God's Constant Supply Continued!

   I listen to it in the kitchen while I am cooking and doing dishes. I fill much of my life with it. Surprisingly, I find it occasionally sparks ideas for a gospel song. Sometimes the idea will be totally unrelated to the subject of the song I’m listening to or sometimes it will be a parallel idea. God uses the music of other gospel song writers as a source of encouragement and inspiration for me.

   Many times when I’ve been listening to good gospel music and it stirs the Spirit within, I will be moved to go dig through my little books of ideas for something to write a song about because I want to be a part of that kind of ministry also—to, through God’s grace, have my music touch others as someone else’s has been used to touch me. I pull out all of my notebooks, pray for the Lord to lead me to the idea He wants me to work on, and begin thumbing through, reading, until He leads me to the idea to develop into a song.    As a person who has written in other fields before becoming a gospel song writer, I’ve learned to be an observer. God uses this skill He allowed me to develop for the writing of songs as well. I’m a people watcher and I am a listener—both within Christian circles and in the secular world as well. While doing this, God impresses upon my heart areas in which people need teaching, areas about which they have misconceptions, areas in which they can come to know Him better.

   I know it is unpopular to say that any song is ever written to teach, but I was trained as an educator and have spent some of my life teaching in public schools and in the classrooms of a college, Sunday Schools, Bible Studies and so on. There is that part of me that wants to educate, to make people think and improve. I try to avoid the impulse to write songs that are purely didactic but any song that includes the gospel is aimed at change because change is what the gospel is about—change from lost to saved, from sinner to the redeemed, from baby Christian to mature Christian. Gospel music is not meant to entertain. It is meant to inspire that change. The entertainment is a lovely bi-product.    Many times in listening to people speak, I have heard clichés, adages and phrases that I have been able to put a spin on to it turn into a tag line for a gospel song. I often write these down to think about later to see what I can come up with. One example of this is when I was listening to people talk about how spring stirs the blood and makes you want to get outdoors and be active. I remember thinking to myself that it was too bad that the Christian church couldn’t be stirred into action in the same way. This later became a song called “Stir the Blood.” The song speaks about how Christ’s warning to the church at Ephesus in Revelation should “stir the blood you’re washed in” and prompt us to action to reach the lost of Christ.

   Of course, I have those times when I awake in the middle of the night with a gospel song I’ve never heard before coursing through my mind—or the idea for one. At these times, in the dark I scratch around in the drawer of my bedside table for a pen and paper, trying not to wake my husband, and scribble words onto paper, hoping they are not on top of each other and that I will be able to read them in the morning. It’s amazing how the Lord can be working in your mind when you are not even conscious.    I believe there are those who will be inspired to write a gospel song or two in their lifetime and that those who are called to be gospel song writers. For the latter, if God has called you, He will not leave you void of ideas about which to write. He will be constantly revealing ideas to you in Scripture, sermons, the people around you—in countless ways. Your job is to learn to be attuned to His revelation of these ideas and to be obedient in the rendering of these ideas in songs that are faithful to His will and His Word, for if God calls you, He will equip you.