New Worship Songs

Yesterday Dale Chapel taught from Psalm 144 to wrap up our Songs of Summer series at Redlands Community Church. He did a fabulous job and got me thinking (he always does). He made a comment about new songs being new (or new again) to us even when they are familiar. He gave the example of singing "Great Is Thy Faithfulness" at different times in his life. Each time we sings of God's faithfulness it takes on new meaning because now looking back we can see it afresh.

Of course, there are some great new worship songs being written today. I've posted some of them on our church's website. Music has and always will play a vital role in our worship and praise God he is still giving us great songs to sing! Read the quotes below from William Temple, former archbishop of Canterbury, and check out some new songs:
To worship is to quicken the conscience by the holiness of God, to feed the mind with the truth of God, to purge the imagination by the beauty of God, to open the heart to the love of God, to devote the will to the purpose of God.

Both for perplexity and for dulled conscience the remedy is the same; sincere and spiritual worship. For worship is the submission of all our nature to God. It is the quickening of conscience by His holiness; the nourishment of mind with His truth; the purifying of imagination by His beauty; the opening of the heart to His love; the surrender of will to His purpose – and all of this gathered up in adoration, the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable and therefore the chief remedy for that self-centeredness which is our original sin and the source of all actual sin. Yes – worship in spirit and truth is the way to the solution of perplexity and to the liberation from sin. – William Temple, Readings in St. John’s Gospel, (1942-44).

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