Praying in the Spirit: Singing in the Spirit

There is a problem, however. If the Church is going to practice singing in Spirit and if the Bible says so little about it, how is the Church to use such singing? The answer, we know, must come from Scripture. And it seems to me that the best approach is to apply what the Bible has to say about (1) music in general, (2) singing in general, and (3) speaking in tongues. I do not believe that the practice of singing in the Spirit will be misused if handled in this manner. Not only can we draw principles of structure through this approach, but we can perhaps get a better idea of the meaningfulness of the glossolalic utterance.

All but two religions have divorced music from worship. It is true that many religions have their melancholy and even macabre chants and dirges, but only Judaism and Christianity have developed music to a high degree of proficiency and integrated it into divine and joyful worship (McCommon, p. 5). In light of the importance of music in Christianity (someone has said that there has been no great revival that was not closely linked to song), it is not difficult to understand the old adage “Music is a handmaiden of religion.” Music, as a servant, waits upon its master. Music turns men’s minds toward God—this is its purpose in the Church, not to entertain but, through the emotions, to deepen man’s relationship with God and to intensify his yearning, as lowly creature, to worship the High Creator (Alford, pp. 19-20).

Music loosens us from the rationalism that can constrict the mind and spirit. Sometimes, as I have suggested, our minds can actually come between us and God; the same anchor that saves a vessel from beaching and thus destruction may also serve to fasten it to the bottom of the sea when it should be racing towards its destination. Music loosens the spirit from its earthly moorings, from the rivets of rationalism and strictures of the cerebral. Music takes us beyond word intelligibility in its attempt to express the inexpressible (Johannson, pp. 96-100).

Music takes us to the mystery, the wonder, the awe of God. We cannot follow the gray-nerve road of the cortex and get all the way there. At some point we must leap from the stationary platform onto the mystical transportation music provides. As has been said, music can indeed take us into another world and “unveil heights and depths in life not otherwise accessible to our observation” (Hunter, ed. pp. 34-35).

Tags: praying, singing, spirit

Category: Spirit, Spring 2001