Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.
(Colossians 3:15 ESV)
I aim—in the five minutes it takes you to read this—to compel you to turn on some Christian music today.
Let’s Take a Drive
I’ll start by inviting you into my car this morning.
On my way to work, I listened to “Come Unto Jesus” by The Worship Initiative. I heard, “Come unto Jesus, come unto Jesus, lay down your burdens, he is enough. Come unto Jesus, rest in his love,” playing through the speakers, peripheral to my thoughts.
I’m carrying a burden, I suddenly realized. That’s right—Jesus tells me to bring him my burdens. He wants to carry this one. Maybe if I bring my burden to him, I’ll finally be free of it. So I took my burden to Jesus in obedience to the words of his that this song echoed from Matthew 11:28-30.
In the five minutes of my drive remaining, I mused. That one chorus just cut through the emotional fog of an entire week with a word of counsel. The burden I carried for days just got transferred from my shoulders to Jesus’. How much longer would I have carried that burden had I not heard those words in the morning rush coming out of my speakers?
Why Listen to Christian Music?
This is why we listen to “Christian” music, I thought. If it’s quality “Christian” music, it echoes the Bible. When I use the term “Christian music,” I mean music written by those who love Christ and write lyrics inspired by biblical truth (not necessarily the genre of Contemporary Christian Music—it could be Christian Folk, Christian Rock, Christian Rap etc.).
God speaks through the Bible; it is his Word to us (2 Timothy 3:16). The Bible is the primary place we run to hear God’s revelation to us. Welcoming music into our lives that recites, reflects, and restates the truths of Scripture is another way to engage with Scripture—to hear, meditate on, and memorize it! If we turn up the volume literally on music inspired by the Bible, we are opening our ears to God’s powerful Word.
Filling Our Lives with the Message of Christ
As I reflected on this five-minute experience in my car, I recalled Colossians 3:15. In the New Living Translation it begins with, “Let the message about Christ, in all its richness, fill your lives” (Colossians 3:15 NLT). It is wonderful that we live in an age where the Scriptures are so readily available to us and no longer reside in piles of scrolls or scattered parchments but comfortably sized books we can open daily. At the same time, God’s Word declares that his will for us is not that his words would find a suitable place on our shelf, but that it would consume our hearts, and find its way into every area of our lives.
One incredible blessing of our age is the ability to listen to nearly any artist or song anywhere, so long as we have a smartphone with us. Add onto that the blessing of hundreds of artists who love Jesus, abide in his Word, and use their gifts to proclaim the truth of Scripture in creative, beautiful, and diverse ways.
The message of Christ can literally fill our lives if we just turn on the speakers, or put in our headphones, or open our mouths to sing, and let the sound waves permeate our homes and cars and gyms and workplaces. Listen to what God says to us in Colossians 3:15. How do we let the message of Christ fill our lives, or “the Word of Christ dwell in us richly” (ESV)? By “singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God” (ESV).
Turn on Some Christian Music Today
God anticipated and intended for his church collectively to build one another up through song. His Spirit has promised that those who love Jesus will speak prophetic words to one another—meaning words that build one another up, strengthening one another with the truths of Scripture and the promises of God (Acts 2:17-18; 1 Corinthians 14:26; Ephesians 4:11-13), and one way that happens is through producing God-glorifying songs!
So turn on some music, friend, and sing along! This is the Holy Spirit’s exhortation to us. Colossians 3:15 says to sing songs inspired by Scripture as a way of filling your everyday life with the Word of God and the message about Jesus.
If you don’t have a relationship with Jesus, I would encourage you to try listening to some “Christian” music. It may awaken your curiosity about what the Bible has to say. If you want to know for sure that what you’re listening to is biblically based, check out our Spotify account—we have tons of carefully curated playlists there.
If you do have a relationship with Jesus, consider one way you could wrap biblically based songs into your regular routine. Instead of seeing Christian music as a genre, see it as a spiritual discipline—a means of listening to Jesus, worshipping Jesus, and a catalyst to come to Jesus. And may God’s Word transform you as you let its message fill your life.