OUR SUNG PRAISE IS MEDITATION

'Through the centuries the rich Word of Christ, working in the meditating hearts of Christians, has produced the spiritual wisdom in which Christians have addressed one another in songs of exhortation and God in songs of praise. In spite of many detours into formalism or sentimentalism, the hymnody of the church has returned again and again to the richness of devotional meditation on the Word of the Lord. If Christians begin to understand the meditative nature of the praise together, their approach to the corporate praise of God would be transformed. The recovery of meditation will also bring a tide of fresh songs of praise. Motre Christians will begin to sing their meditations and to compose hymns of thanksgiving to the Lord for his mighty works of saving love.' 

Edmund P Clowney, Christian Meditation, p.80. 

SINGING

'Let us remember that the very power of singing was given to human nature chiefly for this purpose, that our warmest affections of soul might break out into natural or divine melody, and that the tongue of the worshipper might express his own heart.' 

Isaac Watts in Bob Kauflin, True Worshippers: Seeking what matters to God, p.109.