Music:Christian

So now we have Christian music. Christian music to me is anything that declares itself to be just that. I love Hawk Nelson, but their lyrics rarely ever mention God or Jesus, they simply lack cuss words or derogatory terms. A majority of their songs are about dating relationships however. Because I struggle with having thoughts that cause me to doubt God and my contentment in that area, I don’t feel like these songs are the best choice for me to listen to.

K-love, Air1, and The House FM stay on my radio 93% of the time. If not these then I have my “Worship” station on Pandora (an online create-your-own radio station.) www.pandora.com This is a great way to monitor what you listen to. The system actually lets you pick one genre, artist, or song, and plays only songs that are similar to that particular request. For instance the song I picked was “Hosanna” by Hillsong (I think that’s the right artist?)

Anyhow, I believe we should support Christian music for 2 reasons. The first is because Philippians 4:8 says, “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” To me that means putting as much positive, God-honoring stuff in your body as possible, and leaving anything that is not noble, true, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, or praiseworthy out of sight and out of mind.

Now I have to be completely honest with you, I do occaisionally listen to country music and certain rap songs when I am out with friends or something. Obviously this isn’t an easy thing to do, but when God changed me 4 years ago, music is something he convicted my heart very hard about. He showed me how music was just the beginning of what led me down the path of destruction.

As I changed my music habits, I began to see God working in me a lot more evidently. I remember one day shortly after I decided to give my life to God, I went into my room and threw away all of my CD’s (I obviously had zero Christian CD’s.) I hate to think of how much money I had invested in burning songs, buying rap CD’s, everything. I used to know every lyric to every rap song—the popular ones, the too-dirty for radio ones, even the underground market. Giving all this time, money, and interest up was very hard for me. In fact about a year later I had to go through my CD’s again and throw away a couple more that had awful lyrics on them. This is an ongoing battle. However our struggle is not against the flesh and blood; the stuff of this world like rap—but against the rulers and authorities of evil! (Ephesians 6:12) That means this is a spiritual battle against satan himself! He uses simple things like a song to pull us farther from God and closer to him. Don’t be so ignorant as to ignore this warning! Stand up and fight Christian! (Ephesians 6:10-19) God blesses us for obedience! I’ve seen it happen over and over again. Ephesians 2:10, Philippians 2:12-13.

The second reason I agree with supporting Christian music is because the media is overwhelmed with unchristian things. We need to do our part to fight the evil by supporting the good, this absolutely ticks the devil off! Also the bible talks often about the importance of supporting your Christian neighbor, loving them as yourself, and staying strong with them.

Philippians 2:3-4 “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vein conceit, but in everything consider others better than yourselves. Therefore, each of you should look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.

Here is an awesome website with suggestions for Christian music. For example, if you like country/rock music you might try Third Day. http://www.jesusfreakhideout.com/artists/default.asp

Also, here are some of the awesome artists that played at a great Christian concert called Winter Jam in Oklahoma City last weekend! Check ‘em out and see what you think!

(Forgive me if the genres are wrong, I’m not sure how to differentiate between most of them honestly. Lol)

Heavy metal/rock- http://redmusiconline.com/ I like the song “Your not alone”

If you like Emenem: KJ-52 dude!! http://www.kj52.com/home/home.html Check out the song “Swagged Out”

Or Rap: Lecrae!

Francessca Battestelli: http://www.francescamusic.com/

And again, this guy’s blog has a lot of posts about Christian music: http://christianrock123.blogspot.com/2010/07/secular-christian-rock.html#comment-form

So if you struggle with keeping your thoughts focused on pure things, or if God has been gently tugging at your heart to change the music you listen to, check out some of the stuff we have talked about this week. You can listen to some secular music, but make sure your focus is on God, you can listen to secular-Christian music and focus on the lyrics and using them to witness to people. You can also listen to mostly Christian music and be very blessed for it, or you can go a step forward and listen to mostly Worship music (which we will get into tomorrow.) Think about this and pray about it. Then respond to what God has told you.

Feel free to share your stories under the comment areas. Love you all and God bless!