Is Your Song New?

Sing to the LORD a new song.

That phrase is repeated more than a dozen times throughout the Bible. We read right over it, sing it glibly in choruses, but have you ever stopped to wonder what it means?

If you've been singing songs and hymns all your life, does that mean that they are used up? Should everyone be a songwriter? Is a 300-year-old hymn less valuable to the Lord because it's not a new song?

I pondered that phrase this morning and asked the Lord what it meant.

I thought of the prolific songwriters who bless us frequently with their new songs, their skill with lyrics, their twist of a phrase that lends new meaning to age-old thoughts. They have no trouble singing new songs, but what about the rest of us?

Would you like to know what He said?

Just as His mercies are "new every morning," so is our relationship with God. As we learn to love Him more, gain understanding of His ways, experience highs and lows, and develop a deeper trust and faith, old things take on new meaning. Scripture verses you've read a hundred times suddenly leap off the page and right into your soul. Worship music seems written just for you. Lines of song slip through your ears and take root in your heart as you sing them back to God.

Depending on your particular struggle at the moment, different songs reflect your heart as you offer the "sacrifice of praise." God takes pleasure in our songs. He loves music, loves for us to sing to him when it comes from deep inside. Rambling through nine verses of a hymn while simultaneously criticizing the pianist and wondering what's for lunch is not music to God's ears. He wants a new song.

So what are you singing these days? Are you offering lip service and calling it music? Does your attempt at praise and worship feel like it's stuck in the past?

If your heart hasn't crept toward God in a long time, then you're not singing a new song. It's not God's favorite kind of music, so you might as well save your breath. He's told us clearly the kind of music he likes. He wants to hear new songs, the ones ripped from your soul and offered to him. Whether penned by Isaac Watts or Hillsong, a new song is one that has captured the passions of your heart in lyrical form and made them acceptable to God.

.

Forget the tired mantras that describe someone else's journey.

Offer to to God a new song!

.