Letter To Our Children
by Pastor Joe | March 6, 2024 | Letters To Our Children
March 6, 2024
Sing to the Lord a new song;
Sing to the Lord, all the earth.
Sing to the Lord, praise His name;
proclaim His salvation day after day.
Declare His glory among the nations,
His marvelous deeds among all peoples.
Death and darkness get you packing,
Nothing now to man is lacking,
All your triumphs now are ended,
And what Adam marred is mended;
Graves are beds now for the weary,
Death a nap, to wake more merry;
…by His blood did us advance
Unto His own Inheritance,
To Him be glory, power, praise,
From this, unto the last of days.
An Easter hymn by Henry Vaughan (1621-1695) that
is new to me, which I am currently trying to sing.
Hello friends.
It has been over a month since I’ve written you a letter. (Here is a link to the last letter I wrote on 1.24.24). One of the team members in the church needed time off for health reasons. Since we were a person down, we stopped doing some things. But thank God they are better and are back.
Sing
We Christians sing a lot, don’t we? Just about every time we gather together as a church, we sing. Paul wrote singing is something people filled with the Spirit of God do. (Ephesians 5:19-20)
There are over fifty direct instructions for us to sing, and singing is mentioned just a bit over four hundred times in the Bible. Being a Christian is much about singing.
Singing is a Good Gift from the God Who Made Us
When you sing, blood is being pumped through your body at an increased rate, which fuels the production of three great hormones and holds back the production of one bad hormone in our bodies.
By the way, hormones are chemicals in our body that tell our cells and certain body parts to do and not do certain things. For example, hormones tell the body when to grow and when to stop growing.
Endorphins and dopamine are two great hormones that help us relax and feel well. They are also a way God made our bodies to relieve pain.
The third great hormone that is produced when we sing is oxytocin. What is interesting about oxytocin is that it’s the same marvelous chemical reaction in our body created in a baby when a mother sings to them or when you look lovingly at someone you deeply care for. In other words, singing produces a strong sense of belonging to the community, bonding with those around us, and goodwill towards our fellow human beings.
The bad hormone cortisol is produced in the body when we're stressed or very anxious, and singing is a natural de-stressing agent that reduces cortisol in our bodies.
Singing is indeed a good gift from the God who made us.
Singing is a Good Gift God Wants His People to Exercise
When Christians sing together, we sing as an act of worship to God, we sing to disciple one another about God, and we sing as a declaration to the world.
We sing as an act of worship to God. Don Carson defines worship as the proper response of all moral, flesh-and-blood beings to God, crediting all honor and worth to their Creator-God precisely because He is worthy, delightfully so. Therefore, singing to God is part of our proper, delightful response to God.
We sing to disciple one another about God because Christian songs are meant to teach. They have truths about God in the lyrics. For example, in Exodus 15, the first recorded song in the Bible, we have the song of Moses and Miriam. They are singing of the deliverance of God’s people from their slavery in Egypt.
Interestingly, in the last recorded song, Revelation 15, they were also singing the song of Moses.
Great and marvelous are Your deeds,
Lord God Almighty.
Just and true are Your ways,
King of the nations.
Who will not fear You, Lord,
and bring glory to Your name?
For You alone are holy.
All nations will come,
and worship before You,
for Your righteous acts have been revealed.
We sing as a declaration to the world that they may know that God will judge but also save. Singing reveals to the entire world we are glad when God is glorified and happy when His Son's work on the cross is made known in rhythm and rhyme.
Singing is a Good Gift God Gave Plenty of Sheet Music For
The book of Psalms was one of the church's first songbooks. The Christmas story written down in the Gospel includes four full songs: Mary's song, Zechariah's song, The Angel's song, and Simeon's Song. The Apostle Paul wrote or copied several Christian hymns in his letters. (See Ephesians 1:3–14; 3:20–21; 1 Timothy 3:16; Colossians 1:15–20; 3:15–17.)
Sing, Sing, Sing, it's what Christians do. Singing on Sunday morning from the deepest part of us is right and good. God made it good for us to sing and right for us to sing. Being made in God's image, we can't help but to sing.
Grace and peace to you and yours. Have a great week.
Pastor Joe