"In 1987 Trish and I wrote "All Heaven Declares". When we wrote it, I thought it was OK, and I showed it to Gerald and asked what he thought - I play all my songs to Gerald because I think it's important to bounce our songs off people who have theological insight, so that we don't end up going off the rails with our songs, or putting songs which don't hold water theologically into people's hearts. He said, 'Yeah, I think it's good but I don't think it's as good as "You Laid Aside Your Majesty"', which, looking back now, was quite a humorous comment. We began to sing it, and at a meeting in Southampton once Gerald didn't preach because the Spirit of God began to move when we sang this song. We spent the rest of the evening praying with people.

"I remember going to Spring Harvest in 1988 and Dave Pope was being really encouraging about the song. He had heard it towards the end of '87, at the Evangelists' Conference, and he said, 'We've got to do this song at Spring Harvest'. Trish remembers walking around the site at Minehead, pushing our daughter, Amy, in her buggy, and she heard it being sung in the Big Top. She walked past the Alternative Celebration that I was doing, and we were singing it in there, and she walked past another celebration and Ian Traynar was doing it in there and the youth location ... and she couldn't get over all those people singing the song.

"And I remember going to Cliff College in May 1988, standing in the chapel on the first floor hearing all these people singing "All Heaven Declares". I opened the church window and looked out and saw all these people on the lawn singing it. I was gob-smacked to think that something Trish and I did in our bedroom as an expression of our heart with God was now hitting the church everywhere."

"All Heaven Declares" was a turning point for Noel. Up until this point he had been concentrating on performance-oriented material. All of a sudden a whole new avenue was opening up to him. His early albums 'Dangerline' and 'Lionheart' were more pop-gospel, Garth Hewitt-tinged albums than anything else. But suddenly one song was changing the whole direction of his ministry and his songwriting. "I thought there was a lot more songs like "All Heaven Declares" that I had the ability to write, that could really help people in their worship. It was the song that really put me on the path as a writer. It was quite astonishing really, 15 years of playing my | music, writing songs in a whole variety of situations and this one song brought me to people's attention as a writer. Since then the way people have used me has been in a worship situation more than the performance side of things."

--crossrhythms.co.uk