I Will Sing

I will sing to the LORD all my life;
I will sing praise to my God as long as I live.

Choose to Sing

My dad and I sing about everything. One time we started singing our own song about how we were excited about all things. We sing in the kitchen. We sing in the car. We sing everywhere we go. When I am away from home, we will sometimes sing to each other on the phone and hold out the notes just to really emphasize our joy, and then we start laughing so hard. Psalm 16:11 says that in God’s presence is fullness of joy, and this joy is experienced in such a sweet and powerful way when we choose to join Him in the song He personally invites us to sing with Him.

I love how often God’s Word speaks about singing to Him and making a new song to Him. Over and over again, I have read these verses: “I will sing and make music” (Psalm 57:7), “At his sacred tent I will sacrifice with shouts of joy; I will sing and make music to the LORD” (Psalm 27:6), “I will sing the praises of the name of the LORD Most High” (Psalm 7:17), and “I will sing to the LORD all my life; I will sing praise to my God as long as I live” (Psalm 104:33). In these verses, the psalmist specifically declares that he will sing to the Lord. This is a choice that he makes regardless of what he is going through because he knows that the Lord is always worthy of praise.

Whether or not you will pray and sing hymns to God is a choice that you get to make. No one else can make this decision for you, and God is not focused on the pitch of your voice but rather the posture of your heart. He says that the “joy of the LORD is [our] strength” (Nehemiah 8:10), and to be joyful is not to be naive or inexperienced but to be aware that you are in the presence of the Lord. When we sing to Him, we step into an awareness of being in His presence, and we remember that He is worthy—and that will fill our hearts with joy.

Power in Praise

There is joy in praising God, and there is also power in our praise. In Acts 16, Paul and Silas were severely flogged, put in prison after rebuking a spirit in Jesus’ name, and guarded carefully. At midnight, they “were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken. At once all of the prison doors flew open, and everyone’s chains came loose” (verses 16-26).

It did not matter where Paul and Silas were; they chose to sing praises to God because they knew that God was worthy. The other prisoners were listening closely because it did not make sense for Paul and Silas to respond in the way that they did. In the same way, others will incline to listen to your praise, wondering why you are singing. There is power in your praise to God; indeed, your praise to the Lord breaks chains. Not only will the Lord deliver you through your praise, but He will use your praise to break the chains of those around you who are listening.

He Sings over Us

Our praise redirects the focus back to the Lord who is worthy and who is the One who gives us the strength to sing—not only in the good times but also in the times when we feel like we are chained in a prison cell at midnight. But this kind of response can only happen when we are aware that the Lord is rejoicing over us with loud singing.

Zephaniah 3:17 tells us that “the LORD your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you but will rejoice over you with singing.” To fully believe He delights in us is to join Him in song regardless of what troubles lie ahead.

There is power in our praise because it is joining in the acknowledgment with all of creation that He is exalted over all and that He has the power to break every chain—the chains of anxiety, the chains of fear, the chains of shame. Yes, indeed, there is no prison foundation that He cannot shake. This is the confidence we have in the One who saved us and who sings over us.