Singing

By David Hobbs

For 7-9 years I got up in the middle of Saturday night and went to the church and prayed for several hours. I’ve given accounts of this elsewhere in this blog and in my book Walking in the Spirit. I had no idea when I started it would continue as long as it did, but that’s one of the exciting things about walking in the Spirit—you don’t know things like that until they happen. That’s how God instructed the Israelites as they journeyed through the wilderness: once He showed them where to camp for the night, they had no idea if He would call them to leave the next morning or if they would end up there a week, a month or even years. Or they might even be called to leave in the middle of the night (see Numbers 9:18-23).

So once I started, I had no idea how long it would last, and once I got in the groove, I didn’t want it to ever end. That season did end, but the experiences I had during those prayer times I will treasure for a lifetime.

Music has always been an important part of my life, even before I got saved. It has periodically been able to move me at the deepest level of my being, so much so that at one point in college, before Christ, I dedicated my life to music. After salvation I loved to sing and worship. So in these prayer times in the middle of the night, that’s mostly what I did—not “praying” in the sense of asking for things or interceding for others, but praising out loud and singing to the Lord.

There was one time I was praying a kind of complaining prayer, wistfully wishing that God had given me a great singing voice. My soul had just been stirred by Josh Groben singing “You Raise Me Up”—how I longed for a voice like that! In fact there were many times when my soul would be stirred to the depth by a great singer that I would cry out inside, “I would give everything I have to be able to sing like that!” Now I was thinking, “Lord, you have given me such a heart for worship and a spirit that loves to sing; why couldn’t you have given me a great voice to go with it?” I wanted to be able to stir others like they stirred me.

Often when we pray it’s like we’re thinking out loud, and we don’t really expect an answer. Therefore I was surprised when God spoke to my heart, “I like your voice.”

“Say what?”

 Then He quickened the passage from Exodus 4:10+ where Moses complains to the Lord about his slowness of speech. God had just commissioned him to return to Egypt, confront Pharaoh, deliver the Hebrews and be a spokesman for God, and yet he had this terrible speech impediment (some say he stuttered). It was like “God, why have you sabotaged me from fulfilling your call by these limitations to my speaking ability?” But just when we think God had overlooked something, He answers that Moses’ speech impediment wasn’t some fluke of nature that snuck past Him, He actually gave it to Moses intentionally!

So what was God was saying to me? “I love your voice! Who do you think created it in you? Would I give you a voice that made me cringe every time I heard it? Why would I put something in you I didn’t like when I loved you enough to die for you?”

Wow, that was really comforting. But it left me with questions: “then why couldn’t you have given me a voice like Josh Groben’s, so I could thrill the crowds?”

 Once again He surprised me by answering, “If I had given you a voice like that, you would have built a career singing for man; I want you to sing for me!”

That set me free! Once I knew that the God of all the universe was pleased by my singing to Him…! That revolutionized my time with Him. I started singing out more and more with gusto and abandon. And the faithful Holy Spirit began instructing me how to sing—how to project, how to breathe from the diaphragm—things I had been taught in college as a music major but never really used. Out there in the deserted church in the orchards by the freeway in the middle of the night, I could let it all out and I did.

The Lord kept instructing me also. He showed me that many successful singers do not have great voices (think Bob Dylan!!). But they have something else: they have an anointing that moves people independently of their vocal quality. Anointing can come through the Holy Spirit (think Darlene Zschech), it can be a soulish anointing garnered through hard times (think Ray Charles), or as in Dylan’s case, it can be a life-gift bestowed from above. All anointings are enhanced by suffering.

The Lord instructed Samuel--when He had him pass over Jesse’s other sons but choose David to be the next king--that while man looks on the outside, the Lord looks on the heart (1 Sam. 16:7). Likewise He instructed me that when a person sings to the Lord, God is little concerned with the quality of their voice (as people would judge); rather He listens to what is coming out of their hearts. When we sing to Him with love flowing from our hearts, in His ears it is the most beautiful sound imaginable!