He is Your Song
By Glenna Marshall
My pastor-husband sings all the time. He’s known for it, actually. Whatever building he’s walking into–the church, the bank, the store, the gym, our house—he is always singing whatever song he was just listening to in the car. When we merged with another church a couple of years ago, the other pastor said that it took him a while to get used to my husband’s constant singing. I laughed when he told me that because I remember thinking similarly when my husband and I first started dating. It’s one of the things I love about him, though—whatever is going on in his life, he pretty much always has a song in his heart.
Ten years ago, our church split wide open. It was ugly, painful, and has left me with memories I would love to forget. Since that dark year, I have regularly struggled with anxiety and panic attacks. I remember being up late at night, waiting for my husband to come home from long, discouraging meetings. For weeks, I’d spending my evenings reading my Bible on the couch with a stomachache while listening for the sound of my husband’s truck bumping down the driveway. If I could hear him singing after the slam of the truck door, then I’d know the meeting was rough, but he’d escaped with his song still intact. If, however, I heard no sounds until the jingling of his keys in the backdoor lock, I would know the meeting hadn’t gone well and that we’d be up all night picking shards of the explosion from his heart. I could always tell how things went by the song—or by its absence.
Music has a powerful way of touching our emotions and articulating things we don’t quite know how to say. Just this morning, I was listening to some praise music while running through my neighborhood. The words of one particular song were simple and true and set to a catchy melody. I found myself singing along while huffing and puffing down the street–words about God’s faithfulness that I needed back when I wondered if we’d survive the church trauma and mass exodus. I appreciate the way simple truths of Scripture can be called to mind in song so that we can praise, pray, and cry out to the Lord.
The commands in Scripture to sing praises are many, and I think they’re there not because the Lord needs praise but because our hearts need to praise Him. That’s challenging to do when your church is imploding or you’re enduring slander and maligning gossip. And yet, singing to the Lord helps us to rehearse what we know to be true when we don’t feel it is true. It’s what the psalmists do when their lives were falling apart. They cry out to the Lord, complaining about their circumstances, but they follow up their lament with proclamations of God’s faithfulness. Once they’ve sung about His steadfastness, they resolve to hold fast to Him. The same can be true for us. Remembering His past faithfulness helps us to believe in His future faithfulness. When we sing of His goodness to us in the middle of broken ministry, personal grief, or lamentable finances, we can view our life in light of His unchanging character. When you can’t pray, talk, or think—sing, sisters. Sing to the Lord.
Psalm 118 gives us a good example of this kind of singing. The psalmist begins by declaring God’s faithful love, presence, and care for him. Then he recounts the dire circumstances he has endured when people were after his very life. While few of us have to worry about physical danger in ministry in the western world, the slander and back-stabbing we experience in ministry can wound the heart with long-lasting effects. The psalmist’s words probably resonate with you: “I was pushed hard, so that I was falling, but the Lord helped me” (Ps. 118:13, emphasis mine). Haven’t you felt “pushed hard” in ministry before? Have you felt like you’ve failed and fallen? But take note of the psalmist’s phrase at the end of that confession: “but the Lord helped me.”
How does the Lord help us when we are pushed hard and falling? The very next verse tells us. “The Lord is my strength and my song; He has become my salvation” (Ps. 118:14). What song does the psalmist sing? The Lord. The Lord is both his strength and his song. What saved him, what propelled him in suffering, what sustained him was truth about God’s faithful character. Though we are far removed from the dangers of the psalmist in Israel’s ancient history, we are still desperately close to suffering as the people of God. And sometimes, in ministry life, our suffering comes in the form of hurt from other people of God. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to us, but sometimes it does. We are sinful people living in community together, and we are bound to hurt each other at times.
When we are wading through the hurts of betrayal or the sting of gossip, when we are surprised by yet another person leaving the church, when we feel pushed to our limits to meet needs and carry burdens—the Lord is our strength, song, and salvation. He is your song. Recount His past faithfulness, His unchanging nature, His certain and steadfast love for you. Sing it, pray it, remember it. Life may be falling apart at the seams, but you can still have a song in your heart if the song is Jesus. Nothing in life can pluck you out of His hand, sister. He is your song. Sing.
Here’s a song to get you started.
Glenna Marshall is married to her pastor, William, and lives in rural Southeast Missouri where she tries and fails to keep up with her two energetic sons. She is the author of The Promise is His Presence: Why God is Always Enough (P&R) and Everyday Faithfulness: The Beauty of Ordinary Perseverance in a Demanding World (Crossway, June 2020).