Music and Church

I've always felt that music can be very powerful.  There's simply something about it that expresses emotion more effectively than words alone. As with all forms of expression, music can be used for good or evil. How it's used depends on the person using it. In the church, music is present in virtually every meeting of some sort of congregation. This is because the proper song can set the mood and make it easier for each person to feel the Spirit of the Lord. Here's some of my favorite songs from the Hymnbook of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

Lead, Kindly Light
A Mighty Fortress Is Our God
I Believe In Christ
Now Let Us Rejoice
A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief
The Morning Breaks
The Spirit of God
Nearer, My God, To Thee
Come, Come, Ye Saints
High On The Mountain Top
How Firm A Foundation

All of these links lead to the church music section of lds.org, the church's official website. The songs are presented in the arrangements given in the hymnbook. What you hear on the website would be the same tune that you would hear in a normal church meeting, except it would most likely be played on just an organ or just a piano. I would personally recommend clicking on the "words and music" button and then playing the song.

Whenever I sing a religious song, especially one of the hymns in the hymnbook, I feel that I'm expressing myself better than I could with words alone. Singing those songs is like prayer to me. Thankfully, God doesn't require us to sing well, or even on key.  If He did, I'd have a major problem. I can't sing on key to save my life. God knows the desires of our hearts, and appreciates our actions of faith and devotion, even if we aren't that skilled in performing them.

Now when I finish my mission and return to Glendale, Arizona at the beginning of August, I will be listening to regular music much more than I do now.  But, I will maintain the appreciation for church music that I've developed over the past 18 months. I will also use the discerning taste that I've developed to find good music and ignore the bad. There is plenty of good music available for us to enjoy, we just need to be picky about what we listen to. If we aren't picky, we can find ourselves in darker modes of thought than we would have imagined.

God's involvement in our lives

Part of the message that I share with the people that I work with is that God is real, He actually exists, that He cares about what is happening in our lives, and that He is involved in them.

Our life is a time of learning and testing. The main purpose of the tests of life is to see whether or not we will keep the commandments of God.  In other words, living the gospel of Jesus Christ is not going to be easy. There will be times when it is easier to compromise your moral standards, go with the crowd, or give up your beliefs altogether. Being a disciple of Christ is not the easy way; staying on the straight and narrow path can be rather inconvenient.

A question that everyone must face multiple times in their lives is: "Is God really involved in the lives of man?" What makes this a tough question is the simple fact that human beings are capable of horrendous abominations. In other words, the problem is simply man's inhumanity to man. Naturally, there are questions associated with this one, but I'm only going to give my answer to this one at this time.

Before I can give my answer to this question, there is something I must explain first. One of the gifts that God has given each and every person is agency: the power and ability to choose our outlook and lifestyle.  Individual moral agency will NEVER removed from any individual by any divinely sanctioned means. While there are some circumstances that are genuinely beyond our control, we are capable of choosing our views and exercising our agency on those things we can control.

Now my answer to the question "Is God really involved in the lives of man?" : YES.  It is my testimony that God is not only involved in the lives of the rich and power, but He is also involved in the life of each individual person, from a newborn infant to a five-star general. God's involvement is quiet. Spectacular, amazing, mind-boggling things, like dividing a large body of water in half to create a land route for a migrating nation, can and do happen, but those events are rare. That's why such events are written in the scriptures. And in the case of the Exodus of Israel, that's why the prophets in the scriptures kept referring to it. (The story of the parting of the Red Sea is found in Exodus 14) When prophets later in biblical history wanted to remind the people of God's power, they would refer back to that event. But that is not the average form of God's interaction with individuals and peoples. The average form of God's interaction with man is quiet.  This requires the individual to seek God out first with his heart.  If a person doesn't have their heart in it, they aren't likely to find God. Jesus said, "Ask, and it shall be given you. Seek, and ye shall find. Knock, and it shall be opened to you." (Matthew 7:7-11)
Once you understand the evidence of His involvement, you begin to see it more and more. And, because God loves us, He will answer any questions or concerns we have in our hearts. We simply need to pray and ask in faith. He will not get angry at us for asking (James 1:5-6)

Sometimes, part of the test of mortality is not finding what they want, and sometimes, the test is actually finding what they want.  In this world, it is possible to live a lifestyle that prevents a person from intellectually grasping the concept of God. Whenever we as individuals feel like God isn't there or that He's not talking to us, it is, by and large, because we have some unresolved sin to repent of. It is my testimony that God is involved in our lives on a regular, if not daily, basis and that sin can prevent us from recognizing that. Furthermore, because of Christ's suffering, we can be forgiven.

Note: all of the scriptures that I refer to are from the King James Version of the Bible.