Taking the words along with the music.

One of the things I enjoy in life more than just about anything else is playing the piano, I am not very accomplished at it and to those who are piano connoisseurs I imagine my playing sounds terrible. It doesn’t matter to me if everyone is running for the ear plugs since I prefer playing when nobody is listening anyway! Unfortunately right now I do not have a piano of my own so I have to drive or walk a couple of miles to a 110 year old country church where I can play on the piano there. On the occasional Sunday I’ll play for the service and I enjoy playing the old hymns I remember singing in church when I was little. The old hymns often have so much meaning and often an inspiring story to go with them! One of my favorites is “All Hail to Thee Immanuel” by D.R. Van Sickle. As a non­be­liev­er he wrote the song to prove that one doesn’t have to be a Christ­ian to write a Christ­ian song. How­ev­er, God, with His great pa­tience, turned the ta­bles on him. Years lat­er, Van Sickle was sit­ting in a serv­ice where a choir sang his hymn. He came under con­vict­ion and gave his heart to Christ! Another one of my favorites is “It is well with my soul” by Horatio Spafford. The song was writ­ten af­ter two ma­jor trau­mas in Spaf­ford’s life. The first was the great Chi­ca­go Fire of Oc­to­ber 1871, which ru­ined him fi­nan­cial­ly (he had been a weal­thy bus­i­ness­man). Short­ly af­ter, while cross­ing the At­lan­tic, all four of Spaf­ford’s daugh­ters died in a col­li­sion with an­o­ther ship. Spaf­ford’s wife Anna sur­vived and sent him the now fa­mous tel­e­gram, “Saved alone.” Sev­er­al weeks lat­er, as Spaf­ford’s own ship passed near the spot where his daugh­ters died, the Ho­ly Spir­it in­spired these words.
When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,When sorrows like sea billows roll;Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say,It is well, it is well, with my soul.
The tune, written by Phillip Bliss, is named af­ter the ship on which Spaf­ford’s child­ren per­ished, the S.S. Ville de Havre. Iron­ic­al­ly, Bliss him­self died in a train wreck short­ly af­ter writ­ing this music.
Another hymn with a beginning in tragedy and pain is “Precious Lord, Take my Hand” By Thomas Dor­sey. He wrote this song in Chi­ca­go, af­ter his wife Net­tie died while giv­ing birth to a child who al­so died short­ly there­af­ter.
Precious Lord, take my hand,Lead me on, let me stand,I am tired, I am weak, I am worn;Through the storm, through the night,Lead me on to the light.
We should all ask ourselves if we could go to God like this in a time where we had apparently lost everything that meant anything to us in the world.
“Take my life and let it be” by Frances R. Havergal, is an exceptionally wonderful song and I have heard a total of 8 different tunes to it! I think my favorite tune is one that is arranged from Mozart and I think it is also the most popular one. Yes the tune is nice, but it’s the words that mean something! One day while I was playing it I stopped listening to the music I was playing and concentrated on the words I was singing and couldn’t help but notice with a bit of guilt that I couldn’t honestly sing the song!

Take my life, and let it be consecrated, Lord, to Thee.Take my moments and my days; let them flow in ceaseless praise.Take my hands, and let them move at the impulse of Thy love.Take my feet, and let them be swift and beautiful for Thee.

That’s not so hard to say, but it goes on!
Take my voice, and let me sing always, only, for my King.Take my lips, and let them be filled with messages from Thee.Take my silver and my gold; not a mite would I withhold.Take my intellect, and use every power as Thou shalt choose.
Whoa! The voice is fine, You can have that since I don’t sing all that great anyway, but my money? I work hard for that! Can’t I modify this to say “Take a little of my silver and gold when I have extra”? I really don’t want to give it ALL!
And my intellect? I know I need to keep back some of that to use as I choose, I really couldn’t part with it all!

Take my will, and make it Thine; it shall be no longer mine.Take my heart, it is Thine own; it shall be Thy royal throne.Take my love, my Lord, I pour at Thy feet its treasure store.Take myself, and I will be ever, only, all for Thee.
And my will? I just cannot give that up! Maybe one or two hours a day You can have it but not all of it! And my heart and love? Well I’ve got to save that for my wife so you can’t have it, I’ll give it to you later though!
Take myself…only, all for Thee. What a thought. All is a very encompassing word really, it leaves nothing out. Are we willing to give our all to God? Let that sink in because we shouldn’t be singing the song blindly unless we really mean it! I thought of that as I was continuing to play it and realized I had something to deal with here, I call myself a Christian and I can’t honestly sing this song! After a few minutes changes were made and I finished the song, but it made me think, are there others? Are there songs that I sing that are contradictory to what I know is truth from God’s word? Are there songs that if I really meant what I was saying I would get results that I was not ready for or didn’t want?
“I surrender all” by Judson Van De Venter is one that came to mind almost immediately, it’s one I had sung for years but never thought about seriously. I’ll give the background to it in the writers own words. “The song was writ­ten while I was con­duct­ing a meet­ing at East Pal­es­tine, Ohio, in the home of George Seb­ring. For some time, I had strug­gled be­tween de­vel­op­ing my tal­ents in the field of art and go­ing into full-time evan­gel­is­tic work. At last the pi­vot­al hour of my life came, and I sur­ren­dered all. A new day was ushered in­to my life. I became an evang­el­ist and dis­cov­ered down deep in my soul a tal­ent hi­ther­to un­known to me. God had hid­den a song in my heart, and touch­ing a ten­der chord, He caused me to sing.”
All to Jesus I surrender;Humbly at His feet I bow,Worldly pleasures all forsaken;Take me, Jesus, take me now.
I surrender all, I surrender all,All to Thee, my blessèd Savior,I surrender all.
Well, I found another that I had to really think about before I could sing it again! Do I really surrender ALL?
Deeper, deeper in the love of JesusDaily let me go;Higher, higher in the school of wisdom,More of grace to know.
Here is another one that we had been singing for years but do I really know what I am asking when I sing this?
Deeper, deeper! though it cost hard trials,Deeper let me go!Rooted in the holy love of Jesus,Let me fruitful grow.
Yes, hard trials. It seems like they always go along with a deeper walk with God, the trying by fire and the burning out of impurities! I recently heard a song about how tilling the soil of our hearts hurts sometimes but it is preparing the soil for the good seed. The question I had to ask myself was, do I really want that good seed planted if I have to go through the hard trials? Charles P. Jones wrote the song, now I take the words to heart and make them mine.
“Sweet Hour of Prayer” is a song that I have always thought is beautiful, and by accident found was really fun to play in the form of a round when my sister and I were playing it together and one of us got completely out of time and, instead of messing it up made it much more fun to play. Here is the story of it’s beginnings written by Thomas Salmon.
“During my re­si­dence at Coles­hill, War­wick­shire, Eng­land, I be­came ac­quaint­ed with W. W. Wal­ford, the blind preach­er, a man of ob­scure birth and con­nect­ions and no ed­u­ca­tion, but of strong mind and most re­ten­tive mem­o­ry. In the pul­pit he ne­ver failed to se­lect a less­on well adapt­ed to his sub­ject, giv­ing chap­ter and verse with un­err­ing pre­ci­sion and scarce­ly ev­er mis­plac­ing a word in his re­pe­ti­tion of the Psalms, ev­ery part of the New Tes­ta­ment, the pro­phe­cies, and some of the his­to­ries, so as to have the rep­u­ta­tion of “know­ing the whole Bi­ble by heart.” He ac­tu­al­ly sat in the chim­ney cor­ner, em­ploy­ing his mind in com­pos­ing a ser­mon or two for Sab­bath de­liv­ery, and his hands in cut­ting, shap­ing and po­lish­ing bones for shoe horns and other lit­tle use­ful im­ple­ments. At in­ter­vals he at­tempt­ed po­e­try. On one oc­ca­sion, pay­ing him a vi­sit, he re­peat­ed two or three piec­es which he had co­mposed, and hav­ing no friend at home to commit them to paper, he had laid them up in the store­house within. “How will this do?” asked he, as he re­peat­ed the fol­low­ing lines, with a com­pla­cent smile touched with some light lines of fear lest he sub­ject him­self to cri­ti­cism. I ra­pid­ly co­pied the lines with my pen­cil, as he ut­tered them, and sent them for in­ser­tion in the Ob­serv­er, if you should think them worthy of pre­ser­va­tion.”
Sweet hour of prayer! sweet hour of prayer! The joys I feel, the bliss I share, Of those whose anxious spirits burn, With strong desires for thy return, With such I hasten to the place, Where God my Savior shows His face, And gladly take my station there, And wait for thee, sweet hour of prayer!
Sweet hour of prayer? How many of us spend an hour in prayer? If I were to be completely honest I would have to modify this song to “Sweet minute of prayer” But that just doesn’t quite have the same ring to it does it? Do I hasten to the place where my Savior shows His face and wait for Him in prayer? I haven’t made it a habit to hasten unless I had lost something or was having a problem, the joys and bliss were saved for myself alone, I rarely if ever shared them with Him.
It looks like I need to change some things in order to sing this song in all honesty; it is a good one and should be sung!
Since that day when I realized these hymns we sing are not just nice music but really talking to God I have had a lot of eye opening moments. Hopefully reading this will encourage others to think seriously about what they sing, not to make them stop singing the songs, but to change their lives so they can sing them in all honesty. Then we can sing “Victory in Jesus, my Savior forever...”