The Spiritual Discipline Of Singing

Mark: All right, I'm going to carry on with ⁓ a topic that Pastor Josh had started a couple weeks ago. How many of you guys were here when he talked on praise and you learned the different words for that? Yes, it was a good time. ⁓ So today I'm gonna kind of continue on in this idea, but I'm gonna focus on one particular, what I like to call a spiritual discipline actually, and that is singing. How many people in here like to sing? By the end of the day, you're all gonna raise your hand. We're gonna talk about singing. Jesus, I thank you for your word. I thank you that it is alive and it is active on the inside of us that when we hear it and we receive it, it does good and great things. And so I just, ask that we would be open to your word today, to your way. Amen. All right. So this place of singing, so I wanted to talk about it because, not because I'm the worship leader, I know this seems very self-indulgent maybe, but singing is a very, very spiritual act. And there's a reason that we do that here at Hope. It's not just a filler time, it's not the, well, I was gonna say 30 minutes, we never worship for 30 minutes and I love that. Thank the Lord. It's not just that 45 minutes, hour before the word comes. It's an active and a living discipline that we are doing, singing. And the Bible actually commands us to sing. There's over 400 verses about singing in the Bible. So it's mentioned a lot. And do you know, not really not one time, there is precedent for like the leaders, like in the temple, they were called to be skillful and all of that. So there's precedent for making sure we don't put people up here that can't play an instrument at all or can't sing in tune. But the act of singing as your spiritual discipline in the Bible has nothing to do with whether or not you have any musical ability at all. Not one bit. And it actually isn't contingent on the fact whether you prefer music or not. It is a divine command in the Bible to sing. And so we're gonna talk about that today. It's woven into so much scripture, so many stories in the Bible. And so I just wanna start with one that makes it very clear and very plain what we are to do as living, breathing children of God. And that's Psalm 47, verse six. And then I'm gonna say it once and then I'm actually gonna have you say it with me. Okay, Psalm 47, six says, sing praises to God, sing praises, sing praises to our King, sing praises. I don't know if we have that up there or not. So actually you could just say it with me because it is just sing praises over and over again. Okay, how about this? I'm gonna say it and I want you to repeat after me. Sing praises to God. Sing praises. And there's an exclamation point, which means I really mean it. Okay. Sing praises to our King. Sing praises. Exclamation point. Okay, there's one verse, like I said, there's over 400, but there's one right there. The command is for you to sing, okay? I'm gonna read the next verse here that I wanna talk about a little bit more. Colossians 3, 12 through 17. Do we have that one? I won't make you repeat this whole thing. Okay. Put on then as God's chosen ones. holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another. And if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other, as the Lord has forgiven you, so you must also forgive. And above all these, put on love which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts. to which indeed you were called in one body and be thankful. And this is the part I want to focus in on. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. Can you say singing psalms? And hymns and spiritual songs. It's a divine command for you to sing, okay? I laughed quite a few years ago, I had a Sunday off. and I was out in the foyer and a person had walked into our foyer and it was kind of near the end of worship but we were still going. And she didn't know who I was which made this interaction super great. And she walked in and there he is. Are they still singing in there? I was like, yes, they are. Okay, here we go. Singing was God's idea, right? Not Josh's. Josh was the worship pastor before I started doing this. It's not my idea. It's God's idea. Singing is God's idea. And he made it a formative act. That means when you sing, something happens to your whole body, actually, whether you know that or not. When you sing, you're allowing whatever You're singing, right, you're engaging your whole body. It's taking, you're allowing it. You're saying, I'm gonna let whatever this thing is, I'm gonna let it go inside of me and take root inside of me, okay? This is why it's important, actually, to pay attention to what you listen to and what you sing, okay? And I'm gonna tell you a little story about that right now, okay? So just this last week, I love the Lord always gives you these little extra life moments that just help when you're already kind of like thinking about a thing. And so last week, my youngest daughter came home and she said, mom, this girl at school told me about this other girl. I don't even know what the girl's name is. She's like, it's a song and I wanna hear it. And so I'm like, okay, I haven't even heard of this person. Like there's so many I can't keep up with. So I'm like, well, let's look it up. So I looked up the girl and from right away I could tell, this is country, okay? ⁓ Not my number one musical genre, but all right. Let's listen to it. We're probably a very split crowd with that in here, okay? So I'm like, well, all right, let's listen to it. So I look, I'm like, well, there's no explicit lyrics, so that's good, okay. ⁓ So we turn it on, the slide comes on, brrr, you know, the whole thing. So right away, it's classic country. There's a guy and another girl, and what are we going to do, all these things. Well, the chorus has this line in it that's at the end, and the girl sings, drinking jack all by myself. And I look over, and I see my young daughter. singing these words. And so I looked at her and I was like, do you know what Jack is? And she said, no. First of all, thank God for that. Okay. But I was like, well, ⁓ okay, well, you probably shouldn't sing something when you don't know what it is. Okay. And that actually is a rule for all of us. This doesn't go away because I was the world's worst offender. had, well, tapes back in my day, all the mixed tapes of all the music that my dad would have literally whipped my butt straight into heaven for listening to these songs. I just thought he was the worst and he didn't understand and all these things. So I was the worst offender and all that. But this is actually, as we grow older and mature, you start to realize, actually, do need to pay attention because of how God created music. The rules apply to all music. It's not just worship and it's not just Christian music, right? He actually placed this beautiful thing that we're going to talk about a little bit in Science in a Minute. He placed this beautiful thing on the act of singing and the rules apply no matter what you're singing about. So I looked at her and I was like, you can sing Drinkin' Sprite All by myself. You aren't going to sing that song. Okay. ⁓ Here's the problem though. I listened to that song one time, one time in the car. Guess what has lived rent free in my head? Who's choosing Texas I could tell. The whole thing, was like, it was like in me, the whole song. Ugh, okay. There's something about connecting words and melody that the Lord actually designed. It takes retention to another level. It's an amazing gift He's given us. there are so many studies that have been done on singing. If you know me, I am about as far from sciency as you can get. But I want to get a little nerdy here just for a minute because I find this so fascinating. There's four things I just wanna talk about really quick. No, actually three. I took one of them off. ⁓ On studies that have been found that why singing actually does what it does, okay? So the first thing is singing makes your recall easier. Melody and rhythm create predictable patterns of repetition with a structure that just, your brain likes it. That's just the way we're wired. It likes it. If you've ever been in here, for any length of time, you know that sometimes we will sing something spontaneous from the stage, which is the fancy word of saying, just made this thing up right now here in front of you. And it could be anything. Josh did one this morning, the holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. He just kind of sang that out. It's not a part of any scripted song. It's just one little phrase that has some structure, melody, so that you can repeat it. Okay? ⁓ It creates a moment where a line or a phrase can be repeated easily and a whole group can sing it. So you've been doing this your whole life, whether you know it or not. Everybody in this room knows what we sing at birthdays. What is it? Right? Is there anybody in this room that Larry does not know happy birthday? Yeah, right? Okay. ⁓ What did you do in kindergarten or before that even your parent probably taught you the letters? What did you sing? Yeah, how many of you still have to do that right now? Yeah, okay, don't answer that. ⁓ I have friends that do schooling curriculums where like a lot of their memory work, almost all their memory work involves taking the information, putting it in a song, because it's just how it works. It's how he made singing to be. Second thing is singing is a whole brain activity. Your whole body is engaged. So your language centers. Like I said, this is really nerdy. All right. Your motor system, your emotion sensors, your auditory processing, and your memory systems. Your whole body is engaged when you are singing. Singing codes your emotions, this is the third one. Lyric and melody will code your emotions and that emotion will strengthen a memory formation. That's like I said earlier, the singing is formative. It will create a memory around that particular event. How many of you have had, could be like a wedding thing or something terrible happened and a song was kind of around that moment? And then when you hear that song again, what happens? You're like, boop, right back. right back to the moment, every feeling, every smell, the whole thing, right? It's the way that he made it to be. My dad passed away about three years ago. And when he did, my dad loved to sing and he could not sing at all. Bless his pitiful heart. He was an amazing preacher, but he loved to sing. He tried to be in a choir once when he was young and they like, they kicked him out and he was devastated. But he like sang with everything in him and he loved music. But he was like my number one fan. If I wrote a song, I would send it to him and he always give me feedback. He was just like, we were just connected that way. And so when he passed away, I just like, I was finding it hard to even sing. Like I just couldn't, it was too much emotion wrapped up in the act of it, which makes it really difficult when your job is mostly to sing. So I had a really hard time. ⁓ Back in the day, speaking of emotion, back in the day, if you, you know, in high school and you're like some guy wouldn't pay attention to you or, you know, he broke your heart, all these things that would happen, right? Then I would go home and get my mixtape, get some Alanis Morissette. hate boys, you know, but she would like sing all my feelings. would just get it all out, right? The music was like with me and my emotions. Yes? Yeah. How many of you have done this before? Surely. Okay. All right. Music's connected to your emotions in such a way, some of you may have had this experience even here in this room, where if you come in and we're singing a new song or a song that you do not know, it'll immediately make you feel probably disconnected, right? Or you'll feel a little bit out of place, you'll feel a little out of sorts. It's a little like off-putting almost, really. But then in the next moment, if we sing a song you do fully know, then what will happen? Right, you're back in. There's like a connection there with your emotion that will make you feel like you're back, like I'm a part again of what's happening in the room. So speaking with this place of emotion, I love it because, and the Bible is actually full Psalms that full of praise, songs that are full of lament. So when you're going through a really hard time, David will say, like, how long, Lord, will you forget me? He sings these songs and they're sad. And it's right to do so. It's right to do so. On the flip side of that, though, I've told our team sometimes, when you're kind of in a low place for a long time, and you're like down low, it's probably not a good idea for you to keep listening to the Drinking Jack all by myself. Songs, because this stuff will get inside of you and then you'll be in a pit that you can't get out of and you actually will need to do something that's the opposite. It's kind of what Josh was saying this morning, the sacrifice of praise. Sometimes singing a joyful song feels like a violent activity. Truly, and it's not always appropriate to sing a song of victory, but when the time comes, and hopefully of people around you that will let you know, this time is over now, like you've gotta move on, you will have to bring yourself almost into an act, it's like a violent act that I am going to move a different way. I'm gonna change the way my emotions are reacting about this thing. Last week I was in North Carolina, my mom had a surgery and I believe I've shared a while ago, but my mom has Alzheimer's and when my dad passed away, it's gotten quite a bit worse as unfortunately that disease does. And so last week I went to be with her for the surgery and as we were, her and I just went for a drive for a little bit. And there have been trips where I've gone where she doesn't know who I am or sometimes she will or she is just very spotty now like what's happening. And ⁓ we were sitting in the car talking. ⁓ She had had the surgery two days before this. Didn't remember having a surgery, which makes things very interesting for recovery. But we were in the car, we were driving and she said some kind of phrase. I don't remember exactly what the phrase was now, but when she said it, It reminded me of a song. And so I looked at her and I was like, isn't there a song that has that in it? She was like, what? And I was like, I think it's one that you and daddy used to sing. And so I kind of started humming it. I remembered like a line and I sang it. And then all of sudden, you know what she did? She sang with me. She knew all the words, more words than I did. Through it all, through it all, I've learned to trust in Jesus. I've learned to trust in God through it all, through it all. I've learned to depend upon His Word. She knew every word, every word. She doesn't know. We go to restaurants, she'll pick out a dinner item. By the time they come, she doesn't even remember that she ordered it. But she remembered this song because of the way that the Lord created singing. to impact every part of who you are, gets down into the roots of who we are. I wanna talk about in this corporate setting here for a little bit, why we do what we do. There's some things that happen in this room specifically. And the first is that when we gather together, singing helps us remember. Remember what the Lord has done. In Exodus 15, this is known as the Song of Moses, and it's an 18 verse song. So if anybody thinks we have long songs here at Hope, well, there you go. I'm not reading all 18 verses. I'm just gonna read you a few of these in the beginning. This is after the Red Sea, then Moses and the people of Israel sang the song to the Lord, saying, I will sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously, the horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea. The Lord is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation. This is my God and I will praise him. My father's God and I will exalt him. So they literally, if you read through Exodus here, they will sing, they sing the whole story, you know, the whole thing. So it'd be like, if you had a medical procedure and you went and you got there and they were like, oh, this tumor that didn't used to be there was there. And then you could say. I was driving down National and I went into Cox and the doctor gave me an MRI and wow, there's no tumor. Like, right? You see what I'm saying? This is what happened. They lived through an event and then they gathered together and they sang. They sang because they probably didn't know all the science. They just knew the Lord told them to sing, right? But now we can see, science has told us, this is what happens when you sing. You will not forget this moment when it gets wrapped around melody and rhythm. You will not forget. It will be inside of you. Okay? So the next time something happens and the Lord, the money comes in the mail or whatever, you should try it out. Sing a little song about it. Okay. ⁓ All right, in this room, another way. And all these things, really, I'm saying in this room, but you can do this by yourself. It's all the same thing. Singing is an act of warfare, victory, and deliverance. Okay? Second Chronicles 20, 20 through 22. This is the story of a battle in Second Chronicles, and I'm just gonna read, the whole battle story's a little bit longer. I'm just gonna read verses 20 through 22. And they rose early in the morning and went out into the wilderness of Tekoa. And when they went out, Jehoshaphat stood and said, Hear me, Judah, an inhabitant of Jerusalem. That sounds like a Jehoshaphat voice to me. I'm just kidding. Believe in the Lord your God and you will be established. Believe his prophets and you will succeed. And when he had taken counsel with the people, he appointed those who were to sing to the Lord and praise him in holy attire as they went before the army and say, this is what they sang, give thanks to the Lord for his steadfast love endures forever. Can you say that with me? Give thanks to the Lord for his steadfast love endures forever. And when they began to sing. Right? This is before. This is before they knew what was gonna happen. They have no idea, right? This isn't, I'm sure they were feeling afraid. They're feeling all kinds of things. But when they began to sing and praise, the Lord set an ambush about the men of Ammon, Moab and Mount Seir, who had come against Judah so that they were routed. The Lord did it. Isn't it just like the Lord, you get to sit around and sing and while you're singing, he is at work. Isn't that good? Yeah. A New Testament example of this, I'm sure that you all know is Paul and Silas in Acts 16, verse 25 through 26. About midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God and the prisoners were listening to them. And suddenly, There was a great earthquake so that the foundations of the prison were shaken and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone's bonds were unfastened. This is a beautiful picture. They are literally sitting in the middle of prison and they are singing. Right in the middle before the deliverance comes, they're singing. We sing and he fights. Another part of singing that actually I really, really, really love, especially in this corporate setting, is that singing brings unity. I actually remember when I said earlier that the rules about this God-given gift, they actually have nothing to do really with necessarily what we're singing about, which is so important, why we're singing what we're singing. And I experienced this a few years ago when I ended up at one of the last concerts I ever thought I would attend in my whole life. ⁓ I had a friend, it's a long story, but I was trying to be a good friend. And so I ended up at the Garth Brooks Concert in Kansas City ⁓ at Arrowhead Stadium. You know, okay, I grew up in North Carolina, so I told her before I went, I was like, yes, I have cowboy boots, so I'll be, I can wear them. She's like, do you have something you can wear that's gonna look like you belong here? And she was like, do you even know any Garth Brooks songs? I was like, well, I think like two or three from high school, like they're probably back there somewhere, you know, so. So I go to this concert. And I want to tell you what, I got in there and I cried. Like, not like a little tear, a lot. Like, I was sobbing because there were like 85,000 people or something. I like broke the records for Arrowhead because the field was also filled with chairs too. Incredible, the 85,000 people coming in there from all walks of life, all these things, and then all of a sudden, they all start to sing the same song. And it literally, in that moment, it didn't matter what anybody else was going through for one moment, you know? And unfortunately, you know, it could be friends in low places. Yeah, right, don't sing it, yeah. Or sometimes I thank God for unanswered prayers. ⁓ But the sound, the whole stadium was unified. Unity isn't like a spiritual thought necessarily. Unity can happen in a bad way. I'm not saying Garth Brooks is bad. I'm just saying it was happening because the rules apply. The whole room was singing the same thing and it was overwhelming and I literally just stood there and sobbed. This also can be true in the opposite way of where there is not unity. So when I was ⁓ a little kid, I remember the first time I watched an Atlanta Braves ⁓ game on TV, right? And they were in Atlanta. So that makes a difference, okay? So they're in Atlanta. And I know this is a Kansas City thing too, but I didn't know Kansas City back then because I was from North Carolina. you know, the Braves. And I could like feel it in my insides and I'm like, ⁓ Right? Okay, so then fast forward to, I'm in my late 20s. I end up at a New York Mets game in New York. But I'm like, ⁓ this will be fun. They're playing the Braves. I'll get a Braves t-shirt. And I'll go because then I can do the thing, you know? ⁓ you guys, no, you won't. Like there was just a few of us, you know, and we were getting stuff thrown at us and boom, sit down, you know, the whole thing. So it matters where you are, not unity. ⁓ So here in this room today, though, here's what the truth is about that and about singing specifically. You can come in and it can literally be the worst week of your life, the absolute worst. You could come in, it could be the best week of your life. You could come in and you could be sick in your body, facing some really terrible things. You could be so well, you just lost 10 pounds, your pants zipped without having to put on Spanx. You are living your best life. You could come in here and you could be like, I am literally the brokest of the brokety. Like, I don't know where I'm going to buy my next coffee from. That might be part of the problem if you've been broke, but. ⁓ Or I just, I came in on all this money. am like, you know what I'm saying? In this room right now, these things are happening, right? So many highs and so many lows. Fear about what's going to happen in the world. You might be a Democrat, you might be a Republican. There are so many things happening in this room. When we walk in and then all of a sudden we can say, I exalt thee. I exalt thee. I exalt thee. ⁓ Sing it out. ⁓ I exalted. I exalted. sing it out again. ⁓ I ⁓ exalt So And in that moment, all those differences, all those things where you would never be able to see eye to eye with another person or understand what they're going through, because we came into unity and we looked at something else. And he made it this way. Singing is God's idea. It works for a reason. Another beautiful thing that happens as we gather together is that we can proclaim truth together and we can sing as prayer. Josh, we didn't plan this, but Josh actually did this today for the ministry time that you had a song and you sang it as a prayer. If you, my biggest thing today is that if you see us having two separate times of our services, is my request is that you would stop seeing it that way. That we have like a singing time and then we have a word time. When we're singing the right songs, we are singing the Word. There's no separation. It's all a part of it, right? The teaching is right. We are told in Colossians to teach one another, to admonish one another, but it's not two different things. It's not a like, get your heart ready so you can hear the Word. We're singing the Word if we're singing the right songs, okay? The last recorded thing that Jesus did together with his disciples before he was taken was to sing a hymn. It's the last thing that they did together. The words song and prayer are used really synonymously in so many passages. We have the song of Mary, you have the song of Hannah, you have the song of David. where the idea that these sections, these prayers that are so famous in the Bible that they were sung. We sing truth, hopefully, all the time here in this room. One example would be Ephesians 1 that we sing, Spirit of wisdom, open my eyes again. Spirit of revelation, open my heart again. It's a prayer. Ephesians 1 is just set to melody. It's scripture. It's a prayer. And it's sung to melody. and you can put all those things together. I remember when I was growing up, we would have times kind of in between songs. We didn't really call it worship back then. I don't really know what we called it. It was like the song service or something. ⁓ I was like way deep Pentecostal, you know, church. ⁓ So there weren't no, we didn't do hymns either. It was like, I'll fly away church, you know. ⁓ But ⁓ we'd have these times where it'd be like. We just kind of stop and then everyone would be like, I praise you Lord, I lift your name Jesus. Anybody? No? Okay, yeah, right. But you know what? It's actually really cool. That's cool. I thought it was hilarious when I was little. But we were being obedient. Sing with your mouth. It's amazing. I love our worship team. We have the best worship team ever. They don't go with you everywhere you go. And the command is for you to sing. The command is for you to sing. Another thing that singing does is it teaches us theology. Remember what I said about memory. This is a great way to study and to remember the scriptures. So if you think back to Colossians 3, when we sang that before or read that before, let the word of God dwell richly within you, right? Was the thing that it says right before it says, sing Psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. If I went around the room today, and there might be some smarties in here, so you might be able to say this, but if I went up to anybody and I said, hey, tell me what Lamentations 3.22 says. Anybody? No takers? Okay. But if I started singing, the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, especially if you're 40 and over. His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning. They are new every morning. Repeat that. New. You just sang Lamentations 3, 22-23. Congratulations to you. We have several on our team that are beautiful songwriters and I talked to them about this a lot, making sure that the songs that we're writing from our house are right, that they are scripture and they are right. Because I know just because of math, there are people in our rooms that they're not gonna touch their Bible all week. They may never touch their Bible ever. I hope that's not true, but it's probably true. The only theology they're going to get that will stick with them maybe in their head are the songs that we're singing. What we sing and we say is true about God, it has to be right because of the way he made singing to be and for it to stick. So we don't wanna sing something that's not true. The last one I want to talk about in this context is singing as a form of worship is eternal. This is probably one of my favorites. Revelation 5, 8 through 10. This is what John is seeing. And when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the 24 elders fell down before the lamb, each holding a harp and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. And they sang a new song, saying, worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain. and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation. And you have made them a kingdom and priest to our God, and they shall reign on the earth." When we start singing together in this room, we actually are connecting with an eternal thing, something that's happening. There is a song going on that has been going on. It's going on right now. It will go on forever. The eternal song around the throne of God. And we actually, we connect. It's kind of like ET, you know? It's not like ET at all, but you know, it's like, it's the connection. We're connecting with something. I don't know if you can feel it, but a lot of times in this room when we go into singing something, especially, topically where it is our things that we can read in the Word of God that are happening around the throne of God. Something happens in this room. Right? early in the morning. Our song shall rise to thee. Holy, holy, holy, holy, and mighty God. God in three per Holy, holy, holy is the song, eternal song. When we connect with eternal song, we connect with eternity right here in this room. You feel that? He made it this way. I want to end this morning by just talking to you about your individual time. There's nothing more beautiful to me than these times where we can all sing and we all sing together. It's my favorite. why a lot of times I just have the band be quiet because I love hearing you sing. But I really, wanna encourage you, whether you're a singer or not, whether you can carry any kind of tune or not at all, that you start incorporating this spiritual discipline into your personal time. There are thankfully so many things that you can listen to at home, like you can, you know, pull stuff off of YouTube, off of any streaming service, any kind of worship you can listen to and you can engage that way. But I want to push you a little bit further this morning before we're done and just encourage you to use your own mouth, your own mouth, your own body, your own breath, and engage with the Lord in this way. Psalm 149 verse 5 says, let the godly exult in glory and let them sing for joy on their beds. Nobody has a bed in here, right? Where is your bed at? At home. You know what that tells me? You need to be singing in your home. and it has nothing to do with whether you're a singer or not. Nothing to do with it. It will change the atmosphere. I'll tell you, I've had this happen to me in real time. A few years ago, I was trying to give one of my daughters a shower and she just was not having it. She was squirming away. If you ever tried to like get a child like wrangled when they're wet and soapy in the shower, not good, not good. She was just being so naughty, ⁓ my word. And I had like, I had about had it like up to here, you know, whether you start having flashes in your mind of things that will put you on the news. Like, I'm gonna just lose my actual mind. And I believe completely 100 % it was the Holy Spirit in that moment, because literally I was like, I am about at a place where I'm gonna do something I could regret. And all of a sudden, I I leaned down and I looked there in her face and I was like, you are strong in the Lord. You are strong in the Lord. You are full of wisdom and love. You are, she was like. It sent that mess out of my house. She was so afraid. She probably thought I was psycho, but I don't, but it worked. It worked. And that was like, sing it with me. And so she did. So I was prophesying over her, right? We were singing the truth over her and it like shifted that like naughty, whatever that thing was out of my house, out. Okay. This is a tool the Lord has given you. each one of you, it's not because I'm a worship leader. It's in the Word of God. You can't argue it. He gave us this tool for a reason and it works. It works. Okay. So right now, I'm going show you what you can do, okay? So if you have your phone or your Bible. I want you to turn to Psalm 113. So remember when I said that the last thing Jesus did before they took him away was that he sang a hymn with his disciples. And as we all know, the hymns we know that are hymns today were not written yet. Most scholars believe that it is this passage that he sang with his disciples, Psalm 113 to 118. That's a long song, kids. ⁓ But we're just gonna... I want to show you in your home what you can do as a spiritual discipline to engage this part of, so that your whole body is engaged with the word of God, okay? So Psalm 113, I'm just gonna, I'm just like doing this on the fly. So I'm just gonna read a couple of things and then we're gonna see what we can do. So Psalm 113 says, praise the Lord, praise all servants of the Lord, praise the name of the Lord, blessed be the name of the Lord from this time forth and forevermore from the rising of the sun. to its setting. The name of the Lord is to be praised. So if you're not a singer at all, you could kind of, this is kind of like Gregorian chant a little bit, like, praise the Lord. I don't know, you know, like you don't have to like be some musician or do some fancy melody. Just put some kind of tone to it, right? If 85,000 people can sing for Garth Brooks, you can sing one line of scripture at home on your bed. where nobody is listening, okay? Don't give to someone else what you will not give to Jesus. It's fine to go to all these things. I love music, I love all the music, but don't do that. If you're gonna give somebody else the fruit of your lips, give Jesus the fruit of your lips too, okay? So, all right, so you could do that. You could just sing one note, okay? Somebody wanna try? I'm just kidding. Okay, but I'll just, I'm just reading through, we do a lot of this in prayer room too. ⁓ I'll just take my Bible back there. So I've seen, blessed be the name of the Lord from this time forth and forevermore. And so I would just do, blessed be the name of the. From this time forth and forever more. Then you can sing with me. Blessed be the name of the. from this time forth and forever more. Sing it again. Blessed be the name of. from this time forth and forever more blessed blessed be the name of from this time forth and forever more. Sing it again. Blessed be the name of. from this time forth and forevermore. See? Yes? You just sang some of Psalm 113. Let's stand together. I really encourage you to try it this week. Give it a try. You can shoot us a voice memo if you don't answer. ⁓ It's so important because what it does is then it allows you to obey Colossians 3. Let the Word of God dwell in you richly. Get down deep inside of you the Word of God. It will bypass all the other things that are going on and it'll go and it'll start doing a work inside of you. So important. ⁓ I just thought we'd close today. I'd like to sing Holy, Holy, Holy again as we close. We're not going to do the Holy Piano music today. We're going to make music with our voices. Okay? Love. Early in the- song. to be. Holy, holy, holy. Merciful ⁓ I thank you, Jesus, for the gift of song. I thank you for making it this way, for giving us this tool in our tool belt that we can use. And I ask that the song of God would be in the mouths of the children of God. I just, ask for that, Lord, that you would do that in our house and in our city. I thank you for who you are. I thank you for who you are. I thank you that your presence is everything. We love your name. I just pray today that your homes would be full of love and joy, peace and power, that you would know that you have a sound mind because you have the mind of Christ. in all things. Thank you, Jesus. Amen. Amen. You can go. Have a wonderful day.

Acts 16:25–26 Psalms 149:5