Called to Sing

1 Every Voice

There is a sound rising up from your church. Sons and daughters who know they’re free. Shouting anthems of victory. —lyrics to From This House

God is on the move. He is doing a new thing in our day. When God does a new thing, the people of God sing a new song. When God releases deliverance, the people of God sing a new song. So, now is the time to sing!

This new song that God is calling the Church to release is not an ambiguous or indistinct song. It’s the song of freedom. It’s the sound of the Body of Christ coming together in unity. It’s not the sound of beautiful melodies and harmonies or the skilled sound of perfectly pitched professional voices. It is the sound of every voice singing and making melody. It’s the sound of the Church rising up and taking her place.

The Call to All

We are all called to sing the new song. All of us should be prophetic singers. We are all invited to lift up our voices in praise and adoration to God and in prophetic proclamation to His people.

In the end of this age, a sound will rise out of every tribe, tongue, people, and nation. But we can join in the song now. It is a song Creation is already singing. The heavens have been declaring this song from the beginning of time. Even the rocks are getting ready to shout out the song if we don’t rise up and take our place. It is our turn to sing the song!

So, let me ask you a question: Are you a singer?

Your immediate response to that question answers a lot about how you view the role of a singer. I teach a prophetic singing class at the Radiant School of Worship in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and before I get to any of my teaching content, I begin by asking a similar question: Who here can sing?

You can feel the uneasiness and insecurity in the room rise like bread in the oven. The drummers, bassists, keyboardists, and electric guitar players all know what’s coming. They know I am trying to trick them, but they still can’t seem to bring themselves to raise their hands. You may not be able to answer the question yourself with a clear yes. Perhaps you would want to offer a few qualifiers first like how it’s not your profession, or you sing, but there are other things you do better.

Even the student singers in class have a problem raising their hands. They slowly and bashfully raise their hands only an inch or two above their heads. Even though they are enrolled in worship school as singers or they are singing onstage on a regular basis or had countless people affirm their singing gift, they still often feel funny about acknowledging that they can sing.

Let me go back to my original question: Are you a singer? Did you respond yes or no? This question is all too often accompanied by an unwelcome inner voice that tries to redefine the question to something like—what she means is do you think you have a good singing voice? It’s the reason the musicians in my class don’t raise their hands or the reason you are tempted to deflect if someone directly asks you the same or a similar question. If you think you don’t have a great singing voice, you answer no. Right? If you think you sing well, then you don’t want to seem prideful.

The answer, however, should be an immediate, definitive, resounding yes! You can sing. Not only can you sing, but you are also a singer.

Our singing God handcrafted us with a unique gift that is unspeakably precious to Him. It is our song. We all have words, worship, melody, rhythm, praise, poetry, and prophetic utterance inextricably woven into the very fabric of who we are. God didn’t create any non-singers, just those who have received and activated the perfect gift God placed inside them, and those who are waiting for their song to be unlocked.

We need to be liberated from being bound up and silenced by the world’s definition of what it means to be a singer. We must think of singing as a part of who we are as His people and not as something we do. We are singers.

Everyone Can Sing
We are all capable of singing. Singing in its simplest form is resonating and intoning. It’s reverberating sound that often includes words. As Jesus’ followers, we are commanded to sing. In fact, singing is one of the most commanded actions in the Bible as it’s commanded over 400 times! Here are several ways we’re commanded to sing: “Sing to the Lord,” “Make melody in your heart,” “Sing praise,” “Sing a new song,” “Sing unto the Lord,” and “Come into His presence with singing.”

There are so many other things in Scripture that are only commanded once, and that should be enough to take it seriously. But God went above and beyond to shout to us that singing isn’t optional; it is a biblical command.

Our celebrity-obsessed, Western culture has tripped us up on this subject. We fawn over, and even worship, vocal ability. We have an overwhelming amount of incredible, beautiful, creative, and awe-inspiring singers in hundreds of genres of music. We have TV shows devoted to searching out new vocal talent because we love to elevate people with exceptional singing voices. We pay big bucks to buy their music and to hear them sing live.

Let me be clear, this is a good thing! I love hearing someone whom God has created with profound ability use the very thing the Creator designed them to use. But, because of our celebrity-obsessed culture, we have left singing to the professionals. We have gone from being participants in one of the most precious gifts to being mere spectators and onlookers of gifting and talent.

I’m not just talking about the world, either. This spectator mindset is why our churches are filled with beautiful music yet so rarely echo with the choir of voices.

It’s time for a change.