Sing for Joy to the Lord

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Come, let us sing for joy to the LORD; let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation. Let us
come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song. – Psalm 95:1-2

Many of us like to sing. Even if we are hesitant to sing publicly, when we are alone in the car or at home, often we sing along when we hear our favorite songs.

We love to sing for a lot of reasons—joy, love, sorrow, even fear sometimes.

Our best reason to sing is given in the Bible verse: “Let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation.”

We live in changing times. Change means uncertainty. Culture, the future, security, economy, jobs, politics, family—these are life’s experiences that bring us more change that we are sometimes comfortable with. In this sea of change, we can always depend on the unchanging Rock of our salvation.

Salvation is the Bible’s word for God rescuing us from the consequences we should receive for all of our sins. We don’t give God the respect he is worthy of. We second guess how God deals with us and this world. We don’t give God the love he deserves. He comes in second or third or four hundred fortieth on our love list. Our actions and attitude pile up a boatload of trouble for us. God should reject and punish us.

But instead of dishing out what we deserve, the Rock of our salvation rescued us. In his great love, God chose to rescue us by sending his Son to suffer sin’s consequences for us. God will never punish us for our sins because he already punished Jesus for them. God’s choices and actions are unchangeable history. Our Rock of salvation will not shift his position or change his mind. He has rescued us from our sins. This fact will outlast the universe!

So we sing to the Rock of our salvation. We sing for joy because God has forgiven us. We sing songs about his sure promises to chase away our fears and heal our wounded hearts. We sing to express our love to God who will never stop loving us.

Go ahead and sing to the Rock of our salvation. If you aren’t sure what to sing, or would like company singing to the Lord, come and worship with us. We have found real comfort and genuine joy in singing together the praises of our Lord.

The Struggle Against Sin

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I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. … What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!
– Romans 7:18-19, 24-25

“I wanted to be done with that bad habit, but there I went and did it again.” Does it surprise you that even when you are a Christian, and have a heart that wants to follow God, you still struggle against sinful impulses, and too often fall to them?

You are not the first Christian to feel that way. Almost 2000 years ago the apostle Paul wrote: “I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.” Right before that verse, he explained why this was so. He wrote, “I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature.”

When God brings people to faith in Christ, he covers them with Christ’s forgiveness and counts them as completely holy. He creates in them a new heart that loves the Lord and wants to walk in his ways. But as long as we are in this life, the old, sinful self that we have from birth still wants to do what is evil and fights against the good desires of the new heart God created within us.

So Christians still struggle against sin every day. They often stumble and do sinful things their new hearts don’t want to do. And it frustrates them! Paul wrote, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?”

But there’s good news: “Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!” Though we struggle each day, each day God forgives us because of Jesus’ perfect sacrifice that was complete payment for all our sins. At last, Jesus will come and take us to be with him in heaven. There will be no sin there, around us, or inside us, to fight against or drag us down.

Keep looking forward to that day. Meanwhile, let your daily struggle with sin make you appreciate even more how good it is to have Jesus as your Savior, and to be covered by his mercy and forgiveness.