What "What Would You Do" means
The title frames the song as a direct address to God, a question posed at close range. Not a theological inquiry for a classroom. A conversation between a person and a God who is close enough to answer. Elevation Worship built this song around the idea that faith, when it is honest, sometimes sounds like a question. "What would you do?" is the language of someone who has decided to entrust an outcome to God rather than manage it themselves. It is not a passive question. It is an act of surrender dressed as an inquiry. The posture behind the lyric is one of the more mature postures in Christian spirituality: releasing the need to control an outcome while remaining fully engaged in the relationship with the one who holds it. The song explores what it looks like to believe that God will act, in the specific situation, in the specific life, of the specific person singing. The lyrical frame invites the congregation to place their own unanswered questions inside the song. What would you do, God, with this situation I cannot fix? The open-endedness is a pastoral feature.
What this song does in a room
At 95 BPM with Elevation's production framework behind it, this song sits in the mid-energy register, moving enough to keep the room engaged but not so driven that it requires a particular emotional intensity to participate. The song works across a fairly wide range of congregational readiness, which makes it a versatile mid-set choice. The question in the title creates a participatory dynamic. When the congregation sings "what would you do," they are not just repeating a lyric. They are making a personal declaration of entrusting. That is a meaningful act, and rooms that have been primed for it by a message or a moment of honest acknowledgment of need will respond with depth. The song also works in a room that has not been prepared in that way. The melody and the production carry people into the posture before they have necessarily decided to be there.
What this song is saying about God
The song is saying that God is trustworthy with what you cannot carry. It is making the claim that surrender is not a loss. Releasing your grip on an outcome and asking God what he would do with it is not weakness. It is the specific kind of faith that the New Testament calls trust, and it is modeled throughout Scripture by people who had every reason to keep holding on. The God the song describes is not a disinterested sovereign receiving petitions from a distance. He is a present God who responds, who acts, who does things with what is released to him. The question in the title implies a genuine expectation that there is an answer. You would not ask "what would you do?" if you believed the answer was nothing. The song assumes, without arguing for it, that God is going to do something. The act of asking is an act of confidence in his character.
Scriptural backbone
Philippians 4:6-7 holds the central nerve: "Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." The structure of that passage, release the anxiety, bring the request, receive the peace, is the structure the song moves through. Proverbs 3:5-6 runs alongside: "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight." The posture of the song is this verse in musical form. Psalm 37:5, "Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him and he will do this," provides the shortest version: commit, trust, watch what God does. The song is an extended meditation on that three-part movement.
How to use it in a service
This song works well after a message that has named a specific area of human struggle or unresolved tension. It gives the congregation a worship-language vehicle for doing what the message asked them to do. It also works mid-set when you want to lead the congregation from celebration into surrender, from acknowledgment of who God is into a personal response of trust. The 95 BPM feel keeps it from feeling heavy or burdensome even as the lyrical content deals with surrender, which is a dynamic achievement worth noting. If you are building a set around the theme of faith and action, this song sits well in the space between the two: after faith has been declared, before the congregation is sent out to act on it.
Things to watch for as the worship leader
The interrogative posture of the song requires you to mean the question. If you sing "what would you do" in a way that sounds like an affirmation rather than a genuine opening toward God, the congregation will sing it as affirmation too, and the act of surrender the song is designed to produce will not happen. Keep the question actually open when you deliver it. There is a specific pastoral moment available in this song for people who are carrying situations they cannot resolve. Move through the song with them in mind. The bridge, if the song has one, is often where the declaration of trust arrives most fully. Let it be the moment it is designed to be. Watch your energy levels across the full song. 95 BPM is in a register where a distracted band or leader can let the energy drift without the tempo technically changing. Keep the room engaged across the full arc.
A note for the team behind you (techs, vocalists, band)
Drummers: the groove at 95 BPM should feel forward-moving without being pushy. A clean two-and-four backbeat with a kick pattern that drives the verse forward. Avoid heavy syncopation that could pull against the melodic flow. The transition into the bridge should be marked with a clear fill that gives the room a signal. Keyboardists: the pad layer is important here for building the sustained sense of openness the song requires. Keep the attack soft and let the pads swell rather than land. Piano should complement the pad, not compete with it. Guitarists: at 95 BPM, the rhythm guitar part should be rhythmically precise. Keep the strumming patterns clean and resist the urge to play busy fills in the spaces between vocal phrases. Those spaces are breathing room for the congregation. Bassists: keep the low end solid and the note choices melodic in the verses. The bass can be slightly more active in the chorus without losing the pocket. Background vocalists: the harmonies in a song structured around surrender should feel like they are supporting the lead, not building a production. Keep them close and warm. Come in gradually rather than arriving at full voice from the first chorus. Sound tech, at 95 BPM the mix needs to be energized enough to match the tempo without cluttering the space the song's question needs to breathe. Keep the low-mids clean, the vocal forward, and the reverb tail shorter than you might use for a slower song so the words stay present and intelligible at tempo.