Worship His Majesty by Jack W. Hayford

Author:Jack W. Hayford
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Religion, Worship and Love, God, Christian Life, Christianity, Spirituality, Biblical Teaching, Fundamentalism, General, Pentecostal & Charismatic
ISBN: 9780830723980
Publisher: Regal
Published: 2000-04-02T22:00:00+00:00

THE LIFE-BEGETTING POWER OF SONG

Sing, O barren, you who have not borne! Break forth into singing.... For you shall expand to the right and to the left, and your descendants will inherit the nations.

ISAIAH 54:1-3

She was the picture of shyness, standing at the door and bashfully glancing my way, with one finger curled to her lower lip and her eyes eloquently inquiring, Can I see you, Pastor Jack?

I beckoned to her, and the eight-year-old walked across the prayer room to where I stood with some elders. Though the service was about to begin, I knelt to greet the child, so our eyes were at the same level.

"Hi, Aimee," I smiled. "What do you want?"

She was so sweetly childlike. "Pastor Jack, I wanted you to hear a song the Lord gave to me."

The service was imminent, but right then she seemed a more precious and urgent matter than the multitude gathering for worship.

"Sing it for me," I said. And she did.

It was a tender little tune. The child's loving lyric voiced her worship and gave expression to first discoveries in the Holy Spirit's creativity in song.

"That's beautiful, Aimee. You keep singing it to the Lord Jesus, will you?"

She nodded and we hugged each other as I whispered, "Thank you for coming to share your song with me. Tell Mama and Daddy hello for me, and ... ," I paused and then added, "I love you."

Her smile would have melted a million hearts as she said, "I love you, too," and then slipped out the door and hurried to wherever her mom and dad were seated.

There's more to Aimee's story, but for the moment I pause to underscore a conviction about worship and song: God wants to give everyone his or her own song of praise to Him.

The Creator, whose Word repeatedly says, "Sing unto the Lord a new song," wants to beget a new song on the lips and from the hearts of His own — a distinctly new song of your own! This is not to suggest that everybody's "new song" is appropriate for everyone else or that they should supplant those we've learned together.

But my response to Aimee's song was more than a pastor's kindness to a child; it was my confirmation of a vital practice. She had never heard me encourage private song making in worship, but at her tender age she was experiencing a creative possibility open to us all. While we are not all composers, able to refine melody and lyric, we all have the potential to sing songs spontaneously to the Lord.

The Full Spectrum of Song

Worship may be possible without song, but nothing contributes more to its beauty, majesty, dignity and nobility or to its tenderness and intimacy. There is a full spectrum of purposes and practices of song in worship. The breadth of style, the endless melodic possibilities, the delicate nuances of choral dynamics, the brilliant luster of instrumental arrangement, the soul-stirring anthems of anointed choirs, the rumbling magnificence of giant organs — all seem clearly to be God-given means for our endless expansion and creativity in worship.

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