“How Great Thou Art” in Josh Turner’s hands becomes less a performance than a kneeling—an unhurried moment where a deep voice makes room for wonder, and wonder makes room for gratitude.
When Josh Turner released “How Great Thou Art” (feat. Sonya Isaacs) in October 2018, it wasn’t the usual country-radio move—no clever hook, no modern heartbreak twist, no hurry to impress. It was a deliberate step into older, steadier ground: a hymn that has survived generations precisely because it doesn’t chase the moment. Turner’s recording belongs to his faith-centered album I Serve a Savior, released October 26, 2018 on MCA Nashville, with “How Great Thou Art” placed as track 7—right where the record’s emotional weight begins to glow rather than merely shine.
At release, the album’s chart story quietly underscored how wide the song’s reach still is. I Serve a Savior debuted at No. 2 on Billboard’s Top Country Albums (chart dated Nov. 10, 2018) with reported first-week units around 15,000. Industry reporting and label statements also noted it arriving No. 2 on Billboard’s Top Christian Albums, and No. 1 on Nielsen’s Country Albums chart in that same opening week—proof that a gospel-minded project could still move like a major event. The song itself wasn’t built for a “hit single” race; its success is more durable than that—measured in how it settles into listeners’ lives, not how fast it climbs a weekly ladder.
The hymn’s own backstory is the kind that makes you listen differently. “How Great Thou Art” began as “O Store Gud,” a Swedish poem written in 1885 by Carl Boberg. Decades later, English missionary Stuart K. Hine shaped the widely sung English version, publishing his form of the hymn in 1949 (a loose translation and adaptation that became the standard refrain the world knows). That history matters because the hymn is not merely a pretty melody—it’s a long chain of awe being passed hand to hand, language to language, until it reaches a voice like Turner’s.
And that voice—so famously low, so naturally resonant—turns out to be a perfect vessel for this particular lyric. Turner doesn’t treat the hymn like a showpiece. He treats it like a landscape. The opening lines (“O Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder…”) already hold the posture of someone looking up at the night sky and realizing how small human certainty really is. In Turner’s recording, that posture becomes physical: the phrases feel grounded, almost spoken into the room, while the melody lifts gently overhead.
A key detail: this recording is credited as “How Great Thou Art (feat. Sonya Isaacs)”—and that feature matters. Sonya Isaacs isn’t there to decorate the track; she’s there to soften the edges, to add a second human contour to the prayer. In the credits for the track, Kenny Greenberg appears as producer (and an instrumental presence), anchoring the performance in a warm, roots-forward sound rather than glossy spectacle. The result is reverent without being stiff: you can hear the musicianship, but you can also hear the humility.
What does the song mean when Turner sings it in 2018—long after the hymn has been sung in churches, funerals, weddings, and quiet kitchens? It means the same thing it has always meant, but with an added shade of modern longing: in an era trained to look down at glowing screens, the hymn insists on looking up. It insists on astonishment. Stars. Thunder. The “worlds Thy hands have made.” It’s a reminder that faith, at its most sincere, is not swagger. It is wonder—wonder so overwhelming it spills into the only language that can hold it: Then sings my soul…
If you listen closely, you can hear why Turner chose to record this hymn as part of I Serve a Savior rather than simply sing it once on a holiday stage and move on. The album is designed like a testimony in chapters, and “How Great Thou Art” functions as one of its most universal pages—one that doesn’t require you to know Turner’s biography at all. You only need to know what it feels like to stand before something larger than yourself—nature, time, loss, love, grace—and realize that the heart’s truest response is not explanation, but praise.
In the end, Josh Turner doesn’t modernize “How Great Thou Art.” He returns it—patiently, respectfully—to its original purpose: a song for the moments when words run out, and awe takes over.
