MUSIC THAT MINISTERS TO MY HEART

MUSIC THAT SPEAKS TO MY HEART

                I am currently arranging and recording two CD’s worth of hymns I will call, “THE MAJESTIC HYMNS Volume 1 and 2. Each time before I begin to work on a new song I search for the meaning of the Hymn I am about to arrange, I ask the Lord to send His Holy Spirit… to breathe new life into these songs and to just saturate them with His presence and power.

                This is a rather tall order I might add since I am just one old guy sitting in front of my keyboard before a wonderful program of recording software, but just like I do every day before I write my articles I depend on something more than technical prowess. I have come to depend heavily upon the Holy Spirit to draw forth from me something of His own to share with those who read. Otherwise, what is the point? We have to believe that, as promised, “out of our innermost being will flow rivers of living water.” (John 7:38

                I don’t want to update the Hymns by “Jazzing them up” so to speak, rather I want to reflect the majesty and simplicity and power that inspired those songs in the first place. In the process of doing this I have been astounded at the glory and wonder of the Gospel presented in these songs.

                When I was young I didn’t get it. We sang all these same songs growing up… in fact I was involved in church music as far back as I can remember even having to stand on a chair beside my Dad and my brother in order to see over the pulpit… and yes, the music meant something to me of course, but we were agenda driven and program driven and the music was just a necessary part of the program. Everything was about deadlines and last minute details so that I never got to really let the songs minister to me.

                Now as I seek the meaning and the message of these songs so as to bring it forth the spirit of them musically I am amazed at the power of their words. Most of them having been written in the 17 and 1800s, must speak of past revivals and ardent faith in very different times than our own. Most were written by Baptists and Methodists and such so that the Hymns we sing today are common to nearly all denominations. If you look into a Baptist Hymnal, or a Methodist hymnal or a Pentecostal or Adventist or Presbyterian  you will find the same core body of  the Hymns along with a few songs added that reflect the beliefs and or personality, or culture of the congregation that has adopted them.

                I think about the experiences behind the songs. We know some of them and we know that often the most beautiful and heart stirring songs have been borne out of tragedy, or times of great revival, or persecution and it is on the basis of these same hymns that I have begun to make declarations of faith to God in my prayer life, reviewing before Him the wonderful works of His Salvation and declaring that I too, stand upon what Jesus Christ has done as well as looking for His soon return. We can stand with those pioneers who came before us as we declare, “My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus blood and righteousness. I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly lean on Jesus name. On Christ the solid Rock I stand… all other ground is sinking sand… all other ground is sinking sand.

                Suddenly these words become very personal… not just something from the dusty pages of history, but the same vibrant faith that we must live by today. We too are staring epic events in the face. Our world is being swallowed up by a malevolent force. An antichrist kingdom is being built with one thought in mind… to wipe true Christianity off the face of the earth as well as God’s chosen remnant from among the Jews. They call us the Old World Order and they want to wipe the slate clean and create a New World Order in which Lucifer is the god of the coming age and science is their new Savior.

                We need the faith of our fathers living still in spite of dungeon, fire and sword. We will soon face similar circumstances as the world closes in on the faithful and identifies us as “Deplorables.”

                So we need more than a Christian agenda and Christian programming and deadlines. We need to dig deeper into the well of our salvation… to the fundamental truths that God has provided in His Word… to the truths that are reflected in the majestic Hymns.

                I fear that as we stand with our faces in a Hymnbook  in an opulent surrounding with a mighty pipe organ giving off its high sounding notes, we are in danger of missing the point of these songs as we grow farther and farther away from the battlefields of faith in which they were written. And I can’t help but feel that we will soon be in the trenches once again and when we are, then these hymns will minister to us even as they did in times past.

                We need something more than the church we belong to and the programs we are involved in. We need to somehow go beyond that to a personal faith that is rock solid and firm. Is our faith really in Christ the solid Rock or is it in the program… the agenda… the tradition?

                We need to read our Bibles with new eyes and sing our songs with new understanding, for we desperately need to stand in faith today as did our forefathers. The foundations are eroding in many places to the point where we who believe will indeed have nothing else to stand on but Christ the solid Rock. But that is a very good place to stand.