It was a genuine mistake – a typo on my words. We were singing that great hymn, ‘In Christ Alone’ and in the last verse my copy of the words said ‘From life’s first cry, to final death‘. If you have ever sung this song before you will know that it should read ‘final breath‘. Oops. I have probably sung that song a good ten times previous and never noticed that I had been insinuating that we as Christians have more than one death…
“Thats no big deal” I hear you cry – and you are probably right. But it did cause me to think a little further about what I sing. It took someone to point out to me that what I was singing was completely incorrect and if they had not I’d probably still be singing the wrong words. My mind was just on auto-pilot and it says to me that I probably wasn’t giving my full attention to what I was singing and what the words actually meant.
I think there is a danger for all of us who engage in corporate sung worship to fall into this trap. In the age of good quality modern worship bands it is easy to switch off and enjoy the songs – when, just as we should weigh any prophecies spoke over our lives, we should also be weighing, and meaning every word we say in sung worship to God. It doesn’t matter how catchy the tune is, if it is incorrect or dodgy in any way, we should not be singing it.
I heard a great talk by Louis Giglio who said that we “should stop singing the songs [in our corporate meetings] until we start living the life”. Sung worship has power, it blesses God and draws us close to Him. Lets be vigilent about what we sing and more importantly, mean everything we sing too.
As an aside – this is not the worst typo I have ever seen… My favourite was at an event where they had printed song sheets and the chorus to ‘Your love is amazing’ by Brenton Brown went ‘Hallelujah, Your love makes me sin…’ Whoops… 
I agree Gaz, sung worship certainly has a lot of power, and it can be such a blessing to us as God’s children to know that we can worship freely and give out to God.
Example, a few of us guys from Kings church were at the Royal Albert Hall last weekend for a men’s conference. 3000 men singing Gods praises was quite a thing. A song i’d not heard of before was “See what a morning” by Stuart Townend. The words to that song really aroused my spirit, what a blessing!
God word, Gaz
Of course, i meant GOOD word…you know what i mean
Gaz you are spot on here. Just like we need to test everything we me might hear in a sermon or a ââ?¬Å?word from Godââ?¬Â given from the front, we also need to test all that we are asked to sing.
For me this puts an awesome (and a little scary) responsibility on worship leaders and song writers. Thankfully I�m neither so I feel safe in saying this *smile*. Music is a powerful, powerful thing. How many times have you been reading a passage in the Bible and the words sound familiar some how? And when you think it through you realise that you know them from a song. Music makes it stick. I�d even dare to go as far as to say that a majority of Christians in our churches get their theology not from the sermons, certainly not from private study, but from singing and listening to Christian music.
Jesus knew this. That�s why if you hear chunks� of His teaching read in His original tongue you find it rhymes. Some of Jesus� parables and large sections of the Sermon on the Mount are lyrical. Why? Because it makes it easier for people to remember.
What a responsibility that puts on song writers to make sure they know what they are talking about. Not to take away our responsibility as average Joe Christian. The combination of the repetition of singing and the lyrical nature of songs means that what we sing sticks in our head. Get stuck into God�s word so that we can test that what we are singing is actually wholesome stuff.