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Kindle Notes & Highlights
Singing encourages and expresses the Spirit’s work in our hearts.
Singing helps us remember God’s Word.
While music speaks to our emotions, it’s the truth that sets us free, not music.
what should move our emotions is not the sonorous tones of the organ or the insistent beat of the drums, but the mind’s apprehension of truth about God.”
what we want to avoid is emotionalism, not emotions. Emotionalism pursues feelings as an end in themselves. It’s wanting to feel something with no regard for how that feeling is produced or its ultimate purpose. In contrast, the emotions that singing is meant to express are a response to who God is and what he’s done.
Passionless singing is an oxymoron.
When we experience a lack of desire for God or an inner dullness, our greatest need is to fill our minds with truths about God, especially as he’s revealed himself to us in the gospel.
God gave us singing as a means not only of expressing our emotions but also of speaking to them.
Faith enables us to hear songs as if for the first time because they’re only a faint reflection of the unending praises being sung around the throne.
worship is a gift we receive before it’s a task we perform.
Shallow or vague lyrics need never prevent us from importing biblical truth into them.
I’ve often sung additional words to myself when being led in songs. For example, if you’re repeatedly singing a line like, “You are worthy of praise,” tell the Lord the specific reasons why he’s so worthy: “you redeemed me . . . you know all things . . . your mercies never end . . . you rule over all.”
our response to God’s presence uniquely defines us as God’s people.
No worship leader, pastor, or musician can bring us into the presence of God.
Only Jesus can lead us into God’s presence, and he accomplished that through his substitutionary death, which forever removed the curtain of God’s judgment that separated us from his presence (Heb. 10:19–22). It’s only by putting our faith fully in Jesus’s finished work of redemption that we can encounter the living God. Only Christ has truly brought us near to the Father.
Encountering God generally bears the fruit of things like a greater hunger for his Word, a deeper love for the Savior, and a greater passion for a holy life.
Dependence doesn’t imply inactivity or simply waiting around. It’s expressed in actively pursuing a deeper knowledge of God’s ways and an impartation of his power through Scripture.
It’s the height of presumption to think we can neglect prayer and still expect to experience God’s presence and power. The root cause of our prayerlessness is often not laziness, but pride.
Subjective experiences don’t have objective authority.
Theologian Andreas Köstenberger reminds us, “Biblical spirituality does not consist primarily of mystical, emotional experience, inward impressions and feelings, introspective meditation, or a monastic withdrawal from the world. The primary spiritual disciplines advocated by Scripture are prayer and the obedient study of God’s Word.”7
It’s easy to forget that what we’re doing now is only an introduction, a foretaste, a shadow of what’s to come. Our lives here are only the cover and title page to what lies ahead. For Christians, death begins “Chapter One of the Great Story,” as C. S. Lewis writes, “which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”1
to worship anything but God is rebellion against his rule and a rejection of his sovereign love.
Our decisions reflect our worship.
True worshipers hold fast to the hope that one day we will do nothing but boast in the Lord.
