one on the charts for four weeks, and Groves got a Songwriter of the Year nomination from the Dove Awards.

The song itself was inspired by the couple's relocation and the purchase of their new home which Groves describes as ugly. "We were just starting out," he remembers. "Everything from the wallpaper and paint to the garbage left in the attic needed to be undone, redone, covered up, and taken down."

As the young couple worked together every weekend and evening to turn the house into a home, a verse kept coming into Shaun's mind: "For the eyes of the Lord move to and fro throughout the earth that He may strongly support those whose heart is completely His" (2 Chron. 16:9, NAS).

One day, as he was painting a wall, he realized that the home redecoration process was a lot like sanctification—the process of becoming like Christ. "It dawned on me that sanctification is the process of turning a heart into a home," he says. "I reflected on my own life and could see the times that I hid trash in the closets—sin ignored and unconfessed. I knew I had painted rooms in greed and selfish ambition, despair and depression, bitterness and anger. I asked Him to take over every room of my heart until it was a perfect reflection of His character and personality."

Today, Groves is busy touring in support of his latest CD, White Flag, but he's always amazed at the response to "Welcome Home." He receives e-mails all the time from new believers who repeated the song's lyrics when they didn't know what else to pray. "That's a humbling thing," he says, "to know that a song you wrote in the bathroom is the first thing someone wants to say to God."

Lyrics by Shaun Groves, © 2001 New Spring Publishing, Inc./ascap.

Linda Owen is a writer based in San Antonio.

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