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I Corinthians 14:15
Excerpted from: Exalt With MusicNow we are beginning to add another aspect to this. If music—God's music, the Psalms, the spiritual songs—is going to have its greatest impact, it is going to be something that is done with the mood intended by the composer and the writing of the music, combined with an understanding of what the words mean.
When we are singing the Psalms, there is nothing better that a person could approach God with than His own words. It is interesting to note that in the Psalms, God preserved the words, not the music. He is telling us, there, which is the more important of the two.
At the same time, it also allows for a wide variation of melodic taste from age to age; and at the same time, it keeps the rhythm, the beat, the melody, harmony, structured within the truth of God. There is no better way to get your prayers answered than to tell God His own words back to Him. "This is what you said, God. You are going to do it, are you not?" I do not mean this in a flippant way at all. He will not go back on what He has said.
Now when you add the music to it, you add a dimension that includes not just the bare words, which can be given in a platonic way, coldly, without heart, maybe with some understanding, but when you put the music together with it, it has the right kind of feeling right with it as well. What impact that must have on God; there is nobody in all creation that loves music more than He does. He created it to please Him, and to be a teaching vehicle for you and me. A teaching vehicle, combined with impulses, with feeling that we cannot resist. That is a pretty powerful tool.
Andrew Fletcher said this: “Give me the making of the hymns of the church and I do not care who makes its theology.” He of course is not dealing with the truth, but what he is giving voice to is his recognition of the power of music to influence and to motivate because it effects the feelings.
Laws and theology are important, but unless they capture the imagination, it simply is not as effective as it otherwise would be. Music does kindle the imagination, and it stirs us; it motivates us. So God then urges us that we sing with understanding, or it does not mean as much.
We have to learn not to just mouth the words because we have the music memorized as with the hymnal. We need to work at striving to understand the flavor of the author’s intent, then we can be motivated with understanding. That is so much more meaningful, so much more helpful to us.
SermonsHow Emotions Affect Spiritual Maturity
<< 1 Corinthians 14:14 1 Corinthians 14:16 >>
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