Psalm 100:1 - Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth!

There are many ways in which we can worship God. We can worship him through reading his word and enjoying time with him in prayer. We can worship him through fasting and meditation or times of silence and solitude. However, in this case, we are called to worship God with a joyful noise.

While we could ask many questions about what this is supposed to look like, the most important thing to understand is that God is meant to be worshipped with intentional and effortful sound. Whether that be the sound of one or many voices singing songs to him or making music with an instrument, God has created us to worship him in this unique and wonderful way.

Imagine a movie without any music in the background. Oftentimes if the music is composed well and edited to fit with whatever is happening in the movie, you may not even realize just how much the music is doing to move the scene forward or give it more impact. The sounds that are used in film are key elements to immersing you in what is happening and can even cause you to make emotional connections that may not have happened without the presence of sound.

In the Christian life, it can sometimes feel as if we are in a movie that has no sound. We know that God is glorious and good and gracious and awe inspiring, but that knowledge doesn’t always connect with our hearts and our emotions. In a similar way to how poetry uses rhyme and colorful words to help us see things in different ways, worshiping God by way of making music can help us see him in a more whole way, and not just as the God of our minds.

God calls us to love him with our hearts, and worshiping in song seems to be a key way in accomplishing that task. You see, we aren’t called to make any old noise, but a joyful one. We may sing songs of sorrow, as many psalms are, but joy can always be present in one way or another because our God never ceases to be the glorious, good, gracious and awe inspiring God that he is. We sing songs to him as a way to proclaim his excellencies and build encouragement into one another.

We were made to cry out to God. Jesus told the Pharisees that if the crowd didn’t shout and sing his praises that even the rocks would cry out in praise. All of creation proclaims the glory of God, through the singing of the birds to the howling of a pack of wolves. The evidence of God’s handiwork is in it all, and yet we have the grand privilege of being able to do what the animals cannot. We can verbalise his greatness through our joyful noise.

You may not be a professional singer. You may not know how to play an instrument. In fact, you may not want to open your mouth at all when it comes to time to worship God through song. Trust that the Lord loves to hear whatever noise you make, as long as you make that noise with love and by faith. Make that noise, Christian, and joyfully hope in the faithfulness and glory of God.