"...speaking to each [ones] in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and psalming in your heart to the Lord..."
-What would it look like if a person was actually filled with the Holy Spirit of God, controlled and empowered and consumed by Him? For one, it follows naturally that their conversation would be about Him. So we have Paul describing the ones thus filled as speaking to one another - in songs about God. They are also singing in their hearts to God. In other words, when they are filled with Him in their hearts, God's people are singing. They have a song in their heart, and it is about the Lord. Not merely listening to music, they are actually making music, in their hearts.
-Singing and music is rooted in the very core of the human psyche. It expresses the entire breadth of emotion - joy and celebration, mourning and sadness. Songs memorialize significant moments and relationships - creating cultural icons like the rocket’s red glare, highway run, ba-barbara ann. And they are sure to erupt spontaneously from deliriously happy hearts. Songs and celebrations go hand in hand - do we not have songs for most every major event in our lives? Birthdays, graduation, death, Christmas, New Years, 4th of July, most every major sporting event (including the 7th inning stretch), as well as for our most cherished teams. Fight songs, anthems, jingles, choruses - song is a part of who we are. It just naturally follows that when we are filled up with the Lord that our hearts, our songs, our conversations will be centered around and directed towards Him.
-In Scripture, songs of praise and thanksgiving always had a dedicated place in the life of God’s people (1Chr 6.31-32; Neh 12.8; Ps 5.11, 33.1-3). Songs even led to victory in battle (2Chr 20.22). And when God almighty shows up in a person’s life, He puts an entirely new song in their heart (Ps 40.3), one of joy and gladness. Singing also appears to be one of the primary preoccupations of Heaven (Rev 5.9, 14.3, 15.3), which makes perfect sense, because surely there is no more deliriously happy place in the entire universe. To be in His presence, to be entirely focused on and filled with Him, to be caught up in the reality of His awe-inspiriing perfection and beauty, His breathtaking goodness, His amazing grace and everlasting love (for even me!) - this is the heritage and the destiny of the people of God. THIS is cause for singing even in the here and now when we glimpse such goodness only dimly!
-But that reality invades our world (and longs to invade our lives) here and now. We are given glimpses of this breathtaking goodness every day throughout the entirety of creation, and we ourselves are (meant to be) receiving and being transformed into the image of our glorious God each and every day as we walk in the fulness of His Spirit (2Cor 3.18). This is precisely what Paul is talking about! Breathtaking goodness should in fact be oozing out of our pores for all to see. AND smell. Granted, for some, those who are dying, it smells like death warmed over, but these foretastes of divine glory are further cause for spontaneous singing.
-One might ask, if the music has gone out of my heart, what happened? Where is the Spirit? So many people in the civilized west who claim to follow the Lord, professing to have Christ in their life, and yet where is the singing? Where is the joy unspeakable, the irrepressible songs of praise and thanksgiving? So many profess-ers who amble in to services after (they know) the appointed time of singing has concluded. The singing is (or darn-well should be) the best part, people! Folks coming in for the meat, the quote-unquote main course, and they’re missing out on the dessert, which is often served first! Who doesn’t want dessert first? Has the joy and spontaneous singing been choked out of my life by the worries and the cares of the world? By the love of riches and the longing for temporary things? Has the new song of God ever even entered my heart and issued forth from my mouth? Time, perhaps, to “turn you eyes upon Jesus, look full in His wonderful face - and the things of earth will grow strangely dim...in the light of His glory and grace.” (Helen Lemmel)
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