Songfacts®:

• The message of this song has proved to be meaningful to a lot of people, touching many lives. When Songfacts asked Michael W. Smith if there are any stories that have stuck with him as far as how it's inspired people, he replied: "Well, the one story I remember vividly, I could still go back to reading the letter, was some young girl, I think she was 18 or 19 years old, and had a horrific childhood in terms of abuse and that sort of thing. And she was suicidal. She gave me this whole story in a two page letter. She was driving down the freeway and listening to a pop radio station and heard 'Place In This World' and pulled over and began to weep. And had this encounter with God on the side of the interstate. And her life forever changed. And that's the one that I'll never forget. There's been plenty of people talk about 'A Place In This World' but that's the one letter that I'll never forget."
• Peaking at #6 on the Billboard Hot 100, this was a big crossover hit for the Christian singer, but it wasn't his first attempt at success outside the CCM realm. Back in 1985, his management team thought he was ready for a mainstream leap after Amy Grant landed her first secular pop hit with the Smith-penned single "Find A Way." A&M was set to release his 1986 soft-rock album, The Big Picture, to the general market but backed out at the last minute, and it was released via the Christian label Reunion instead, followed by his 1988 album, i 2 (EYE).
  
  Smith had all but given up hope for a crossover when Go West Young Man dropped in 1990 and was shocked when its lead single thrust him into the limelight. Although he earned another entry in the Top 40 the following year ("I Will Be Here For You," also a #1 Adult Contemporary hit), he still considers himself a one-hit wonder in the pop world.
  
  "'Place In This World' was a fluke," Smith is quoted in the Encyclopedia of Contemporary Christian Music by Mark Allan Powell. "There was no marketing set up for it. There was just a woman at Geffen (Clare West) who went in there and it just took off."
• Go West Young Man was Smith's first Platinum-certified album, with one million copies sold in the US.
• Smith wrote "Place In This World" with Amy Grant and Nashville songwriter Wayne Kirkpatrick. Kirkpatrick co-wrote another "world" hit a few years later: "Change The World," which was first recorded by Wynonna Judd but popularized by Eric Clapton's Grammy-winning cover in 1996.
• This won the GMA Dove Award for Song of the Year in 1992.