I love my gospel music now – that’s something that the Lord
brought into my life after I was born again. Before I would have never listened
to it, but now it’s something I really enjoy. Praise and worship songs are
important to our spirit – they help renew and strengthen us in a powerful way.
Singing them is important too – listening is good, but singing brings the words
out of our own mouths so we can claim them for ourselves.
I don’t listen to the music I used to listen to much at all
any more, and that’s started to change again which interests me. When I was first
saved, I asked the Lord if I should get rid of all the music I owned – I have
crates of CD’s and even still have old vinyl from my brother and from my own
teenage years. It was a surprise to me when He said I didn’t need to throw them
away, and even more or a surprise when He started to show me that within those
songs and bands, even bands like The Smashing Pumpkins, there are moments of
Divine beauty and truth. I’ve gone to visit churches where the worship service
was a rock band, and there can definitely be a place for all kinds of music in
our lives. There were a few CD’s He had me get rid of – there was one that I’d
bought by accident that was so weird and dark that it gave me the creeps just
looking at it – but for the most part He said to keep them, and now they’re
coming back again into my life, slowly but surely, the songs, the singers, the
bands, the music.
Ephesians 5:18-19 tells us, “And do not be drunk with wine,
because that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one
another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with
your heart to the Lord.” Once early on when I was newly born again, I was
talking to the Lord about why it’s bad for us to drink too much and do drugs, and
He gave me an image of His Spirit who lives within us being choked and
smothered by smoke and alcohol. We can’t be filled with the Spirit if we are filled
with toxic things, and I know that also goes for the food we eat and the things
we listen to, the things we read, the things we think, and the things that we
allow to fill our heart. Anger, jealousy, sarcasm, bitterness – they’re just as
bad as too much wine.
But even through the partying that so many of these bands I
used to listen to were doing, they still managed to reach moments of communing
with the Divine. That is the power of God – He can get through to us even when
we are not in any shape to listen. He’ll meet us where we are, whatever we are
doing, and He’ll keep right on talking through the noise and chaos all around
us. It may not all get through, but as He says in Isaiah 55:10-11, “For as the rain
and snow come down from heaven, and do not return there without watering the
earth and making it bear and sprout, and furnishing seed to the sower and bread
to the eater; so will My word be which goes forth from my mouth; it will not
return to me empty without accomplishing what I desire, and without succeeding
in the matter for which I sent it.”
No matter how far away we think we are from God, He is
always near to us, and no matter how far we think we have to go to get back to
Him, He always shows us how easy it is to return. All we have to do is open our
hands and let Him fill them – with His love, His mercy and His blessings. And
as He fills them everything else that has kept us from His blessings will all
fall away like sand.
Blessings,
Jannie Susan
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