EP 88

Welcome to the Smiling at the Future podcast.
My name is Christi Rose and this is my pursuit to glean practical wisdom on femininity, home making, finances, relationships and singleness from the God fearing men and women in my life. Hope you enjoy this journey with me as we learn to smile at the future.
Hello everyone. Singing is such a wonderful grace that God has provided for us to stir up our affections and give expression to our hearts and praise, and it can even guide our emotions in times when we need help being lifted out of a low place. Be sure to check out the Spotify playlist that we have attached to the show notes of this episode. It will hopefully be a resource to provide you with melodically beautiful and theologically rich music to help you sing more throughout your week. I have my dear friend Kelly Cunningham on the show today to help inform our understanding of why God created us to sing. So here is my conversation with Kelly Cunningham.
Welcome to the podcast Kelly Cunningham, I’m so thankful to have you on today. And before we start talking about singing, I would love for you to introduce yourself to the listeners and share a little about your history and why this topic resonates with you. Well, first, thank you so much for having me here, Christi. It’s such a joy and a pleasure as your friend and I, I’m just glad to be able to share these things with your listeners. So I let’s see, I grew up at Grace Community Church. I’ve been there since I was three years old and grew up actually even went to the elementary school there and have been a part of music in the church. I I tell Clayton Herb when I when we talk about it. I literally learned about music and learned about singing in the ministry at Grace Community Church and in the school. And music has been a a huge part of my life. It has become a part of my life that there’s never been a time where I didn’t love singing. And I ended up as a music major in college after I took a little side side rail in communication and the Lord brought me back, made it really clear that that’s what he wanted me to study and do and have as a big part of my life. So I I also am single, which has given me more time over the years to dedicated to that craft. And then I I have a lot of degrees. Well, the degrees I have are all in music. So I have a music and communication degree in undergrad. And then I did my Masters in Music Education and Piano pedagogy. And now I’m working on a doctorate in music teaching and learning, which has been such a joy and a privilege and completely unexpected. So not what I had planned for my life, but what the Lord’s best plan has been. And I’ve been really grateful. I also serve now at Grace Community Church in their children’s choir program. So I have lots of kiddos that are learning about singing through the work the Lord is doing there, which has been a privilege to be a part of. And then for the last 16 years I’ve taught adjunct at the Masters University in the music department. I teach piano pedagogy there and have that that even. It’s definitely music. But even that, that whole program has had some elements of singing to it as well. So lots of music in my life by the Lord’s grace. Yes.
And you, Kelly, are one of the most joyful people that I know. And you can just see how music comes from your heart. It’s really an attitude and people pick up on that. And watching you teach the kids, I’ve had the opportunity a couple of times and just see how your joy and enthusiasm for singing for music is so contagious. And the kids just pick up on that. So God has gifted you in that way, and I’m thankful that you came on to talk about this with the listeners. And I think it’s a good companion topic for our last episode that we talked about with Philip De Corsi on fear and God’s protection. And I think singing is a tool that we can utilize in combating fear and anxiety. And it’s something that God designed and designed our bodies to be able to do to sing. And so we’re going to flush that out a bit more theologically. Why do we sing? Why is it important for Christians? So I would love to just start with that first question, why God commands us to sing over 50 times in His word. So why does God care so much that we are a singing people?
Yeah. When I first read this question from you, Christi, I was like, I don’t know. It’s God. I don’t know why I got those things. But I I will say that it is a beautiful mystery to me that God gives us the command to do something that is so exhilaratingly pleasurable to do. So like I said, why does God do things well? Because he can do whatever he pleases. But in his infinite and generous wisdom, he has created us to do something and singing that connects our body and mind and spirit, that brings joy to the singer and the listener. And it’s something I tell my choir kids all this time while we sing, We’re having fun and we’re working hard. So it’s something really, really personal to us, but then also we’re giving something beautiful or compelling or funny or interesting to the people that are listening. And then if our hearts are humbled before the Lord for this beautiful gift He’s given us and that we can give to others, then we can worship Him in our singing. Now I would say we don’t have to. We don’t have to be singing something theological like directly Bible based songs in order to worship God in singing. Just like we can we can worship by doing the dishes or we can, whatever that is, you know, whether in Word or deed, do all for the glory of the Lord. But so we can worship by singing opera, or we can worship by singing pop songs, as long as it’s not blasphemous or crass or base. But all of those things are Singing itself can bring pleasure to God. But then the amazing thing about singing is that when the words are specifically doctrinal, then there’s an entirely new spiritual purpose to it. And then through our singing, we can praise God or pray, or our hearts can be reminded of spiritual truth, or we can encourage others, or we can share the gospel with someone that’s listening. So at that point then the text really is linked with that human act of making melody. If we’re by ourselves just a melody or if we’re with other people, then then we can sing even even just all individual voices Singing Melody or we can learn to sing in harmony and and that’s then that’s a different kind of aural understanding and an aural expression of something that’s beautiful and I feel like I’m just running here. But then also as humans, there’s something really interesting when we’re singing that, that we have more time to ponder and think about the words in a very meditative way, because notes take longer to sing than just thoughts splitting through our mind. So then through that, then our emotions are also stirred by the the expressiveness of the music. And God knows how all of this moves our hearts. And so he commands us to make use of this as a way to posture ourselves and to to bow before the Lord as as our emotions are stirred and our minds are thinking on the text. So I’m not. I’m not a theologian. I’m a musician, I’m a music educator. But to kind of circle back to actually your question of why God cares about singing. He is jealous for his own glory. And he, like in Exodus 20, he commands us to worship him alone. And in John Four, he tells us to worship in spirit and truth. And so those things are really that that’s a command. That’s something that he tells us to use that meditativeness, that expressiveness, in order to worship him. And I have a whole train of another thought, but I want to stop and give you time.
Well, I was just going to add that, you know, when we hear a something like the word command, we can think it’s drudgery or difficult to follow through with. But God’s commands are not burdensome and we know from his word that they are for our good and his glory. So he always does what’s best for us and for him. So he weaves those together. And I I like how you talked on that. We’re, you know, body and soul. We are symbiotic. We’ve talked about that before in the podcast, how God designed us as our creator to always inhabit a body. And singing is one of those things that beautifully unites both of those things and and it unites our senses. And we’re like just our whole being is involved in singing and it’s not just something that God created us. And then after the fact thought, oh, maybe singing would be a good thing for humans to do. That would be good for them. But he designed us with that in mind, and I just, I’m gonna rabbit trail a second here into the physical aspect of singing ’cause I think this is really interesting, that our vagus nerve, which is connected from our mind down through all of our organs in our body, singing is something that stimulates that nerve and helps us in our just our physical well-being and health. It’s part of our, what we call the parasympathetic nervous system. So we have the sympathetic nervous system, which is our fight or flight mode. Usually if you’re anxious or stressed, that is on full swing. But the parasympathetic nervous system is the one that helps us to rest, to digest, and it’s amazing that singing activates that. So it’s almost like God designed singing to help us with our anxiousness, our stress. It has a physical element to and I I you see this with like Hinduism or or yoga, when they’re humming, you know that they do that to calm down. And I feel like that’s kind of like Satan’s hijack of a system that God placed in US, ’cause, you know, Christians aren’t just mindlessly emptying their mind and humming to calm down. We’re singing and it’s based on truth and things we know about the Lord. Like you said, it not doesn’t always have to be theological, but that’s really what unites our hearts and stirs our affections towards the Lord as being able to sing those truths. So I just think that’s a fascinating little study that I’ve done and just thinking, well, this is healthy for my body, it’s healthy for my soul. No wonder God is commanding us to sing. I love it.
Well, that’s really connected to actually what? Right before I paused. The next thing I was going to say is this is the perfect flow into that. So you talked about the physical side of things. And then in music and music education, music philosophy, there’s something that that connects the other two, which would be the mind and the emotions. So there there’s a book, it’s by a man named David Elliott, and it’s called Music Matters, at which I think even that in itself, the fact that an entire book on music philosophy is called Music Matters to to us. Like it really does make a difference in our lives. And he talks about two things that pair together in music that I I think really explain a lot about how it works for us. And that is the intention in making music and the expressiveness of the music. So if we start about just thinking about human expression, that there’s certain qualities of our vocal expression that we take when we’re sad, we we moan, we wail, we sob, and music can amplify those things tunefully. So you listen to music and it sounds like sorrowful because it has that imitation, that expression of human emotion and things that we understand as humans. And then music can also giggle. Or like when we’re, you can listen to music. I was just listening to something last night and the soundtrack to it, I was like, it just sounds so cheerful. And I was like, it literally does sound like giggling. Like I was like, that’s the music. Or we can cheer and there’s or there’s that triumphant there’s music that when you think those human emotions, the music actually captures that emotion. And that can get really into the long and deep arguments about whether music is a universal language, whether that crosses cultures. But there’s arguments out there that those things do that. There’s even though objectively cultures are different, there’s definite, clear distinctions and even preferences and styles and all of that, that there’s there’s a certain way that music expresses human emotion, that it it just like you. We can hear the laughter, we can hear the moaning, we can hear that. And then the other quality that he talks about is intention. And this is where this gets to our mind, that we have to have a purpose behind what we’re seeing. And this is what allows our heart to actually praise God through singing or encourage others through singing. And you can really get into the weeds when you get when you start thinking about intention. And this is where some of those arguments come as to whether your intention as the singer matches the intention of the composer or the lyricist. And also then whether if you’re singing publicly, whether your intention matches the listener’s intention. So that can get really, really deep is when it comes to those that question of what your intention is. But that is another way that music or singing really does bring glory and praise and worship through to God is not it is through this kind of inherent and expressiveness. But then also, and this is, this is again, I’m not a theologian, but a picture that I love, is the fact that you have that kind of triangle of intention, like the person who wrote it and the person who’s singing it and the person that’s listening to it. And it’s just a a cool picture of the communication within the Trinity. And it’s definitely not a theology. But I think it’s an interesting way that even in music and in how we experience music that we see a reflection of our creator. And that to me is maybe a little too deep for a conversation early in the morning. But I do think that it’s a little bit like all of those things. Expression and intention and the physical aspect that you talked about are all things that do bring pleasure to God, that that that he created us with, that those things working together. And and we just one other little thing we talk about bringing pleasure to God and how that then brings pleasure to us. And those things working together really does fulfill what the Westminster Catechism says, that our chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. And singing is a beautiful way to do that.
That was so eloquently put. Kelly and I loved the emphasis too on the emotional expressions. And I I have a a three-year old nephew and if he hears a song in a minor key he will just start weeping and and he he wants us to turn it off. He just gets very overwhelmed by anything that sounds sad. And it’s so interesting how even at you know little 3 year old can tell the difference between happy music sad music you know or even like the movies we watch. You reference the soundtrack you can’t imagine watching a movie without music and how how bland it would be and how it wouldn’t stir our emotions. So I think that’s that is an interesting observation and I think, you know, just ’cause this podcast caters to single women the emotions you can feel in singleness, that there can be a roller coaster. And I think music is a powerful way to connect with those emotions of longing and unmet desires. And so it can be a real ministry for your heart in those seasons when words are just not enough to express the emotions you’re feeling. And on the flip side, they can help us to raise our emotions and our affections when we’re feeling especially down. I feel like it’s our secret weapon for singles, if I can put it that way, of like it. It can be such a powerful instrument to help us get ourselves out from those sad places and raise us back up, lift us up. So I don’t know if you have any thoughts on that.
Yeah, well you and I have talked a little bit before. I think I’ve shared with you about the season. I I had a season where I was sick for a a while like I was down in bed for like a month. And those those seasons can just a month is actually not that long compared to some people’s illness. But for me it was I’m a go, go, go, go, go. And a month in bed was like, what? But in that season, the Lord really did use music in a powerful way for me. When I I literally couldn’t do anything. And to just be able to put music on and be reminded of spiritual truth, when in many ways I felt like I couldn’t even. I couldn’t even think clearly enough to pray for on my own, but that I could listen to music that was Biblically based and solid, theologically and beautiful and calming, and just a reminder that that I didn’t need to feel overwhelmed by my circumstances and I I just could reflect and meditate on the Lord. And I picked music that was calmer and quiet. That’s just my preference if I’m picking music typically. I’m a little bit more of a mellow, chill music kind of girls, but I think the Lord knows and there’s all different styles and ways that we can respond to that. And like when you were first talking about music reflecting our emotions, I felt that. But then like you said the flip side, sometimes we need to put something on that’s peppy and that’s just gonna remind us and and that we can sing triumphantly the truth that we maybe don’t feel immediately in that moment. That we can say this is what I know to be true and mind and my heart need to get there and music can be a channel for that. That, I think is powerful. Yeah, that’s that’s a really good point. And we need to do the things we know we should do regardless of how we feel because in doing those things our affections will grow in that pursuit. So I think that’s a a good point. And the next question kind of segues. We talked about how all music can be glorifying to the Lord, but when we’re thinking specifically of praising the Lord, can you speak to why it’s important that the lyrics be grounded in God’s word when we are involved in praising Him?
Yeah, to just kind of say a little bit more about the fact that it doesn’t have to be praise music. In First Corinthians 612, there’s the idea that all things are lawful, but not all things are profitable. So I think there is something very specifically profitable about submitting to biblical truth as we listen and sing music and like I said about posturing our hearts that I think there’s there’s a sense where we need to hear certain truths repeated to ourselves. Even just like we were just talking about specifically in seasons that are more difficult that we we really need to make sure that the theology of the songs we’re singing are accurate because we can listen to praise music as a genre again. This gets back a little bit more to our intent too. And I think we can maybe just we can take a song that maybe is not as deep theologically, but if our intention brings what we know in terms of the reality and the truths of Scripture, we can praise through weaker music. But it’s best to sing and praise through really beautifully theologically grounded music. It’s not just like the emotion of it that we’re being placated by at that point. And we can, yes, leverage the power of the music that in itself as a physical thing, but when we can leverage that along this depth in our soul. But it needs to be alongside the life giving work of actual spiritual truth. And so that’s why I love songs that are straight scripture that are sung poetically. I mean, there’s, you know, there’s a history. John Calvin was one of the first to write metrical Psalms, which literally, well, he didn’t write them all by himself. There was a team of people, but but they wrote songs that were in meter. That was the poetry of the day was very regular and it’s rhyme schemes and things like that. And they took the Psalms, all 150 of them, and made them into songs that could be sung and that were used for the service that gets into something called the regulative principle, which is that Calvin believed that only only straight things out of Scripture were appropriate for the worship service. Whereas Luther, you know, if you know a mighty fortress is our God, he that’s not straight scripture, but it’s deep theology. So Luther believed more that anything that was theologically sound was appropriate for singing and worship in the church, whereas Calvin said no, it has to be only the Bible. But from both traditions, from both reformers, theologians, we have wonderful music and kind of setting a tradition for music, for how music is written for the church and for Christians that allows us to worship either straight out of Scripture in these beautifully poetic ways. And people continue to write more and more of these or songs that are so deeply theological and that that melding of melody and harmony, harmony and poetry that is just beautifully transcendent and does reach to the depth of those emotions. That expressiveness we were talking about, but with such spiritually perceptive, theologically rich and deep intention. And so when you have a songwriter that has that intention of reflecting God so truthfully and so accurately, then when you’re listening and singing along, then your mind is stimulated to truth. And that really does raise our own intellect. There are things I’m I like I said a couple times, I’m not a theologian. So I would love for theologians to be writing wonderful poetry so that as I’m singing it, I can reflect that and think on that and meditate on that. And that amplifies and gives breath and life to the truth of the text in a different way. So when we have that, why would we not sing that?
Exactly. And like we’ve already, you know, talked a lot about the emotional side of music. But if you have music that’s just raising your emotions but not doing anything for your mind as far as truth about God, then you’re just, you know, it’s an emotional experience. Might leave you on feeling a little bit excited and high, but then you have no truth to be meditating on the rest of the week. Music is incredibly tied to our memory. I used to work in assisted living and I would work with people who had severe dementia, so they couldn’t remember anything. You couldn’t remember their children’s names, anything about their history. But you start singing a song like Amazing Grace or the National Anthem or You Are My Sunshine, and they would sing along and it was amazing how it just seemed to be an untouched area of their brain. And so it just lodges in there. And when we think about Colossians 316, let the word of God richly dwell in You think Music and singing is one of the ways that we can do that and it just implants in our memory in a very special way. So I would love to hear your thoughts on that too.
Well, I love that you started with working in assisted living because my thoughts on that went to where I live and work right now, which is with children. And so you saw the end result of something that started in childhood and the fact that we are implanting those spiritual truths in our minds. So I was just going to say to any of our listeners, you know your listeners that have children that they’re they have influence on in their lives start now singing with them, planting those spiritual truths in their hearts and in their minds. I tell the families as they join in our children’s choir program that we my desire is to choose theologically rich songs so that as the children grow, when they come to the storms of life, when they come to and the joys, not just the storms, but when they have those moments and throughout their lives that they have a song to sing with it that’s so deeply implanted in their minds that that’s that’s what comes to mind. And and we we even through our songs, can memorize Scripture again. That’s why I do love songs that are straight out of scripture because then we’re memorizing the word of God and that’s a way to be meditating on it. Which is, you know, then we’re hiding God’s word in our heart like we’ve been commanded to do.
Yeah. Now most of our church services start and end with worship. So why is it valuable and important that we sing together as believers in Jesus Christ?
Yeah. OK, so I love this. You just quoted Clash in 316. The next little part has one another in it. The next part is it says let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. And one of the ways we do that is teaching and admonishing one another. Admonish all of those things with singing, with songs and hymns and spiritual songs, so that right there is just a continuation. It’s not just that the word of Christ is dwelling richly in our own hearts, but that is a way to do that. As one of the one anothers of Scripture. I I just love that. That we are building one another up, That it’s a means of fellowship, It’s a means of teaching. And even the secular philosophers and music educators, a huge part of music, music education, philosophy, all of that is centered around that the togetherness of singing. Even secular scholars see that there is something profound about the experience of doing music in a community. And there’s an entire branch of music called community music. There’s track seal music, which is like doing it, You’re doing and and even the people that like hand out a program are a part of the music making. I mean, but it really it gets it to this point that there is something powerful about making music together and the Lord and his wisdom has given us that gift. And I also love that that passage is set in the context of submission. Right after that you have wives submitting to their husbands and husband like husbands to the Lord and all of that, that that the train of the flow of that passage. Again, I’m not a theologian, but that there is this idea that we are submitting to one another as we’re singing together in harmony and that there’s a thankfulness there. You know, that’s that’s one of the descriptors in that verse is that we’re singing with grateful hearts, giving thanks to God together. And there’s a communal aspect of recognizing that I’m not just here living my Christian life solo, but that I’m in fellowship. And so singing congregationally is a a means for US submitting together in unity to proclaim the doctrine that we believe about God and about the God that we love. And that’s just a powerful thing. It brings honor and to the Lord to be able to do that. And when you think those thoughts, when you’re singing in a congregation and you just realize we are all united in this, it’s amazing. This is we are all singing the same truth, believe the same God. And it’s just sweet when you really are thinking about it, when you’re singing together. And I like that you touched on you’re not doing a solo. And I know that’s something we talked about, that you have to teach your kids that. You know you are not just trying to be the loudest voice in the choir.
Amen. But you are blending with those around you and doing it together. You should sing loudly, but do do it together.
And that gets back to both intent and expressiveness. Like as if your intent is to do this singing act together in harmony and in unity, then that your expression of it, the musicality of it, is going to be different. You’re not going to blast your voice out there in the same way because you’re making music together and there’s a blending. I love that you brought up that word. You know, I tell the kids in choir, listen, Can you hear your own voice and the voices of the people around you? If you’re if you hear only the people around you and not your voice, then you’re not singing loud enough. Sing louder. And if you hear only your voice and not the voices of the people next to you, sing softer, so that together we can create a beautiful offering of praise to the Lord. And that’s a choir. That’s a little different than a congregation to some degree. But I think the more that we train and learn and think deeply about how we sing as a congregation, that that would even influence how we sing when we’re singing in the congregation.
Yeah, and I think that leads nicely and I’m just gonna jump to this question then, your intent and your motives. So how do you sing to the Lord in those moments and not be fixated on how you sound to those around you? So you’re you’re thinking the wrong thoughts in that moment when you’re praising the Lord at church if you’re only aware of your your own voice. But also we can wrestle through our motives of just having divided hearts and being aware that what’s coming out of our mouth is not what we’re feeling in our heart at that moment. So how do we work through those mixed motives and still praise the Lord and be able to offer sincere praise to Him?
Yeah. Well I I mean I think in some ways it’s it’s like anything in the Christian life in this broken planet takes constant confession. There is we’re we’re not always going to worship and sing with pure motives on this side of heaven. We’re just not. But but there are a few things I think we can do as we go into that and we talked about apathy and sounding good and looking good. Well, I want to say this first. First you have to prepare your heart for worship. That kind of adage of Sunday morning begins Saturday night. It really is true, even when it comes to things like how we sing and how we worship the Lord through music. When it comes to the service, I think sometimes we just show up to a service and we expect that we’re going to suddenly feel like worshipping and we’re going to whether that’s through listening to the music. If you’re, you know, depending on the churches, the there are some churches that basically only do congregational singing. Our church has a choir that starts with instruments in the choir and and that is they call it a call to worship. And that for us can be a preparation time. And I think a lot of us would be honest to say that we hear that and we’re like reading the bulletin and thinking about oh OK, who I made it. I found my spot. Who am I sitting with? All of those things, right? And someone has designed the service to prepare us to be able to sing congregationally and to sing without that kind of apathy or mixed motives. And we need to use what our worship leaders have provided for us in terms of preparing our hearts to respond in praise. It’s not just responding by singing at that point. The worship service includes the reading of the Word and hearing preaching and often a pastoral prayer that’s sometimes long and extensive and our minds can wander. And but again, those all of those things. If our our intention is directed toward the Lord and and we are humbled before Him, then when it comes to singing a congregational hymn, we’re much less likely to have our minds caught up in all of those other things that can be a distraction. Now that doesn’t mean we don’t still struggle, but there are ways even of again focusing on the lyrics themselves. Like if we are thinking in our hearts, then this the words that we’re singing, it’s a lot harder to think, wow, don’t I sound good or it’s a little boring this morning. I mean when we’re singing holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, all thy work shall praise thy name and earth and sky and sea. And if we’re singing that and we’re actually reflecting on the holiness of God, His complete otherness from us, His magnificence, his excellence, his greatness, his awesomeness, his beauty, all of those things, you keep going then and then also we’re thinking on earth and sky and see all it works. I praise your name. It’s going to be a lot harder to think about ourselves. It’s just we’re recognizing that we’re joining in this chorus of praise from all of creation that’s directing their worship to the Lord. If we don’t sing, the rocks are going to sing so but the Lord can also use our humbled hearts and work in US. Confession even in that moment. But the more we know God, and the more we love God, the more we posture ourselves before Him. I keep saying that, but I I think that that we just need to submit our hearts to the Lord as we seem then by God’s grace and through sanctification, which is a a slow and lifelong process. But through that, that there’s a little bit more and little chip away of the pride and the things that distract us. But that’s great. Yes, and it’s an incredible privilege. I think if you come thinking those thoughts too of I have the privilege of calling the one and only true God my Father, my Savior. You know, worship is a response to truth. So we are responding to the truths that we know about him. And if you’re meditating on that during the week and thinking those things in the word you’re going to, your heart’s just gonna be overflowing in that response and thankfulness to the Lord. And I think we talked about this a little bit in the episode I did with Stuart Scott on Pride and Humility, but just understanding that. That, you know, if we’re concerned or thinking too much about how we sound or maybe we’re huffed up because we sound really good and you know, we can hit those high notes or whatever just recognizing that we are, we are just stewards of all that God has given us. So he’s given us the voice, He’s given us the body, He’s given us himself to praise. So when you recognize I’m just a steward of these things and it’s all going back in praise to the Lord that just abolishes pride. And with the mixed motives like you alluded to, we we still have a fallen, sinful flesh. We have the world flesh and the devil that we are still battling with. So I think we’re always gonna feel the tension of those mixed motives. And yes, we are continually repenting and bringing that to the Lord and asking him to purify our hearts and our motives. And we desire that our praise be coming straight from the heart and sincerity to the Lord. But I think when we feel that tension of motives, we just recognize this is the side of heaven. We are always going to live in that tension, but that should not ’cause us to stop worshipping, we should just cling to the Lord even more when we see that. Yeah, yeah.
If I can add jump in on that a little bit, I just a personal anecdote of how the Lord will sanctify you through what He wants for you in that regard. Also for about 10 years I couldn’t sing and the Lord was so gracious and and working that through me in me allowing that. Like I said, there was never a time in my life where I didn’t love singing. But I, the Lord has shown me through that season how prideful I was in it, and how much of, you know, the secular world uses identity. And I was putting my identity in that. But I singing for me was a huge matter of pride. Even singing, even serving in the church and different ways through my younger years and even beyond that. And I was dealing with some health issues that came up, and part of that meant I actually could barely talk, let alone sing. The Lord used that to humble me in such profound ways. And not to say that I don’t still struggle, but it was. It was so revealing of my heart to see when I showed up in church on a Sunday morning. And I just remember suddenly feeling like, OK, I have to mouth the words and how do I how do I still worship? How do I still have and maybe better worship when I can’t actually make a tune, when nothing is coming out of my voice? How can I still express through the music, have the that? How can I do that in a way that’s maybe even more honoring to the Lord? And by His grace, it’s slowly coming back. It’s I I think my voice is never going to be quite 100% there just because of some health stuff. But I’m so grateful for that lesson and for those years of battling through like someone Sunday. It would be there kind of and I I could sing low notes and then and then I’d have to drop out whenever it got high and and I just I see God’s kindness in allowing me to for one, then understand better when people don’t know how to sing as well and feel funny about their voice. There’s a new empathy there for me. There’s men like yeah, I get it. But also you can, like you can learn, you can grow from, you can get better, ’cause I went from Ground Zero as an adult, to being back to singing more and understanding more about my own voice and why I had gone through the things that I had. So anyway, all that to say, Lord is going to sanctify you in the ways that you need to. Yes, you know, it makes me think of the verse in Ephesians 519, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart. So it may not always be the fruit of your lips, but you can do that in your heart.
And that segues nicely. To the next question of there are people who don’t enjoy singing and maybe they aren’t good at it and it’s hard for them to stay on key. And so they show up to church or whenever they’re worshipping the Lord and they would rather get there after the singing is over instead of having to join in. So how would you encourage someone to learn and grow in their love for this?
Yeah. OK. So I would start by acknowledging that I get that it is much easier to do something and enjoy it when we feel like we can at least do it tolerably well, but then also when we know why we’re doing it. So I think one of the ways, one of the big steps would be to realize that as believers singing is to be a part of our lives. It is a command. And so as Christians we know that. And if we remind ourselves of that, then it is easier to take time to learn to do it, even if it’s just a little bit better than we can. Now I will say this honestly, it is much better, easier to start that as kids. So a little another little caveat for the kids in your life, like do just start singing with them now I would say for those that want to sing, that are listening, that are like I I just don’t just start somewhere like sing in the shower. I know that sounds weird, people say it all the time, but it actually there’s like acoustical reasons that it sounds better in the shower. There’s tile and it echoes and it’s kind of like you’ve got natural reverb, so it’s gonna sound a little better. So just start there or sing in your car where you can like turn on the music, turn it way up so you don’t have to hear yourself and just start singing along. I will say this too. There are ways to learn to sing better. My dad, I love my dad. He is a godly Christian man. He is so faithful. I’m feel like I’m gonna share the story. When I was little. Oh, this is embarrassing. My dear sweet dad was standing next to me when I was playing the piano and I was singing the singing along and I turned to my dad and I said, dad, can you stop singing or throwing me off? But my dad sings so much better now than he did when I when I was a little kid. And he has been an example of someone. First of all, he does love music. So I know some people music isn’t as much something they love, but it is still possible to just keep listening to it. And because really it only takes two things to sing. It takes hearing the sound of the note and then it takes figuring out physically how to make the breath come out of your mouth in such a way that the voice, like your throat, your larynx, is relaxed and and you’ve got sound and air flowing out. So if you can figure out those two physical things again, we’ve we talked at the very beginning today about how it is a physical thing. If you can figure out those physical things, then you can learn better how to sing. Another thing that I love about it is that, and we haven’t touched on this really at all, is that music requires both a technical aspect and an artistic aspect. And so for people who are a little bit more like, I just love the creativity of it. I just love. It’s beautiful, it’s artistic. You can start singing in that direction, even if your area is totally visual art, you can appreciate the aesthetic side of music. But then if you’re more like the tech person, if you like organization and you like how things work and engineering and all of that, you can approach music with a more technical side like, OK, physically, how do I do this? What is, what’s the procedure? So I think that something fun about music is you can approach it from both of those different ways. But when it comes down to it, singing is not about the sound of our voices. Singing for the Lord is about our hearts, and He has given us the voice He wants us to have. And that was part of, I think the lesson he had me learning when I couldn’t sing was it is his choice for us, what we sound like, and we can cultivate that and we can work toward it. Obviously I was doing what I could to learn more about what was going wrong with my voice, so that I could keep singing. But what I love is that when we get to heaven, we will all be singing. Yes.
And you know it’s not if you have a voice, but do you have a song? I I think that may have been what the Getty said. That singing is about the heart. So if you love the Lord and you have a song of Thanksgiving that you can offer to him, then you can sing. Doesn’t matter what your voice sounds like. And some people are just self-conscious. Maybe they’re starting out and they know they don’t sound great, but they don’t know where to sing, to practice, where they’re not going to be heard by other people. Maybe you have roommates or a family, but you you’re also at your work where you don’t have the privacy. So I would say sing in the car too. I I know you’re sitting down, so, you know, maybe not the best position to be singing well, but that’s what I’ve done. And I feel the freedom to just belt it out and to sing loudly and I do it to and from work. I did one year as well, just started learning more songs so I could sing them by memory and trying to learn new hymns. So I would go through once a week and try to learn a new hymn and the lyrics so that I could just be meditating and thinking on that through the week. And we’re gonna put a a link to a Spotify playlist in the show notes for the listeners so you can go and listen to some of those songs and learn them. Those will be just to help guide you in the process of learning to enjoy and love music. But are there other resources, Kelly, you want to leave with the listeners to just further their study? Maybe you whet their appetite. They’re like, OK, I’m going to pursue this. I would love to learn to sing better or just understand the theology behind singing on a deeper level. What would you direct them to?
Yeah, well, the resources that I thought through were predominantly moral on the theological level. When it comes to the technical aspect of singing, there are some books you can read, but honestly, most of them are so highly technical. I would just say find someone that you know that sings and just you have to sing with. Like you have to take a little lesson here and there, jump into singing somewhere but there’s not I I don’t know it’s hard because it’s such a physical thing. So, but we referenced already the the Gettys book. They have a book that’s called sing and I I think it’s wonderful. It has so many. It’s just well written beautifully it’s worshipfully written. I I think devotionally written in a way that’s I I just love their focus on singing and you know their conferences and the things that they are doing currently right now. For him, writing in the church is really powerful and I think it’s changing the face of how even in our generation people are approaching worship through music. So I think their book is a huge and another person who has been very influential in, I think, turning the tide of how our culture, our Christian culture had started to approach music is Bob Coughlin and he has a great book called Worship Matters. That is, it’s written a little bit more for the worship leader than for the congregation, although it definitely applies to that. But it’s a great book in terms of resources. And then the other one that I more recently found that I I just really enjoyed reading was from HB Charles. And I didn’t know until like two months ago that he is a singer. He’s on Spotify, You can listen to his music. He is a, he’s a gospel singer, so he leads worship in his services. He actually, his mom was a music leader in this church. His dad was the preacher. And he has written a book that’s called On Worship. And I think that book just really gets to a lot of why we sing. And he would say he’s not a singer, but he literally is like the soloist singing with his choir. So it’s really fun music. If you like gospel, it’s gospel, but with really deep theology, which is pretty hard to find.
Yes, and I’ll I’ll throw in their worship, The Ultimate Priority by John MacArthur. It’s been a while since I’ve read that one. It doesn’t focus just on music and singing, but really the heart behind why we do what we do and doing it all to the glory of God. So that’s another resource.
I did have one more thing though. I I don’t know if this is appropriate to throw into your podcast or not. But Speaking of the gettys, they have a song that comes out of a heritage of really crying out to the Lord in the middle of adversity. And I if it if it works for you. I thought we could just read the lyrics or I could just read the lyrics for us because it really gets to a lot of the things that we have been talking about. So it says So this is how can I keep from singing? And it says my life flows on an endless song. Above earth’s lamentation I hear the sweet, though far off hymn that hails a new creation. Through all the tumults and the strife. I hear that music ringing. It finds an echo in my soul. How can I keep from singing while though my joys and comforts die? I know my Savior liveth. While though the darkness gather round songs in the night, he giveth. No storm can shake my inmost calm while to that refuge clinging. Since Christ is Lord of heaven and earth, how can I keep from singing? I lift my eyes. The cloud grows thin. I see the blue above it, and day by day this pathway smooths since first I learned to love it. The peace of Christ makes fresh my heart a fountain ever springing. All things are mine since I am his, how can I keep from singing? And then that last bit repeats. But I just thought it sums up so much of what we’ve been talking about, that when we recognize what the Lord is doing even through and in the midst of difficulties and joys. But with all of that, as I reflect, how can I keep from singing?
Oh, what a beautiful note to end on. No pun intended. Thank you, Kelly, for sharing your expertise, your heart, your experience with me and the listeners. And I just hope that the outcome will be more singing praises to the Lord from the heart.
Thank you so much. Thank you, Christi. It’s been fun.