Many Christians have lost
their song. Some who were “mighty praisers” in days past, now hang
their harps upon the willows of a strange land. They find it impossible to sing
the Lord’s Song in a foreign place, where everything is so new and different.
As it was with the children of Israel, so it is with the Church. Numbers
of God’s people in this hour exist beneath the crushing weight of the spirit of heaviness. The garments of praise are dropping from many.
Whenever the Lord’s
people set their course toward a strange land, they lost their song. That joyous,
jubilant strain of melodious praise became a moan of melancholy, a lament of languishing, and a wail of woe. The harmonies of heavenly worship which echoed and resounded throughout the encampment, became a dirge
of despair, a groan of grief, and a sob of sorrow. Such are the utterances of
a people in bondage; a people in servitude.
A mournful, minor, melancholic
moan is not the testimony of a victorious life. Neither is a depressing, doleful,
dirge the expression of a free people. Yet, numerous Christians are currently
adapting to such as their normal of mode of worship. It seems they have turned
their attention from the established standard of spiritual worship in “Zion,” to some foreign thing originating
in a strange land. As the high praises of Zion are forsaken and left behind,
a new and different kind of expression begins to dominate. Far behind are the
glorious and glad songs of salvation: forsaken, the canticles of comfort: silent, the soaring vespers of victory: forgotten,
the hymns of happiness and melodies of majesty. As pearls in life’s pathway,
they beautified each breaking. Jewels and gems of grace and glory; each one gleaming
and glimmering, shining and shimmering; lending their light to our pilgrimage path.
Lost is the anointed precision of singing in the Spirit.
“Yesterday,” the
rolling harmonies ebbed and flowed as the tides of a great surging sea, whose billows and waves rose and fell in awesome grandeur. As the airy, ethereal strains of a grand pipe organ, weaving an auditory garment in
intricately threaded passages: the living pipes sounded as the Holy Breath rushed through them. At times the song was brought forth in diminutive mellow tones, sweet and soft as angels voices: Again,
in complex antiphony; and often in the compelling, overwhelming power of a thundering crescendo. Thus the Song of the Lord echoed around the world, in days of great awakening and outpouring.
The Lord’s Song: The
most glorious and beautiful sound this side of Heaven. True expression of worship
and praise is a rare jewel; a priceless gem. A lethal erosion now undermines
the monumental landmarks of Christian worship in both vocal and musical expression.
Broadly, there remains and engagement in the “mechanics” of worship, but too often, such activity is little
more than ceremony governed by habit. The glorious praises of the living God
are tragically degraded to realms of routine and ritual.
In reflecting upon such “mechanical”
worship, I am reminded of the “marionette doll,” which is animated by manipulation of a series of strategically
connected strings. It can be made to sit, walk, or stand. If the operator is highly skilled, the doll can even be made to run, leap, or dance. Through the art of ventriloquism, the marionette can appear to speak, laugh, cry, or sing and shout. While an audience may thrill at the expertise of the performance, a deceptive illusion
is involved, for the doll has not life. Its actions are not created by the impulse
of an internal life force, but by the hand which “controls the strings.”
When the performance is ended, the strings are released, and the doll collapses in a heap, sealed in its box, until
time for the next act.
To engage in a form of worship
devoid of an internal unction of Divine Life, produces only death. Worship must
not be a learned practice, nor a habitual ritual, it must first be born in the heart, and then work outward. True worship is an outshining of the light within. It is a
visible, audible expression and reflection of a redeemed life: A witness and testimony of the New Birth.
There is a universal call
of the Holy Spirit in this hour: “Return…Repent!” He bids us return
to the Lord: Return to the old paths of plainness and righteousness. The high
praises and true worship shall return in fullness as we re-focus our gaze upon the paths of His choosing. As our eyes are single to Him, and our hands engaged in rebuilding the “Holy City,” the restoration
will take place. Then will our spirits and souls swell and explode with the fullness
of joy, and the mighty ocean of worship flow. Again shall the living pipes of
the “grand organ” be heard in the land. Wafting from pole to pole
and echoing ‘round the Equator, the triumphant praises of Zion’s King shall resound and re-echo until the whole
Earth shall hear the glad song.
“Then was our mouth
filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing: Then said they among the heathen, The Lord hath done great things for them.”
– Psalm 126:2.
