Reverend Raymond Osborne, Pastor

Please Note That Most Messages Follow
The Revised Common Lectionary

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

The last time you and I met together, which seems like an eternity, I continued our series on Worship and spoke to you about the Gift of Prayer. We discussed that each time we assemble in this place we gather in the presence of God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit. This morning I bring you the next to last message in this series. “Is Singing as Important as Praying?”

This is going to be a brief message, which ought to delight each of you! We are going to close this service with a mini-hymn-sing. At the conclusion of this message I’m going to give you the opportunity to pick some of your favorites and we will sing a few verses from each hymn or praise chorus you pick so be thinking!

If we carefully study the Scriptures we will find that singing is a VERY IMPORTANT aspect of Worship!

One of the ways to find out how important something is in the Bible is to do a word-search. If you enter the word “worship,” you will find that it appears 158 times in the Bible. Enter the word “praise” and you find that it appears over 300 times! The word “pray,” 121 times, and the word “sing,” 122 times.

I would suppose that no one here had a problem with my sermon on prayer. We all would probably admit to praying either in a daily devotional way, or collectively when we say the “Our Father” here on Sunday mornings, or when we simply find ourselves in trouble and we mutter a sincere, “Lord, help me!”

But if I asked you how often you sing to the Lord, I bet I’d get a variety of responses. “I don’t like to sing.” Or perhaps, “I can’t sing. Why I can’t carry a tune in a bucket or even tune the Radio!”

The truth is, singing is a VERY IMPORTANT part of worshipping God and He doesn’t care how you do it, or how well you do it, just that you DO IT!

Some people are very gifted in singing. Unlike myself, some have the ability to read music and sing each note with master precision. Others, like myself, have been given the ability to sing by ear. Yet there are others who, as my Dad use to call it, sing by letter. Just open your mouth and letter fly! Folks the Word of God does not say that we have to sing in key or in time, the word of God simply says “Make a joyful noise unto the Lord!”

Since I’ve been here I’ve done my best to allow us more opportunities to sing. We’ve included praise songs in our worship. Singing is just as important in our worship as the praying, as the giving, as even the spoken word. In fact, I’ve seen folks come to know the Lord through music when the spoken Word never reached the depths of their soul.

In my last pastorate we use to have an annual youth concert with a very popular youth group called “New Life.” These guys brought the fog on stage and the laser lights and the loud thumping music that peeled the paint off the walls. Each and every concert we saw multiple youth come to know Jesus. Butch, I miss that man! Maybe you and I can talk about how to get New Life to do a concert for us.

When I was in Germany doing a Lay Witness Mission a young man who was serving in the Army met me at the airport. He had tears in his eyes. He said, “Ray I wanted to thank you for singing the song you wrote the other night. It was that song that caused me to realize that I was lost and needed Jesus in my life.” Then I cried as he hugged me and we said our goodbyes.

People music has a certain quality and power in it to change lives and lead people to Jesus.

Music also can pick us up when we’re feeling blue. It can encourage us when we are feeling beaten by the enemy and his demons.

But why is it so important to us here? Because it’s a vehicle for bringing us closer to God and for showing our love and adoration to the King of Kings.

To conclude our service we are going to have a mini-hymn-sing. For the few moments left I want you to call out your favorite hymns or praise choruses and we will attempt to do them. If it’s a guitar tune I’ll do my best but without my partner it may be that we’ll have to by-pass it until next Sunday.

Before we do I want to read you a portion from the United Methodist Hymnal.

This is point # VII from John Wesley’s Select Hymns, 1761

“Above all sing spiritually. Have an eye yo God in every word you sing. Aim at pleasing Him more than yourself, or any other creature. In order to do this attend strictly to what you sing, and see that your heart is not carried away with the sound; but offered to God continually; so shall your singing be such as the Lord will approve here, and reward you when he cometh in the clouds of heaven.”

Now - Let Us SING!!

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