Saturday, May 5, 2007

The Company I Keep


Passage of Scripture: Psalm 33:1-3

Psa 33:1
REJOICE in the LORD, O you righteous!
For praise from the upright is beautiful.
Psa 33:2
Praise the LORD with the harp;
Make melody to Him with an instrument of ten strings.
Psa 33:3
Sing to Him a new song;
Play skillfully with a shout of joy.

I love the sound of music, and obviously God does too. It seems when nothing else will sooth me, music will. As the music and worship leader for our church, I find myself listening to more Christian music more than anything else. However I have discovered through the years that we can honor God through all kinds of music even if it's not of the genre, Christian. What makes the music pure and pleasing to God is the attitude of our heart as we sing or play our music.

One of my best experiences with this was when we did a Thanksgiving service at our Local First Presbyterian church. This service was all about being thankful and about giving thanks. Not only did we play and sing Christian songs throughout the service of course, we also had the opportunity to play some music that our band had created and although the music was more of a Celtic and Appalachian style of music, when we played those songs as a part of our worship it was amazing how God used our music to bless those that heard it.

The verses above tell me that whatever I sing and whatever I play, I should play it to the Lord. It doesn't matter where we are playing, church, coffee shop, cafe, fair grounds, etc. Wherever we play, we play because we enjoy the music and the blessings God has given us as we play together as friends with a common love for music. We love playing together, we love creating new stuff, and we enjoy each others company. God has blessed us and a part of our joy is the ability to play for him as well as for ourselves. We call ourselves "The Company I Keep." There are four of us in our group and we are all four Christians that are involved in our individual churches within our community. God has certainly blessed me with this wonderful opportunity to play His gift of Music that he has placed in my heart with a wonderful group of friends.


Unfortunately, Satan has had his influence on music as well. We have to be on guard to protect ourselves from his influence in the area of music. Just like everything else in this world that God has created and blessed us with, Satan is a lion looking for those that he can devour, and anything good can be manipulated into something bad. It's a shame that something as beautiful as music can be used to deny or defy God, but of course it can.


True joy in music however comes to us when we play skillfully to the Lord. Psalm 33:3 says... Sing to Him a new song; Play skillfully with a shout of joy. True joy comes from God, play for Him and shout with joy. It's that rewarding!


If you are interested in visiting out website and learning more about us, go to http://www.companyikeep.com/ and you can listen to some of our music. If you enjoy singing or playing music, then do it all for the Lord and increase you joy and pleasure in your music. May God bless you as you play your tunes unto the Lord!

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