(This was a response to a post by another student that claimed that Christians don't need to sing, but can just praise God is whatever way they feel comfortable with.)
I have been reading the Psalms a lot for the past two or three years and I think it can at least be said that God wants us to sing to Him. A brief search on the word "sing" in the Psalms came up with around 26 commands/encouragements to sing to Him. We can allegorize this and apply this to other ways of praising God, but don't think we should ignore the simple meaning of the text. If it says to sing to God that many times, He probably means it!
We can praise the Lord in many other ways, but I think that singing His praises should receive special attention and time. We can praise Him in other ways besides singing (the Psalms are filled with exhortations to praise Him as well), but with this many imperatives, I think we can safely say singing is something that pleases God, and he expects it from His people. I believe that it should be part of the Christian life.
There are at least 26 exhortations to sing to God in the Psalms, but there are as many as 50 places in the Psalms where is says something to the effect of "I will sing to God." So everyone should sing to God because He commands it. Just because that is true doesn't mean you alone are responsible to make that happen. We don't have to "judge" everyone that isn't fulfilling that responsibility. We are responsible for ourselves and those God has put under our care. We can encourage others to sing, and train them to do it better, and try to show them that God loves it when we sing to Him, but we start with ourselves. "I will sing to the LORD, because he has dealt bountifully with me." Psalm 13:6.
1 comment:
Well said. :)
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