I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the LORD.--Psalm 122:1
What is it that we do in the House of the Lord? Luke 19:46 records Christ's echo of Isaiah 56:7, "My house will be a house of prayer for all nations!" We worship, we pray, we praise, we sing unto the Lord our God with shouts of joy and thanksgiving! All the days of my life, while I have breath, I will give thanks to the Lord, our God! Sing O Israel, Sing to the Lord!
We often hear from our Worship Leader, Ted, "Pray the words of this next song!" Jimmy Swaggert once said, "Music, ladies and gentleman, is the gift of God! It was given to man to offer praises to God and to lift us up to him and to exalt Him! To touch the tender recesses of our hearts and of our minds." So tender are those recesses, so tender and soft is that secret place reserved just for God. Many people confuse singing as our gift to Him. Is it not His gift to us? Lewis notes in his "The Weight of Glory" that these allusions to music in the New Testament are heavenly only because they speak the words that words cannot. The secret place in our hearts and memory whispering of heaven, wounding it as we do calling it names such as 'nostalgia.' That feeling we get in prayer, music and praise that would wonderously drown us, waves pounding over our head if ever we got a hold of it longer than He allowed? (Perhaps, in such withdrawing, Christ saves us from making a god of the music itself.)
Does music play such a role in prayer, worship and thanksgiving? Why? Why do most people think of music, in whatever form it may take, when they think of "worship?" Is it not that we, who are too fragile and finite, forget the wonders of God and the presence His Spirit has - that in prayer, thanksgiving and song we are reminded of, indeed returned to a certain portion of His incomparable love?
There is a saying in my family that what words cannot say, music and tears can. How can we say the name of the God who has no name or praise the Lord whom no temple can hold? We must sing His praise and give Him our heart as His temple. We sing these songs, this long history of psalm-speak, from the depths of our heart that nothing save music can fathom. Song is a thing so powerful, thanksgiving a thing so powerful, the "oneness" of the union we feel with the God of the Universe in His praise, a thing so powerful that when it comes, we forget all else. Nothing outside God matters. Nothing save Christ. And when it goes, and it must go, we ache for it. In the praise, the music, we are caught up in something other worldly, heavenly, intangible, that when it fleets away, it goes "like the water washing away on a beach, just being pulled back, so big and strong you can't stop it."(1)
But is the music we sing only a thing that strikes emotional and sentimental chords? Or are these the emotional and sentimental tremors that are meant to shake us to our knees in praise? Why must we continue to sing these praises and songs if we know they are merely sparking chemical reactions in our brains? Does it matter the nature of their workings?
No.
It matters that you allow it to take hold and take root. That you allow the growing vine to plant itself in your heart, that your soil is neither shallow, nor overgrown, nor untended. That even when the music doesn't sway you, you sing along with It, and the Conductor to Orchestrate. You will at times be the flute, at times the crashing symbol. But it is all part of the Great Symphony. Be glad, be joyful and be thankful, just avoid tooting your own horn.
I was glad when they said, let us go unto the house of the Lord!
(1) Anne Rice, "Christ the Lord; Out of Eygpt" pg 98
We often hear from our Worship Leader, Ted, "Pray the words of this next song!" Jimmy Swaggert once said, "Music, ladies and gentleman, is the gift of God! It was given to man to offer praises to God and to lift us up to him and to exalt Him! To touch the tender recesses of our hearts and of our minds." So tender are those recesses, so tender and soft is that secret place reserved just for God. Many people confuse singing as our gift to Him. Is it not His gift to us? Lewis notes in his "The Weight of Glory" that these allusions to music in the New Testament are heavenly only because they speak the words that words cannot. The secret place in our hearts and memory whispering of heaven, wounding it as we do calling it names such as 'nostalgia.' That feeling we get in prayer, music and praise that would wonderously drown us, waves pounding over our head if ever we got a hold of it longer than He allowed? (Perhaps, in such withdrawing, Christ saves us from making a god of the music itself.)
Does music play such a role in prayer, worship and thanksgiving? Why? Why do most people think of music, in whatever form it may take, when they think of "worship?" Is it not that we, who are too fragile and finite, forget the wonders of God and the presence His Spirit has - that in prayer, thanksgiving and song we are reminded of, indeed returned to a certain portion of His incomparable love?
There is a saying in my family that what words cannot say, music and tears can. How can we say the name of the God who has no name or praise the Lord whom no temple can hold? We must sing His praise and give Him our heart as His temple. We sing these songs, this long history of psalm-speak, from the depths of our heart that nothing save music can fathom. Song is a thing so powerful, thanksgiving a thing so powerful, the "oneness" of the union we feel with the God of the Universe in His praise, a thing so powerful that when it comes, we forget all else. Nothing outside God matters. Nothing save Christ. And when it goes, and it must go, we ache for it. In the praise, the music, we are caught up in something other worldly, heavenly, intangible, that when it fleets away, it goes "like the water washing away on a beach, just being pulled back, so big and strong you can't stop it."(1)
But is the music we sing only a thing that strikes emotional and sentimental chords? Or are these the emotional and sentimental tremors that are meant to shake us to our knees in praise? Why must we continue to sing these praises and songs if we know they are merely sparking chemical reactions in our brains? Does it matter the nature of their workings?
No.
It matters that you allow it to take hold and take root. That you allow the growing vine to plant itself in your heart, that your soil is neither shallow, nor overgrown, nor untended. That even when the music doesn't sway you, you sing along with It, and the Conductor to Orchestrate. You will at times be the flute, at times the crashing symbol. But it is all part of the Great Symphony. Be glad, be joyful and be thankful, just avoid tooting your own horn.
I was glad when they said, let us go unto the house of the Lord!
(1) Anne Rice, "Christ the Lord; Out of Eygpt" pg 98
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