Monday, October 29, 2007

Ideal Praise Music

Friday night I wrote a post titled Doxology. It is filled with verses about the greatness and glory and grace of God. “How great is our God” is the theme of my life right now. Almost all of my favorite praise songs and hymns have to do with this topic:

How Great is Our God
Great Is the Lord
Lord We Want to Lift Your Name on High

are only the few that have been running through my head the past couple hours.

I had an opportunity to earn $50 for taking a survey about Christian radio. My conscience wouldn’t let me return the call because I hardly ever listen to Christian radio anymore. Ravi Zacharias is good. Occasionally I’ll hit a song with good lyrics, or that is old enough that I remember it from the 90’s when contemporary Christian music was bearable. Mostly the music is noise, screams, violence-inspiring beats, or bad theology. Then we adopt them into our churches for worship songs, but that’s another post.

A dream radio station would play thoughtful, accurately biblical songs whose lyrics I can hear, and with which after a few hearings I can sing along. There would be a focus on worship songs: not “I love you, Jesus,” but “He was wounded for our transgressions.”

  1. This category praises the character of God,
  2. Praises His intervention in the world, and
  3. Thanks Him for His personal provision for me.

The other types of songs I would allow is the testimony kind (just like #3 above, but addressed to people, not to God) and prayer-songs (of confession, need, desires, excitement - like the Psalms). All should be in accordance with sound doctrine.

To tell the truth I can hardly find albums like this to buy. Even the collections of hymns by today’s artists tend to be impossible to join. The artists want to present their version on the hymn, making it special. But I do own a series of CD’s that have choirs or artists just singing the hymns. My favorite is What Wondrous Love is This, featuring Joni Eareckson Tada (she’s the singer I recognize).

If you, like me, are looking for simple hymns to remind you through your day of the greatness of the God we serve, get this collection.

To God be all glory.

4 comments:

Lisa of Longbourn said...

The hymn Let Us Love and Sing and Wonder by Newton, with which I was unfamiliar, for any other of you readers, can be found at: http://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/l/e/letuslov.htm

kschaub, is it easy to sing along with the albums you mentioned?
To God be all glory,
Lisa of Longbourn

Lisa of Longbourn said...

My life in the past 30 hours! Aaah! I refused to even turn on my computer; it's so addicting and then I am tired the next day. Plus I had to work. So to confess, I have not listened to a one. But I will.

I'll check with my brother; he has some Jars of Clay, I think. And online will at least have samples. There's always the library, which I'm kicking myself for not checking since I was just there. And finally, there is purchasing these hard-to-find albums, when I don't go to local Christian bookstores, online.

Thanks for checking.
To God be all glory,
Lisa of Longbourn

Lisa of Longbourn said...

Sandra McCracken - very good. She'll let you listen to her songs, too! I want this cd; have to save money. http://www.igracemusic.com/sandrahymns/

To God be all glory,
Lisa of Longbourn

Lisa of Longbourn said...

I will get a couple Jars of Clay CD's from the library.

Derek Webb has really good lyrics, but I'd have to be in the right mood for that style of music.

Sandra McCracken, as I said, was very impressive.

Indelible Grace III did not have any samples available online.

Shane & Shane were ok, with music like Derek Webb's.

Andrew Osenga sounded sad, and I couldn't find a lot of praise music.

Andrew Peterson has a good acoustic sound and imaginative: lyrics, song titles, and album titles for that matter.

Josh Bales had fun music, but I couldn't access samples of praise music.

To God be all glory,
Lisa of Longbourn