Singing With Thankfulness in Our Hearts

Colossians 3:16

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.

After opening with singing Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee and prayer, we got to sing this song today in church.  What a wonderful way open worship on this first Sunday of a new year! We were introduced to CityAlight at our last church and we have loved adding their songs into our repertoire of the newer hymns that are being written in recent years.  I’m thankful for the wealth of newer hymns that are rich in biblical language that we can add to our library of psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs we can sing with thankfulness in our hearts to God.

I recently went through a bout of the blues where I felt low and couldn’t really explain it. 2021 was a year with a lot of challenges and griefs one on top of another that felt overwhelming at times. I have found that when that kind of pressure starts building and I may have trouble focusing on reading my Bible deeply and well in some of those moments, one of the best comforts I’ve found is to put good music with Christ-exalting lyrics and thoughts on repeat and fill my heart and mind with them. I am extremely thankful for the gift of music.  Often these rich spiritual songs minister to my soul in a deep and resonant way. I am thankful that God is bringing new hymn writers to us, people like Keith and Kristyn Getty, Stuart Townend, Matt Papa, Andrew Peterson, CityAlight, Sovereign Grace and many others who are writing music we can sing, even when our hearts are broken, which take us out of ourselves and to the very throne of God, bringing light to adorn the darkness and lifting the sprit in times of trouble. 

Today was a good day to start this new year, also, because we were finally able to formally join our new church.  We have known for a while now that this church is to be our new home and church family, but life circumstances kept happening that hindered us from going forward. Today we finally got to make it public that we want Northwest Hills Baptist Church to be our new church family here. We are excited to join in the life and work of this little body of believers and we are thankful for the deep and solid teaching, gospel and grace-centered encouragement, and rich friendships we are already developing here. 

God is so kind to us. And I am grateful.