Above all, sing spiritually. Have an eye to God in every word you sing. Aim at pleasing Him more than yourself or any other creature. In order to this, attend strictly to the sense of what you sing; and see that your heart is not carried away with the sound, but offered to God continually; so shall your singing be such as the Lord will approve of here, and reward when he cometh in the clouds of heaven.
The last part of our series here is the most important. As Wesley says here, sing spiritually. Engage your spirit in the song. We can all sing together, sing strongly, and sing to the best of our ability, but if we are disengaged from our spirits and singing only to be singing, we’re missing the point.
God isn’t asking for us to be the best musicians or singers in the world. Some of those things we can’t control. Everyone knows I’m not the best vocalist or guitar player ever, but the one thing I can control is worship to him. Am I doing what I do for my own glory and edification, or am I doing it in genuine praise and adoration to our Father? Am I and the worship team fading into the background and allowing God to be front and center, or are we trying to take the stage and the adoration of the crowd?
I struggle with this on many Sundays. Some days I might be looking forward to playing a particular song because it’s fun, or singing a song that I think has great meaning, but then I lose sight of why I lead worship. I’m not there to just be “in the band”, I’m there to help people find a way to worship God. If anyone in that room needs to be focusing more on God and less on the music, it’s me. People don’t go usually home whispering the words from the sermon (sorry, Phil), they more often walk out the door singing one of the songs we used that morning. Music can be theology that sticks with them that week. It needs to be music that glorifies God and speaks to the spirit of the believer.
That being said, we have to be more interested in the worship we bring than the music we sing. We aren’t there to hear cool new songs that get played on the radio, though sometimes we play those. We aren’t there to hear hymns that we remember from when we were kids, though sometimes we play those. We aren’t there to admire the skill of the band members, though we do our best to “play skillfully with a shout of joy” (Psalm 33:3). We are there to glorify and worship God. We could do it with a tambourine and a ukelele, but let’s not let it get to that.
Matt Redman wrote a song called “The Heart of Worship” out of a time in his church where they removed the sound system and band for a time so that they could focus on worshiping God. The pastor reminded his church to be producers and not just consumers of worship, and asked them, “When you come through the doors on a Sunday, what are you bringing as your offering to God?” That’s a powerful question and one that we should be asking ourselves every day, not just on Sunday.
When the music fades
And all is stripped away
And I simply come
Longing just to bring
Something that’s of worth
That will bless your heart
So, lets focus on glorifying God when we come together and sing. Let’s strip away the extraneous stuff that might hinder us and enter into his throne room when we worship. I’m not always good at this, but we can’t get better if we don’t practice, right?
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