Diary of an Apprentice - Week 10

 

Hannah O'Donnell, 4^th February 2022

Hi all, I usually give you a fun fact at the end of my blog, but today I'm revealing it early... lucky you!
Music is class! I love listening to music, especially Christian music that glorifies and worships our great God. But The Beatles is my guilty pleasure too.. :)

Listening to music that brings true glory to God is what I'm going to talk about today... I'm going to throw out some of my song and artist recommendations and explain why I don't listen to certain artists.

Being on Guard
Listening to worship music is awesome, it's a great way to worship and praise God and be encouraged to keep 'fighting the good fight of faith' - 1 Timothy 6v12. We are actually called by Paul to sing out praises to God:

"Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ."  - Ephesians 5 v 18 - 20

But if we carry on reading Paul's letter to the Ephesians, we see that we are told to be on guard, to protect our hearts from the sinful lies of the devil:

"Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand."  - Ephesians 6 v 10 - 13

So, in light of that, we can see that we need to be guarding our hearts against unhelpful music just as much as we are guarding our hearts against false teachings. To do this, I try to make sure that I only listen to the music of artists that I have researched first. Mostly, I try to find out what they believe and which church they belong to. I try to learn more about these churches and what their doctrines are before I choose to listen to their music because I want to protect myself from the risks of having false teachings and heresy preached to me, even in the lyrics of music.

I want to encourage everyone to be more aware of what they are listening to and subjecting their ears and hearts to; please protect yourself from the schemes of Satan.

To those who claim that they are wise enough to discern between true and false teaching in music so believe this does not apply to them, I still would recommend that you research before you listen. If we choose to listen to music that speaks of things scripture does not say, then it could be said that we are being complicit with the idea of people preaching false truths. Rather, I believe, we should be actively standing against anything that is against the gospel of Christ Jesus.

An example of this in action for me would be my choice to no longer listen to a very big, very well-known band in Christian culture, called Bethel Music. They are a huge church in America that produced music for their own services and have since released them to the public ear. I loved their seemingly gospel-centred songs but was completely oblivious and ignorant to the blatant heresy they preached until a wise, godly friend pointed it out to me. I decided to do some research for myself and found that the leader of the Bethel church made this statement:

"Jesus performed miracles, wonders, and signs as a man in right relationship to God, not as God. If he performed miracles because he was God, then they would be unattainable for us. But if he did them as a man, I am responsible to pursue his lifestyle."

This statement then explains why his church, Bethel, believes in the Prosperity Gospel (that it is God's will for you to always be well and healthy and that large enough faith and monetary donations to religious causes will bring this health). From scripture, I knew this was all entirely untrue. They say Jesus was not God, but he was. Jesus was, and is, fully God - only he can miraculously heal. They say the [prosperity!] gospel implies we can achieve merit through our own works, but we can't. We can only receive good gifts through the grace of our loving God.

Since learning this I've chosen to boycott their music for 2 reasons: 

• I don't want to risk subjecting myself to false teaching. It's much safer for me to listen to the music of artists who love Jesus and preach directly from the beautiful truth and goodness of scripture.
• I don't want to be, in any way, encouraging the heresy they believe or encouraging others to believe the heresy they preach. Heresy is serious. 

This is what I believe from my own research, but I urge you to do your own, don't take my word for it.

On a brighter note, taking into consideration what I've just said, here are some of my recommendations with a Spotify playlist link should you be interested!!

Song recommendations:  https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4ZMgQtEiOstOFEIRRE8xxG?si=10799c11db9f49d5

• Yet not I but through Christ in me - CityAlight
• It is well - The Worship Initiative
• His Mercy is More - Matt Boswell
• Nailed to the Cross - Rend Collective
• You're Beautiful - Phil Wickham

Artist Recommendations:

• Rend Collective
• Phil Wickham
• Sovereign Grace Music
• Keith and Kristyn Getty
• The Worship Initiative / Shane&Shane - These are generally covers of other artists' songs. They are an awesome band for those who no longer want to listen to a certain artist but have songs they really love and know do not speak false truths.