Reason I Sing (Live)

“Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns and spiritual songs to God with gratitude in your heart” 

Colossians 3:16

“Sing to Him, sing praise to Him, tell of his wonderful deeds” Psalm 105:2 

There is truly nothing else in all the universe that should stir our hearts to joyous and uncontainable song more than the glorious truths of the Gospel. I once heard someone say that we should preach the Gospel to ourselves every single day. I would add to that: we should sing the Gospel to ourselves every single day. We are so fundamentally fickle in faith and devotion that we need reminders every single day of who Jesus is, what He has done on our behalf, and how that impacts every waking moment of our lives. Every single day we require a total reset. We are more prone to forgetfulness than we give ourselves credit for, and thus singing truth is our gift! 

We have to tell ourselves in every season, in every circumstance who we are in Christ and what He has done for us on the cross. Just think about all of the thousands of songs that you have memorized through the years that have provided the soundtrack to your life. Songs that when you hear them, immediately take you back to a certain place, a certain memory, a certain interaction, a certain emotion, a certain season. I can name at least 10 songs right now that have deeply impacted some of my core convictions and beliefs. 

Now imagine for a second if the Gospel itself was the predominant “song” that provided the soundtrack to your life. If you could look back through the seasons of your life and attach your dearest memories to a refrain of the Gospel in a way that strengthens and brings joy and life to your soul! As much as sharing the Gospel with others is a discipline that we do in obedience to God, I believe that we should daily work the muscle of reminding our own hearts of the reason why we live, breathe and exist. We do the real work of centering our lives on the person and works of Jesus. One effective way that we can start is by singing about it consistently every single day. 

Jerry Bridges so beautifully articulated in his book the Discipline of Grace 

“To preach the Gospel to yourself means that you continually face up to your own sinfulness and then flee to Jesus through faith in His shed blood and righteous life. It means that you appropriate, again by faith, the fact that Jesus fully satisfied the law of God, that He is your propitiation, and that God’s holy wrate is no longer directed toward you. To preach the Gospel to yourself means that you take as face value the precious words of Romans 4:7-8 “blessed are they whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered…..it means that you believe on the testimony of God that “there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus”. It means you believe that Christ redeemed you from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for you. It means you believe He forgave your sins and now you are holy in His sight, without blemish, and free from accusation”

There is a reason why throughout Scripture singing is not only a suggestion but a command. I believe that music and melody were created by God to help us connect our minds and hearts more deeply to the truths of God’s word. Singing has a way of bringing truth to life and causing it to sink down into our souls in such a unique way. So today, if you haven’t yet, take a moment to remind yourself of all the reasons that you have to sing. Meditate on the glorious door that Christ has opened for you to enter into the presence of God with freedom and boldness in spite of your sin because of the cross, AND SING!