Hey guys! Long time no see! or talk, or read or whatever lol. I hope this quarantine time hasn’t gotten you down too much. I know it’s been a little rough for some of us around here and I was trying to think of a way I could hep out and I’ve come up with dozens of possibilities, but first I thought I’d share this:
This Sunday morning my family and I were unable to meet with our congregation for worship because the men of the congregation have responsibly decided to not meet at our building for the time being so as to not put our members at risk with this virus that is making its way across our country. However, as believers and followers of God’s Word we know the importance of worship on the first day of the week so we did something new and had the sermon over Facebook Live. Now having devotional time in our living room is nothing new to us. Not only have we hosted many an event at our home but we often gather as a family when our regular services are canceled. We sing, pray, and most times have a short devotional thought. This Sunday for our virtual worship service though we only had the sermon, communion, and prayer but we sang as a family before “going live”.
And that got me to thinking.
Singing praises to God has always been a big part of my life and something we’ve done as a family often – on long road trips our car was often full of our voices lifting in praise. And our youth devotionals often went way longer than scheduled because we kept saying one more song, just one more! I love to sing (even though I’m not very good at it), and there are only two times I have enjoyed singing more than when my family sings together – evening devotional at Camp Wiregrass and the magnificent sound of more than a thousand voices at my sisters celebration of life. All of these times have been on my mind a lot since we had devotional together last Wednesday night because our regular service was canceled. And it got me thinking – we know A TON of songs by heart, but we all also have the devotional song book Kristen and I put together for church on our phones so not only do we have the words but we also have a long list of options to choose from (even though we definitely have our favorites! Wes is on “Get Right Church and Let’s Go Home” right now:) ). Looking at my phone Sunday evening as we gathered around our table after supper for different songs to ask the boys to lead I was struck by the thought that others may not be as fortunate as I am. Not only do I have two brothers that love to sing (and are both excellent song leaders to boot) and my father but we are also blessed to have abundant resources to use like our devotional song book, copies of other song books we have collected over the years, and my extensive list of a cappella worship songs that I’ve curated. Not to mention the volumes of “class” books we have collected over the years to study from as we are confined to our house.
So I decided to share our wealth!
This first post will include a copy of the devotional song book that can be kept on your phone (if you have an iPhone save it to iBooks and you can even search for songs!) or downloaded and printed! I hope this will help you and encourage you all to spend time in worship to our amazing Creator and give you resource help for the right words and options of songs. Mostly I hope by sharing some song time with you all it helps to lift spirits and encourage souls.
“Some days there won’t be a song in your heart. Sing anyway. ”
Emory Austin
Later I hope to share some of my favorite recordings of devotional songs with you and continue lifting our voices in praise together!
“Let us go singing as far as we go: the road will be less tedious.”
Virgil
PS There are a few errors in the book so please be kind and also don’t hesitate to reach out if something is confusing or hard to understand. Also, it was one brought to my attention that there wasn’t any music (meaning the notes) to follow and I am sorry for that! You can always Google/YouTube a song to hear it sung first before trying it out on your own. I hope this is beneficial to you all and may you all be blessed and continue in good health.
Oh, and stay home! 🙂
Life Thereafter 