Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus is a timeless hymn written by Helen Howarth Lemmel. In this lesson, you’ll learn how to play it step by step: the guitar chords, melody with sheet music and tabs, and even a finger-style arrangement. Grab your guitar and let’s bring this beautiful song to life together.

How to read the guitar chord charts

To clarify how to read the chord charts in the next section, the top horizontal line represents the high E string and the bottom horizontal line represents the low E string. The vertical lines separate each fret. The numbers in the blue dots tell you which fingers to use on the fretting hand. 

For example, on the A Major chord, you use the:

• 1st finger on the 4th string, 2nd fret
• 2nd finger on the 3rd string, 2nd fret
• 3rd finger on the 2nd string, 2nd fret
• Circles represent open strings
• X means to avoid the string

You can check this link for more on how to read guitar notation symbols.

Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus – Guitar Chords

In the key of A Major, the basic chords for this song are A Major, D Major, B minor, E Major, B Major, C# minor, and F# minor. You can click on the chords with links to learn different ways of playing that chord.

Try the following chords one at a time until you feel comfortable switching between them. These chords will be written above the melody in the next section.

By the way, you can get the PDFs of this song below.

Here are some other resources on chords:

• Master the basic chords on guitar
• 6 tips to get better at switching between chords on guitar
• How to play barre chords and 5 tips to get better at playing them!
  

Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus guitar tabs

This section shows you the melody of the song with guitar tabs and the chords written above the staff. Keep in mind that the melody and chords are meant to be played as separate parts. We’ll look at how to connect these parts later in the arrangement section of this lesson.

You can refer to this simple guide to understanding music symbols if needed.

You can learn a finger-style guitar arrangement of this song after the lyrics below.

Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus Lyrics

Verse 1:
O soul, are you weary and troubled?
No light in the darkness you see?
There’s light for a look at the Savior,
And life more abundant and free!

Chorus:
Turn your eyes upon Jesus,
Look full in His wonderful face,
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim,
In the light of His glory and grace.

Verse 2:
Thro’ death into life everlasting,
He passed, and we follow Him there;
O’er us sin no more hath dominion–
For more than conqu’rors we are!

Verse 3:
His Word shall not fail you–He promised;
Believe Him, and all will be well:
Then go to a world that is dying,
His perfect salvation to tell!

Reference: Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus. hymnary.org

Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus guitar arrangement

In this section, we are essentially connecting the melody and chords together using a finger-style method of playing. The numbers next to some notes on the top staff indicate which fingers to use on the fretting hand.

Some of the chords in this guitar arrangement have been modified such as using chord inversions, and 7th chords. If needed, check out this other lesson to learn how to finger pick on guitar.

If you like this style of playing, you can check out this lesson to learn how to connect a melody and chords on guitar.

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Want to learn more songs? Check out the sheet music with guitar tabs resource on this site.

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