Singing

Is singing an act of worship?

If I was the one reading this question, the first thing coming to my mind would be "what do you mean when you ask this question" and I believe this is part of the problem with how I was raised. In my training, I was taught singing was a necessary part of our worship service and we could only be pleasing to God if we sang in each service and we sang in the correct manner. During my training, I never considered the fact of a "worship service" being human creation where various human elements of assumed importance were practiced and yet this is what I find all over our communities. Before I go any further, I think it is important for me to express my love of our desire to offer physical worship acts to our Heavenly Father and I will continue to do so as long as I have breath. What I don't find in the reading of my bible is how this is either desired or required by God to be pleasing (affect our salvation). While it would feel strange, I do not see what we do when we come together as even being AS IMPORTANT as what we do when we are not meeting together.

In my past, and still today, there are many who believe we are instructed to gather on Sunday (the first day of the week) and we are given a pattern of things in the bible concerning what and how they should be done. I can remember one day, after reading several passages from the Law of Moses, how I prayed and asked God why He gave such great detail in the Old Law and gave us so little concerning the "procedures" of the church. Some day I might meet someone one who tells me they have never asked a similar question and yet with many asking the question, I believe many see a very different answer because they simply can't accept the possibility presented in John 4.

The answer of my heritage is based on every answer being given in the bible and we simply have to study long and hard enough to "discover" every nuance of what has been given so we can please God. I have come to believe the answer Jesus gives is much more simple. Jesus describes a "kind" of worshiper the Father seeks, obviously declaring there is more than one type. I find this humerous because my fellowship is famous for declaring singing a "kind" of music and fail to realize singing is only one expression of music. In fact, if as I was taught with Acts 2:38 in my youth, we take the word "and" for what it means, we would discover singing and making melody/music as two different things, not one and the same. We would also discover, like others in the Christian world Paul's statement in 1 Corinthians 14:7 refers to the recognition of the tune being played by the flute and harp when they were gathered together. One "official" commentary from Mr. Coffman would have us believe, "If such an illustration as this has any meaning, it has to be that uninterpreted tongues are as noisy, disagreeable, useless, cacophanous and worthless as a kitten on the keys of a piano. Paul, of course, made the comparison with instruments known in his day." The reality of those to which Paul was writing is they recognized the tune being played by those on the harp and flute when they came together and not something most have probably never heard "a kitten on the keys of a piano." (unrecognized random notes of an instrument) This illustration does fit better with the critical attitude of those I grew up with who considered instrumental music evil.

Returning to the point, I have grown to believe God did provide us supreme detail in His gift of a desired worship having UNLIMITED possibilities. The worshiper He desires is one who does so in spirit and truth, with truth not being the right way to do things but rather a righteous manner in which we do what we do; our demonstration of LOVE!

Yes, singing is an act of worship but the better question is whether singing is the worship God desires. I love to sing and do so even when some think it is not appropriate. Possibly, all of us should sing because of the reason given for our singing and use it to help us be filled with the spirit and not because someone thinks it "has" to be done.