Songfacts®:

• This gospel/country track about the depths of a father's love was a poignant one for its co-writer Rivers Rutherford. The Nashville songwriter was worried about his own ailing daughter when Robb Royer (former bassist/guitarist for the soft rock band Bread) brought him the lyrics. He recalled:
  
  "My oldest daughter was lying in a coma at Vanderbilt Hospital when a good friend and co-writer of mine arrived and handed me a sketch of a song we had started. I told him that it was not a good time for me to think about working, but he insisted I take this piece of paper. I remember absentmindedly shoving the paper into my back pocket and muttering something like, 'see ya.'
  
  A few days later I found that typewritten sheet and glanced over it. It didn't take me long to see why he had insisted I look it over. When my daughter completely recovered I got back together with my friend and finished 'Raise Him Up.'"
• The narrator recalls meeting his significant other when she was a teen mother and deciding to take the boy as his own and "raise him up." He compares the situation to Joseph raising Jesus as his own son despite not being his biological father.