Tag: song

Inspiring Music: The Connection Between Song and Prophecy

Inspiring Music: The Connection Between Song and Prophecy

Marissa

Years ago when I was studying the topic of prophecy in the Bible, I noticed a link between prophecy and music that I thought seemed strange at the time. When we think of prophecy, we typically think of foretelling future events. We might also think of “inspired speaking,” which is the more general sense of both the Hebrew naba (H5012 “prophecy”) and the Greek propheteia (G4394 “prophecy”). Thus, a prophet (nabiy [masculine] or nebiyah [feminine] in Hebrew and prophetes in Greek) is someone who shares a message inspired by God; they’re a spokesperson for Him.

It’s likely impossible to read the Bible without noticing the importance of music, especially in the Psalms. People of God sing a lot, often accompanied by lively music and dancing. With this in mind, perhaps the link between music and prophecy shouldn’t surprise me, but it did. I hear this much less often now, but when I was a teen I was warned repeatedly against the dangers of getting too caught up in the emotions of worship music. Those emotions could stir you up to ignore theologically questionable lyrics or make a fool out of yourself swaying and back and forth in church (or so the argument went). And yet, people in the Bible deliberately sought out music as part of not only their praise but also to help them hear God’s voice.

Prophets as Singers

Revisiting this study started with my mom suggesting that someone should put together a study on music for our monthly scripture writing group. So far, I’ve come up with 20 scriptures for the topic “Inspiring Music.” They’re not all direct links between prophecy and music, but they all have to do with inspiration and singing or playing musical instruments. Several of these verses have to do with prophets and prophetesses who used music when sharing inspired words.

Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a tambourine in her hand; and all the women went out after her with tambourines and with dances. Miriam answered them,

“Sing to Yahweh, for he has triumphed gloriously.
He has thrown the horse and his rider into the sea.”

Exodus 15:20-21, WEB

Now Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Lappidoth, judged Israel at that time. …

Then Deborah and Barak the son of Abinoam sang on that day, saying,

“Because the leaders took the lead in Israel,
    because the people offered themselves willingly,
be blessed, Yahweh!

Judges 4:4; 5:1-2, WEB

With two of the Old Testament prophetesses singing like this, Brown-Driver-Briggs dictionary even includes “gift of song” as part of their definition for nebiyah. The Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament notes that it’s rare, but musicians are “designated nebi’im” (entry 1277). We see another example of this when David appointed “some of the sons of Asaph, Heman, and Jeduthun to prophesy as they played stringed instruments and cymbals” (1 Chr. 25:1-3, NET). It shouldn’t come as any surprise to us that music can be divinely inspired, but seeing it linked with prophecy underscores the importance God places on musical praise, worship, and teaching.

Image of people singing in church overlaid with text from Psalm 105:1-3, WEB version: "Give thanks to Yahweh! Call on his name! Make his doings known among the peoples. Sing to him, sing praises to him! Tell of all his marvelous works. Glory in his holy name. Let the heart of those who seek Yahweh rejoice."
Image by protestantsbarr from Pixabay

Inspired By Music

In addition to these examples of prophets and prophetesses as musicians, we also have an example of a prophet who listened to music.

Elisha said, “As Yahweh of Armies lives, before whom I stand, surely, were it not that I respect the presence of Jehoshaphat the king of Judah, I would not look toward you, nor see you. But now bring me a musician.” When the musician played, Yahweh’s hand came on him. 

2 Kings 3:14-15, WEB

Here, three kings came to Elisha asking him to talk with God for them. Though he wouldn’t have responded to the kings of Israel and Edom, Elisha said he would seek God’s guidance out of respect for the king of Judah. In order to do that, he asked for a musician and it was while he listened to music that “Yahweh’s hand came on him.” It’s a fascinating precedent for someone using music to help them communicate and connect with God.

Music was a key part of worship in God’s temple, particularly after King David appointed singers and musicians for worship in the tabernacle. That type of ministry through music continued into Solomon’s day and beyond whenever kings and righteous leaders reinstituted true worship (1 Chr. 6:31-32; 2 Chr. 23:18; Neh. 12:44-46).

He [Hezekiah] set the Levites in Yahweh’s house with cymbals, with stringed instruments, and with harps, according to the commandment of David, of Gad the king’s seer, and Nathan the prophet; for the commandment was from Yahweh by his prophets.  The Levites stood with David’s instruments, and the priests with the trumpets. Hezekiah commanded them to offer the burnt offering on the altar. When the burnt offering began, Yahweh’s song also began, along with the trumpets and instruments of David king of Israel. All the assembly worshiped, the singers sang, and the trumpeters sounded. All this continued until the burnt offering was finished.

2 Chronicles 29:25-28, WEB

Share Your Song

Image of a man singing with a hymnal, with the blog's title text and the words "When we have God's spirit inside us, want to encourage others, and have a thankful attitude, then godly music is one of the ways for us to express our appreciation for the Lord and strengthen our relationship with Him."
Image by Jens P. Raak from Pixabay

The emphasis on music isn’t just an Old Testament thing. Much as there was music in the physical tabernacles and temples of old, God expects to see music in His spiritual temple that’s made up of all faithful believers.

 Let the peace of Christ be in control in your heart (for you were in fact called as one body to this peace), and be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and exhorting one another with all wisdom, singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, all with grace in your hearts to God.

Colossians 3:15-16, NET

When God looks at His church, there are some specific things He expects to see. He wants us to be at peace with each other and have peace inside us. He wants to see Jesus’s words in us “richly,” overflowing in “teaching and exhorting with wisdom.” And He wants to see us “singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.” The context indicates that singing is part of our teaching and exhortation (our inspired and inspiring words); a conclusion reinforced by another letter Paul wrote.

And do not get drunk with wine, which is debauchery, but be filled by the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing and making music in your hearts to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,

Ephesians 5:18-20, NET

When we’re filled with the Spirit, that’s going to inspire music both aloud and in our hearts. I know it can be hard sometimes to get excited about singing. Maybe you don’t like the way your voice sounds or you’re turned-off by the style of music at your church. I like singing, but there are some hymns that sound an awful lot like a funeral dirge to me and I just can’t work up much involvement singing those. But there are other hymns that I love, and when I’m at home I’m free to pick a style of Christian music I like and dance around singing them all I want. If we want to make music part of our worship, surely we can all find songs that match our tastes well enough that we can sincerely use them to glorify God. At the very least, we can appreciate the words of the music we sing at church and recognize the value God places on music.

In addition to the encouraging and exhorting aspect of “speaking to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs,” there’s also a link to thankfulness. Thanksgiving is a key aspect of praise and of song, and it should accompany our teaching, exhorting, and singing. (2 Sam. 22:50, Ps. 33:2, and others). In this as in so many other things, it comes down to the state of your heart. When we have God’s spirit inside us, want to encourage others, and have a thankful attitude, then godly music is one of the ways for us to both express our appreciation for the Lord and strengthen our relationship with Him.

–

Featured image by Wolfgang Heubeck from Pixabay

Song Recommendation: “How Can I Keep From Singing?” by Keith & Kristyn Getty

Click here to learn more about these books or to order a copy.
Favorite INFJ Songs Playlist

Favorite INFJ Songs Playlist

Marissa

A couple weeks ago, Susan Storm asked me to write an article about songs that INFJs love. When I asked some INFJs on Facebook for feedback on that topic, I was overwhelmed by the responses. It was far more than I could fit in just one article! I’ve compiled a Spotify playlist with the recommended songs, albums, and artists that you can click here to listen to. It’s over 6 hours long, and growing with each new comment. I’ve found several new favorites, and I hope you will too!

Coincidently, I finished writing this article shortly before I finished listening to Jordan Peterson’s “Maps of Meaning” lecture series. In the final lecture, he spends a few moments talking about music.

“Virtually everyone gets intimations of meaning from music. And I think music is hierarchically structured patterns that are representative of being laying itself out properly.  … It is an abstract representation of proper being.” — Jordan Peterson, 2017 Maps of Meaning 12, time signature 1:51:00.

Music is meaningful to us on a level that I doubt most of us (me included) really understand, at least consciously.  And, in the case of many of the songs INFJs list among their favorites, it really does prompt us to think about “being.”

Some of these songs represent irrepressibly hopeful ideas of the world, while others dive deep into brokenness and pain. Some are raw, some are happy, some beautiful, some hard to listen to. But for at least one INFJ out there, the different songs on this playlist are expressing the sorts of things “which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent” (to quote Victor Hugo).

How Do You Hold on to Hope When You’re Fighting Anxiety and Depression?

How Do You Hold on to Hope When You’re Fighting Anxiety and Depression?

Marissa

Anxiety and depression are two of the most common mental illnesses, and they often occur together. Just because its relatively common, though, doesn’t make dealing with both feel any less weird. Exhibit A, this image I ran across on Pinterest:

It’s overly simplified, of course, to say “depression is when you don’t really care about anything” and “anxiety is when you care too much about everything.” Still, these comments capture part of how strange it feels to simultaneously (or alternately) deal with depression and anxiety. “Having both is staying in bed because you don’t want to go to school and then panicking because you don’t want to fail. Having both is wanting to go see your friends so you don’t lose them all, then staying home in bed because you don’t want to make the effort.”

Anxiety and depression are going to show up a bit different for everyone who struggles with them, but for me it’s like one day I’m on-edge, jittery, and so distracted by my inner anxiety monologue that I struggle to remember how things actually happened. Then the next day I feel like a weight’s pressing down on me snuffing out all motivation and hope. And some days, the smothering feeling is there but I’m also anxious about stuff I should care about and there’s this weird fight going on in my head. It’s exhausting.

Holding on to hope isn’t easy when you’re fighting a struggle inside your mind that tells you the worst could happen and there’s no point in trying to do anything about it. But we’re also not helpless victims of our own minds. We can change the patterns of our thoughts. We can choose to hold on to hope even when there seems no reason for it, and the easiest/best way to do this is with the Lord’s help.

Read more →

What’s Behind The Facade?

What’s Behind The Facade?

Marissa

Yesterday my sister and I went to see a community theater’s production of the musical Jekyll and Hyde. It’s a show that our cousin introduced us to years ago through the soundtrack and we were excited to it on stage. I’m not sure I’d call this a favorite play, but the music is fantastic and the story line prompts some intriguing questions about the nature of human kind and how our personalities work.

Jekyll and Hyde is a classic tale of good and evil. The play is quite different from Robert Lewis Stevenson’s novel, The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In the original version, Jekyll develops a serum to separate his darker side because he’d already started indulging his vices and wanted to keep doing so without fear of discovery. The play offers a more compelling protagonist; a Jekyll searching for a cure to evil on a grand scale. If you’re curious, you can watch a really good high school production of the play on YouTube by clicking here.

This isn’t the sort of play that I recommend frequently. It’s dark. It’s complicated. It’s more sexual than the scandalized ladies sitting behind me expected. It doesn’t end happy (don’t look at me like that — you don’t get spoiler warnings when the book’s 132 years old). But it’s also a deeply compelling story that dives head-first into tough questions about the nature of man. Read more →

Even If You Don’t: Holding On To Hope In Dark Times

Even If You Don’t: Holding On To Hope In Dark Times

Marissa

We know God can do anything. So how do you react when He doesn’t do something that you beg him to? When your loved one isn’t healed? When your heartbreak feels unbearable and then something else piles on top of that? When you just don’t know how to go on, yet you have to anyway?

I’ve been going through a rough patch emotionally, especially over the past few weeks but really for a few months now. And I feel like God has thrown me some songs as “lifelines” in this time. First it was “I Am Not Alone” by Kari Jobe and more recently it was “Even If” by MercyMe.

I know You’re able and I know You can
Save through the fire with Your mighty hand
But even if You don’t
My hope is You alone
I know the sorrow, and I know the hurt
Would all go away if You’d just say the word
But even if You don’t
My hope is You alone

I didn’t much want to sing this when it popped into my head. Actually, I couldn’t at first since all I remembered was the “But even if you don’t” line. But I looked the song up, grasping for some hope to anchor my soul, and after playing through it a few times I could breath and pray again. I’ll admit, though, that there was still a part of me crying out, “Why?” when I thought about Him choosing not to take away the sorrow and hurt. And it’s okay to do that. As my counselor said, God is big enough to handle it when His kids are frustrated with Him.

Hope is one of the key things that gets us through the times when we’re frustrated with God and don’t understand what He’s doing. And it’s something I don’t think we talk about enough. Paul tells us “faith, hope and love remain”  (1 Cor. 13:13, WEB). They’re all three virtues that aren’t going away, but we talk about faith and love a whole lot more than hope. Which is a shame, because hope is something that’s very much needed in this world. Read more →

Voila, That’s Life, Enjoy It!

Marissa

My sister and I had yesterday all planned out. Doctor Who in the morning, lunch with our cousin, then an afternoon of dress shopping for a dance in a couple weeks. The first complication happened when we thought we were running early so we swung by a dance store looking for shoes. We got lost, finally stopped at the store, and when we left the car wouldn’t start. Not too much of a complication though — we changed out the faulty fuse that’s been plaguing my sister’s car, and finally got to lunch 1/2 an hour late.

Lunch was great, so that part of the plan went well. But then the car wouldn’t start again and changing fuses didn’t cut it (the mechanic warned this day would come). So there we were, stuck in Raising Cane’s parking lot waiting for a tow truck driver and my sister was starting to see things, to put it delicately, in a rather negative light.

Now, I’m all for the occasional cry-and-eat-chocolate pity party, but the sun was shining and it was a beautiful fall day and we just ate an awesome lunch with our cousin. I mean, it’s not like we were in the middle of nowhere when it was raining and dark. So I rolled out a guaranteed negativity buster:

I watched this film more times than I care to admit when I was younger. I’m worried it won’t hold up well to rewatching, especially after reading Jules Verne’s original In Search of the Castaways, so I haven’t seen it in a while. But I could still (mostly) sing this song.

There’s really quite a bit of truth in “Enjoy It” for such a silly little song. So much of whether or not we have a “bad day” or a “good day” depends on how we respond to the things that happen to us. Advice like, “A hurricane comes your way, enjoy the breeze” sounds ridiculous, but the principle of reframing incidents and looking on the bright side is sound. As the song points out, there’s no point in crying about things we can’t change — “Each moment is a treasure, enjoy it!”

If there’s a complication, enjoy it!
You’ve got imagination, employ it!
And you’ll see roses in the snow,
Joie de vivre will make them grow,
Voila, that’s life, enjoy it!