Sing to the Lord, Alone

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00:00:05.000 | Pastor John, occasionally I like to check in with you and simply ask if there's

00:00:08.680 | anything off of your front burner, anything that you're thinking about from

00:00:12.640 | your personal devotions that you want to share with us here.

00:00:16.000 | Tony, I think what I want to do off my personal devotions is encourage folks to

00:00:24.360 | sing to the Lord by themselves in their personal devotions. I believe that the

00:00:39.640 | Spirit of God wants to encourage us to sing to the Son of God and to the Father.

00:00:47.520 | And the Spirit in which I'm giving this right now, maybe I better clarify, the

00:00:52.280 | Spirit in which I'm giving this encouragement to sing is like the

00:00:56.760 | marriage counseling I would be giving to somebody if they said, "Things aren't going

00:01:00.320 | so well with us. You don't need advice for us." I'm not laying anything

00:01:05.520 | down as a detailed prescription or a formula that's gonna fix anybody. I don't

00:01:14.600 | have any intention to say how often a person should sing or how long they

00:01:18.580 | should sing or how loud they should sing or any specific results that are gonna

00:01:23.440 | come from singing. It's not like that. It's more like me saying to a

00:01:27.880 | husband, "Why don't you just try regularly saying to your wife, 'I love you'?" I'm not

00:01:34.420 | telling him five times a day. I'm just saying, if that's missing,

00:01:39.240 | probably it could go better. Or try touching her on the back of the

00:01:44.080 | neck when she's standing at the sink for no reason whatsoever, not leading

00:01:48.280 | anywhere, just felt like reaching out to her. Or try talking well of her in public.

00:01:53.800 | In other words, I would just be kind of throwing out these suggestions that I've

00:01:58.200 | learned over the years that would say, "I just think your marriage just might be

00:02:01.440 | enriched by doing those things." That's the Spirit in which I'm

00:02:05.680 | offering this encouragement to sing to the Lord in your personal devotions. And

00:02:12.640 | I say this as one who's not a natural singer alone. I love to sing in church. I

00:02:19.560 | love to sing with lots of people carrying my voice so I don't have to

00:02:23.320 | hear me. I don't default to singing when I'm alone. I wish I did. I wish I

00:02:30.880 | were that kind of person. I hear some people, they just sing. They're just

00:02:33.680 | singing. John Bloom is like that. He just seems to be singing. I don't do that. I

00:02:38.200 | have to say, "Oh, it would be good to sing. Let's sing." So I'm kind of

00:02:43.560 | preaching to myself here. And the more I've thought about that, like why I'm not

00:02:48.040 | like that, the less I like it. I don't like it. I don't like having to be told

00:02:54.840 | to sing. I wish I were the kind of person who just sang. So anyway, I'm not, and I'm

00:03:01.480 | talking to me and anybody like me. It seems to me that the psalmists sang and

00:03:09.800 | encouraged us to sing, not just in the great congregation. They did all the time.

00:03:14.520 | Sing in the great congregation. But I think when they got up in the morning,

00:03:18.600 | here's Psalm 57, "I will sing and make melody. Awake, my glory. Awake, O harp and

00:03:25.920 | lyre. I will awake the dawn." So he's like, wakes up in the morning, "I'm gonna sing

00:03:30.560 | the sun up." Or Psalm 108, same thing, "My heart is steadfast, O God. I will sing

00:03:35.920 | and make melody with all my being. Awake, awake, O harp and lyre. I will awake the

00:03:41.440 | dawn." That seems to be like, I haven't gone to church. I haven't gone to the temple

00:03:45.640 | or to the synagogue. I'm just bringing up the sun with my song. Or Psalm 59,

00:03:55.040 | "I will sing of your strength. I will sing aloud of your steadfast love in the

00:04:01.640 | morning, for you have been to me a fortress." He just seems to be overwhelmed

00:04:07.480 | by God's strength in his life, and he wants to wake up the morning with it.

00:04:12.280 | It's the overflow of joy. "My heart shall rejoice in your salvation. I will

00:04:18.320 | sing to the Lord because he has dealt bountifully with me." So has the Lord

00:04:22.960 | dealt bountifully with you? Well, the response of the psalmist was, "I will sing

00:04:27.120 | to the Lord." That would be maybe a good response to add to whatever your

00:04:31.520 | responses are to the bounty of the Lord. And he seemed to sing to the Lord when

00:04:38.240 | he woke up at night. Psalm 63, "When I remember you upon my bed and meditate on

00:04:44.560 | you in the watches of the night, for you have been my help and in the shadow of

00:04:48.520 | your wings I will sing for joy." So he's not just singing at church. It seems to

00:04:57.440 | be something that he just considered part of his being. He said, "I will sing to the

00:05:02.600 | Lord as long as I live. I will sing praise to my God while I have my being."

00:05:08.040 | He just belonged to his being. And Paul, I mean, if you leave the Psalms

00:05:14.440 | behind and go over to Paul, here's an amazing thing he said in 1 Corinthians

00:05:18.440 | 14, "What am I to do? I will pray with my spirit and I will pray with my mind also.

00:05:25.120 | I will sing praise with my spirit and I will sing with my mind also." He's talking

00:05:31.640 | about tongues there, and sometimes he's in the spirits singing in tongues and

00:05:38.800 | sometimes he's not. And so it seems like part of Paul's personal devotions was he

00:05:44.120 | sang by himself. And James said this, "Is anyone among you suffering?" James 5, "Let

00:05:52.680 | him pray." Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise. So that probably didn't mean

00:05:59.120 | wait till you get to church. So I'm not gonna make any great promises to anybody.

00:06:04.320 | I'm just gonna say, "God would be pleased no matter how bad your voice is and you

00:06:10.720 | will be helped, yes you will, good things will happen in your soul if you sing to

00:06:16.520 | the Lord. So get a hymnal or go to Google and print out your favorite worship

00:06:20.760 | songs or sing softly so nobody can hear or sing loud." I'll close with this. Noel

00:06:29.960 | and I had an apartment in England about seven years ago on our sabbatical. The

00:06:35.680 | most memorable thing of living in that apartment is the Korean couple in the

00:06:41.400 | morning who lived above us and we awakened to them singing, the two of them

00:06:46.780 | singing every morning. It was one of the sweetest sounds that I've ever heard. And

00:06:52.200 | so whether people hear you or don't doesn't doesn't matter, it will be

00:06:56.760 | powerful in your life. Good, yeah. And just for clarity's sake, are you making any

00:07:02.320 | fundamental distinction between singing in daily morning devotions at home and

00:07:06.600 | say singing alone in the car on your way to work? No, no I'm not making those

00:07:11.160 | distinctions. That's just awesome. I grew up in a home with a mom and

00:07:17.000 | dad who sang in the front seat with my sister and me in the back seat and to

00:07:24.200 | this day I look at that and say, "What a privilege, what a privilege." I wonder if

00:07:29.880 | I'm still a Christian because of looking at my mom and dad and saying, "They're not

00:07:35.360 | performing. They're not in front of a church. They're not even thinking about us.

00:07:39.960 | They are singing their old-fashioned spiritual songs because they're

00:07:45.000 | overflowing together." So car, you know, walking out in the woods, wherever, I'm

00:07:52.440 | just saying personal singing, not just corporate singing, is a sweet experience

00:07:58.240 | that I wish everybody could taste. Wonderful. Thank You, Pastor John. Well, but

00:08:02.960 | what if you don't feel like you connect with God at all in singing to Him? This

00:08:06.440 | was a question raised online not long ago and Pastor John addressed it in

00:08:10.080 | episode number 287 titled "Giving Up on the Church." It can be found in the Ask

00:08:14.680 | Pastor John podcast archive, most easily in the free iPhone app. Thank you for

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00:09:03.720 | support the work of Desiring God. Monday we will return to talk about a new

00:09:08.040 | chapter in John Piper's legacy. I'm your host Tony Ranke. Thank you for listening

00:09:12.480 | and thank you for partnering with us.

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