SPIRIT-FILLED MUSIC IS STIMULATING.

SPIRIT-FILLED MUSIC IS STIMULATING.

            Henry Halley, speaking of Ephesians 5:18-21, states that, "Hymn singing is by far the most natural, simplest, best loved, and by all odds the most spiritually stimulating of all the exercises of religious meetings." Halley, Henry. Halley's Bible Handbook.  Grand Rapids: Zondervan Pub.Co., 1965 p. 551.  Why is the music ministry of a Spirit-filled musician stimulating to the congregation?  One thing is sure, Spirit-filled music doesn't start with a score or with an instrument, but rather with a Spirit-filled musician.  This music begins as a result of heart-felt religious knowledge and concurrent emotions.  Since there is the knowledge of sins forgiven and the marvelous keeping power of God, this awareness brings about spiritual emotions in the process of music making.  There is more to religious music making than knowledge and emotion, but there is no evidence in the Old or New Testament whatsoever that would prohibit or exclude emotion and meaning from religious music.  Spirit-filled music making should express strong generalized feelings caused by a series of complex spiritual reactions brought about as a result of a holy heart-life.

            The musician who performs sacred music in or out of church has an obligation to be true to the message of the music h or she is performing.  As I have often stated in my writings, it is one thing to sing about God, but it is entirely another to know the God that he or she is musicing about.  Mark 7:6 records the words of Jesus who quoted Isaiah 29:13 to the Pharisees when speaking to them about vain worship.  “He answered and said unto them, Well hath Esaias prophesied of you hypocrites, as it is written, This people honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.”  Sacred musicing is nothing more than human performance and is not an act of true worship unless the musicer is living in unbroken fellowship with God.