serenade

My dad sent me a link the other day with every scriptural reference to music that there is in the Bible.  There's a lot.  So I decided to go through them all and write down the ones that specifically mention singing (because that's how much of a dork I am).  I now have three fully typed pages of all the verses in the Bible that mention singing.  Most of them are very similar, and I'm sure you've read many of them before.  Here are a few that caught my eye:

"They ministered with their music . . " 1 Chronicles 6:32

"So what shall I do?  I will pray with my spirit, but I will also pray with my mind; I will sing with my spirit, but I will also sing with my mind." 1 Corinthians 14:15

"Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth, burst into jubilant song with music." Psalm 98:4
I knew it!  I knew "bursting into song" was scriptural!  This is my new verse to quote when people (ahem Greg) make fun of me for singing my thoughts and conversations.  And actually, I found that "bursting into song" is found multiple times in Isaiah.  Just saying.

"I will sing to the Lord all my life; I will sing praise to my God as long as I live." Psalm 104:33

"How good it is to sing praises to our God!" Psalm 147:1

One verse, however, jumped straight off the pages in my Bible and into my heart.  It's from the book of Zephaniah, and I had never read it before (probably because it's from Zephaniah).

"The Lord your God is with you, he is mighty to save.  He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing." Zephaniah 3:14

Did I read that right?  The creator of the universe, the creator of life, the great "I AM" is going to sing to me!?  Really?  To me??

As I sat and stared at those words, my heart flooded with emotions and my eyes flooded with tears.  What in the world will he sing about?  What will be the words of the song?  What will his voice sound like?  How will I react?  When will he sing to me?  Will it be in Heaven, or could he be singing to me now?  Wouldn't it be cool if we did a duet?!  ;)

Then, I came across this verse:

"You are my hiding place; you will protect me from trouble and surround me with songs of deliverance." Psalm 32:7

I don't know if this strikes anyone else as powerfully as it does me, but I am literally blown away by the thought of the Lord "surrounding" me with his songs.  I've read about God's love for me, and I've never doubted it.  But the idea of my Father holding me in the palm of his hand and singing a song just for me makes his love for me as real as it has ever been.  For the past forty-eight hours, I have literally been moved to tears thinking about it.

My heart has been rather convicted about a few new things lately that I won't go into, mainly concerning matters of the heart.  I'm trying really hard to change my heart.  I don't believe God commands us to sing for the sake of singing (although I'm up a creek if that's wrong).  Rather, I see a theme in my three typed pages of Biblical verses on singing.  Praise.  I don't know what I did to deserve to be sung to by the creator of the universe (answer: nothing), but I know that I am going to praise him in song right back.

"The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and I am helped.  My heart leaps for joy and I will give thanks to him in song." Psalm 28:7