The Heart Of Worship

My heart greatly rejoices, And with my song I will praise Him.

Psalm 28:7

In Meditations from a Prison Cell, F. Olin Stockwell, one of the last missionaries to leave Communist China, wrote about his imprisonment at a center where the Communist leaders were indoctrinating young people in Marxist ideology. Every afternoon and evening, the leaders would teach the young people and then set the teachings to music. China was singing herself into the Communist worldview, Stockwell wrote.

Everyone has had the experience of hearing a song on the radio or a hymn from childhood and being able to sing along “by heart.” While it’s our mind that remembers, we say “by heart” because of the emotional “hooks” these songs set in us. And it is from an emotional level—the level of the heart—that God wants us to worship Him as well as from the mind.

Some of the most heartfelt and theologically oriented worship in the Bible is found in the Psalms, the hymnbook of Israel. With the abundance of edifying Christian music available today in varying audio formats, there is no reason for the home and heart of every Christian not to be filled with worshipful songs.

Since God knows you “by heart,” make sure yours is a heart of rejoicing.