What’s been happening...

Thought I’d check back in. A lot has been happening but I’ve been enjoying it so much I’ve forgot that there’s wisdom in writing it down to make sense of it and to be able to refer to it in months to come. So here goes…

Honestly, music has come back into my life in a big way. I think it all started with listening to Lecrae’s mixtape ‘Church clothes’. A few days before that, God had been speaking to me about music in particular. I was absolutely shocked at what he was insinuating. For so long my mind has been turned away from all music that wasn’t specifically by a Christian artist containing strong Christian themes i.e. exclusively talking about Christ, God and Salvation and Sanctification. Even lately my mind has been turned off of music altogether, realising though I get hyped when I listen to rap, that’s all it really seemed to be……a hype. If I’ve been listening to any music in my spare time over the last year, it’s been mostly Abimaro and the free or the Gospel Jazz podcast. 

Now all of a sudden God was breaking down my barriers and messing up the way my mind has been conditioned after so many years. He was changing my attitude towards music in general.

Now for the last few years I’ve had a real kind of fear based relationship with any music not explicitly Christian because of thoughts that it could contaminate me. Thoughts that it could send me back into the same thought patterns and cause me to follow after the same things. I’ve struggled with hearing non-Christian music in shops, in lessons or just generally around, especially music containing expletives or lustful, worldly and sexually provocative lyrics. It would do my nut in and often I would pray in tongues or seek some other kind of refuge.

But the truth is as I follow him and trust in him, he delivers me from evil and all the wickedness around me. My trouble comes because I know there is evil or corruption in much of the music. God’s made that very obvious to me. Though I realise it’s not necessarily in the instruments, not in the synthesisers, not even necessarily in some of the drum patterns…….in other words not in the objects themselves, it can be in the hearts of those who compose the music, and some use such tools to spread wickedness. Some sacrifice their beats to idols or work with people who have already sacrificed their music to their gods and this affects how it impacts the people. 

Through recent scripture reading I’ve been learning about spiritual food, including music. I’ve realised the truth is that there is no God but one (though people claim to sacrifice to other gods) to whom belongs everything on the earth and ‘an idol has no real existence’ (1 Corinthians 8). But saying that, we can still provoke God to jealousy by giving ourselves to things he is not cool with.

For example......I can’t now choose to be involved in idol worship saying ‘I know an idol doesn’t really exist so I’m just playing along and taking part in it with a mind that knows the truth’. Whether I know the truth or not doesn’t make a difference if I let someone else believe that the truth doesn’t matter and give my co-sign to their sinful acts as kosher. By partaking, I’m still involving myself in sacrifice to demons and making a third party believe I’m down with it. I must do all that I do to the glory of God, not causing offence to those brothers who are weaker in these areas as I once was (Romans 14), nor leading pagans to believe I’m down with their practices and even willing to join with them in it. Our knowledge must not be used to harm another’s faith or to passively or consciously commit idolatry (1 Corinthians 10).

I think it was last year that I heard of a group in the 70’s who used to ‘partake in sex acts with the lost to show people God’s love for them’. Obviously that is blasphemy to most people and utter foolishness to those in the truth. Yet we bow to the idols of envy, selfishness, sensuality, worldliness and many other things just in the hope of becoming more seeker friendly and having people identify with us. Sometimes it’s just because we like these things. They appeal to our flesh. We enjoy when Nicki Minaj or Lil Wayne encourages us to use sex in a way which God finds offensive all in the name of relating with others or enjoying what others enjoy. In this way we lose our saltiness (that which makes us different from the world) and on a sad note, we hurt God. Though we can listen to all things and all things are allowed, all things are not beneficial. A tip is to check the content of songs we listen to against the rule of the benchmarks given us in the Bible. Is the music good? Is it beautiful? Is it true?

Some non-Christian’s articulate music which is amazing and ministers deep into us. Music which glorifies God because it make us think of beautiful things, of his goodness, the creativity he has given to men, the truth he has set inside all of us, even though we are fallen and don’t reflect him as we were made to. Sometimes the impact is so much we have to thank God for the experience. 

Now I’m not saying God doesn’t work out of the box sometimes. Sometimes God wants us to hear an artist’s music and what they speak about for particular reasons. Not to enjoy the glorification of sin but maybe to understand where someone is at. We’ve gotta let God lead but it’s important to use our discernment in these matters.