Choosing to sing

Sometimes I wake up with a song in my heart, but not always and not usually. After eight hours sleep, I should feel rested. When all is well, I should feel happy, but this morning (as many mornings) getting up was bad enough; do I have to be joyful about it too?

God says so. He put His Holy Spirit in my heart and the fruit of the Spirit includes joy. I’m not always aware of the reason for waking without it, but I am aware that when I choose to let the Spirit rule my life, that joy will appear. For instance, yesterday it came as soon as I opened my mouth in praise.

Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth! Serve the Lord with gladness! Come into his presence with singing! Know that the Lord, he is God! It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise! Give thanks to him; bless his name! For the Lord is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations. (Psalm 100:1–5)

My singing is such that I’m glad these verses say, “Make a joyful noise….” I’m also glad that giving thanks is easy. God is good. He does love me, even when I’m crabby. He is faithful, not only to me but to all generations. Those are reasons enough to be thankful, but there are many more. 

Last night my husband shared that in his prayers yesterday, he began thanking God for everything he could think of and wound up in tears of gratitude. I need to tear a page out of his book. Being thankful should be easy; besides His faithfulness and His love, God has blessed us in so many ways.

The next psalm begins with the psalmist’s commitment to sing to the Lord. (This time it is music, not mere noise, but God accepts my noise too.) He adds a few other commitments that seem directly related to having a song in my heart…

I will sing of steadfast love and justice; to you, O Lord, I will make music. I will ponder the way that is blameless. Oh when will you come to me? I will walk with integrity of heart within my house; I will not set before my eyes anything that is worthless. I hate the work of those who fall away; it shall not cling to me. A perverse heart shall be far from me; I will know nothing of evil. (Psalm 101:1–4)

First, he thinks about living a blameless life. He knows that he needs the Lord to come to him for that to happen, yet as a believer in Jesus Christ, I know that Jesus is always with me. He makes it possible to live without blame, but this also requires a choice. Thinking about it goes a long way toward making the right choice. When I wake up in the morning, what am I thinking? Do I choose thoughts of how I will live the day — or complaints about my muscle aches? When my thoughts are turned toward “How can I glorify God today?” then singing comes first thing in the morning and lasts all day. 

The psalmist also determines to walk with integrity within his house. Many Christians can pass the test of godliness when someone is watching, but how many fail in the privacy of our homes? Living my faith when no one is looking is very important to me. Does anyone know whether I wake up with a song or not? Does anyone care? I know, and God knows, and from His Word I understand that He cares far more than I do! I’m to be what He wants me to be, even if no one ever sees what I am doing, or knows what I am thinking.

The third thing is that the psalmist says he will not watch anything that is worthless. He didn’t have a television, but had they been invented back in the days of David, he might have written, “I will not watch worthless television shows.” Does whatever I put into my mind at night affect the mood that I wake up in the next morning? Can some of what is aired on TV rob me of that song in my heart? I think so.

Lastly, the psalmist is determined to not act like, or even think the same way as those who have abandoned God. This week, I read that Christians in North America have fallen so far short of living for Christ compared to believers in most of the world, that we don’t even realize that we are falling short. One author says that we are so sub-normal that if we encounter one who is normal, we think they are above-normal.

This makes me sad, yet according to the psalmist, I can decide to put away the “work of those who fall away.” Activities like watching television or griping about my sore back might not appear to be “perverse” or “evil” yet if these things keep me from singing about God’s steadfast love and justice, then I need to hate these things and put them out of my life.

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Lord, this seems like ‘ordinary’ stuff, but so often the ordinary stuff falls short of the life You give. Instead of giving in to the status quo, I want to wake up each day with a joyful heart. I am not talented to make music, but at least I can make a joyful noise. I sense Your presence and that You approve this message. Now I need to respond to it.

No Retirement

The older I get, the more aware I am of the shortness of life. It seems that time flies, even though the clock moves no faster than it did ten or twenty years ago. Not only that, all that I want to accomplish seems elusive. This is not mere bucket-list items (I do not have a bucket-list), but even the tasks started but not yet completed drag out and take longer than they should. 

I complain that I am too tired and even say that I don’t feel like doing anything. Many times, a nap or anything mindless is more appealing than doing the dishes or even tackling a quilting project. Yet God does not let me get away with my excuses. 

Besides this you know the time, that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed. The night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires. (Romans 13:11–14)

I laugh at part of this passage. I’m not even slightly interested in the works of darkness that it describes. However, the flesh still has its desires. Put your feet up. Relax. Do nothing. Read a novel. Raid the refrigerator. Sip tea and gaze out the window.

Not that any of those things are always wrong. This is about motivation and priorities, about obeying God or doing my own thing. I’ve said before, I can avoid housework by reading my Bible all day, or I can avoid reading the Bible by doing housework all day. 

The passage is about what I do instead of being filled with the Spirit and controlled by the will of God. It is about saying no to the I-wants that keep me from obeying God. I’m not to make provision for that, blatant or subtle, easy to discern or foggy. 

Sleep is a euphemism for being out of touch, not alert to what is going on around me in the kingdom of God. This kind of sleep is induced by gratifying my fleshy desires to the point that I doze off and miss hearing the Lord speaking to me. While immorality and fighting may not be among those desires, the Holy Spirit will not let me use the old excuse of “It’s really not so bad” when it comes to selfish fulfillment. I’m not to make provision for anything that looks okay on the surface, but has become a cover up for my reluctance to walk where Jesus is leading me.

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Lord, You know me well. I can hide behind “respectable sins” as easily as some can delve into those more obvious. Instead of doing that, You ask me to wake up. One reason is that I have no idea when You will take me home and my salvation will be consummated. You are telling me it is far better to be walking in the light when that happens than messing around with any sort of selfishness, no matter how ‘innocent’ it might appear. You know my heart.