PRIME YOUR HEART FOR EASTER: NO GREATER LOVE PLAYLIST
Today we’re sharing a worship playlist we’ve designed especially to complement this year’s Good Friday & Easter theme at FBC: “No Greater Love”. The songs in this playlist were selected because they beckon us back to the depth of Jesus’ atoning sacrifice on the cross, the soaring heights of His resurrection victory, and unrivaled love that motivated it all. Before you explore the playlist, here are a few bonus thoughts for reflection:
How can a worship PLAYLIST prime my heart for Easter?
This kind of question begs a deeper question that’s really healthy for us to mull over: “How does worship music affect my heart?” (Really…when you strip away the “Christianese” answer, What does it actually do?) Here are a few thoughts from other worshipers that can inform us:
1. WORSHIP PREPARES US TO WORSHIP.
We talk often about how worship is designed to be an overflow that springs from personal solitude with the Lord. Scottish Minister Alexander Maclaren wrote, “Fruitful and acceptable worship begins before it begins.” Much more recently, Worship Leader Andi Rozier said it this way: “The secret to worship is to worship in secret.”
The idea is that worship isn’t reserved only for corporate gatherings. Rather, it’s a lifestyle that continuously fuels and refuels the worshiper - each moment with the Lord priming and exciting the heart for the next.
2. WORSHIP IS COGNITIVE.
Pastor J.D. Greear tells us something we can ALL relate to: “Music gets lodged in your mind. It bounces around your head when you aren’t even thinking about it. In short, it sticks.” Sometimes we wish this reality had an “on/off” switch, right?!
It turns out that this pattern has biological backing. Author and Speaker Jen Wilkin explains:
“…Neuroscience backs this up. Pairing information with music helps our hippocampus retrieve that information with ease. Music is a powerful teaching tool, and before the discipline of neuroscience existed, the followers of Yahweh employed that tool.
Miriam’s Song of the Sea in Exodus 15 was composed to stamp the memory of God’s transcendence onto his people’s consciousness. The 150 psalms, whose words by themselves are perfectly potent, were written to be sung. The children of God understood their need to be reminded by sacred words set to melodies. After all, ours is a long history of forgetting and being summoned back to remembrance. Music plus words equals recall.”
3. WORSHIP IS EMOTIONAL.
Author and Pastor Bob Kauflin adds another layer:
“Music is capable of moving us in subtle and profound ways — in anticipated and unexpected ways — with or without words…Whatever the reasons, music can come alongside words and heighten their emotional impact in a way we may not have perceived with words alone. That has a number of advantages. First, singing can help us take more time to reflect on the meaning of words. It can stretch out words and phrases. It can allow us to repeat them or put space in between words. All these qualities can help us engage emotionally with the words we’re singing.”
While worship is far more encompassing than emotions, worship does include emotions. Listening to and singing worship music as part of the rhythms of our daily life helps us to bring our emotions into alignment with the truth.
4. WORSHIP IS SPIRITUAL.
Author Mike Harland combines the cognitive and emotional effects of worship on our souls and very lives:
“The correlation between how people think and what they sing is astounding to examine. In medical and scientific communities, much has been learned about the links between music, memory, attitude, and emotion. Unique in God’s creation, people are wired to create melody and rhythm and link them to thought and reason. And when those come together, something amazing happens to the soul of mankind. We are moved to action and stirred to response…
…The songs our people sing become the prayers our people will pray in their moments of deepest crisis. The expression of worship from the heart of God’s people turns into songs of worship sung in the congregation, in the waiting room of a hospital, and yes, even at the bedside of a soldier going home to be with the Lord…God gave us the gift of music. And with it, we can inform and inspire. We can take truths about God that transform hearts and lock those truths into our souls by singing them back and forth over each other.”
IN SUMMARY
Singing songs that echo God’s Word stirs our souls. The lyrics follow us into the furthest corners of our lives. One final thought from Charles Spurgeon articulates this beautifully:
“It is marvellous, brethren, how one sweet word of God will make many songs for Christians. One word of God is like a piece of gold, and the Christian is the gold-beater, and he can hammer that promise out for whole weeks. I can say myself, I have lived on one promise for weeks, and wanted no other. I had just simply to hammer the promise out into gold-leaf, and plate my whole existence with joy from it. The Christian gets his songs from God; God gives him inspiration, and teaches him how to sing: ‘God my Maker, who giveth songs in the night.’”
“Keep your mouth full of songs, and you will often keep your heart full of praises…”