This month I live in a city full of sounds that ring in our ears. I hear the hundreds of motorbikes that line up at a red light ready to speed off around the city. I hear the chatting in a courtyard of 300 people I share an apartment building with this month. However, I also hear the most beautiful song within the city of Ho Chi Minh.
A song is comprised of notes, rhythms, and words. A song of beauty is comprised of all of that, but their heart sings the melody. See, a lot of songs come about because an artist has an experience and creates a song to try to express how they are feeling. These artists show that it takes more than simply words to express something deep in your heart.
This month my heart has sung in a house that is beautiful and grand but empty. The owners of this house sing with words but they have not been able to sing with their Spirit yet. I joined together with two others. It doesn’t matter our stories or skin color but we sing with the same Spirit in our hearts. See, the beautiful thing is when different voices sing with their Spirit they complement each other and bring a fullness of sounds. The more people who have the Spirit that this song comes from, the fullness of the Spirit within the song grows because each sing with a different heart from their story of redemption.
As we sing together, our song floods this house and surrounds the girls who haven’t met their composer of their song yet. The more we sing with our Spirit, curiosity grows in their heart. Their curiosity stems from admiring the beautiful composer who has written our song and even created how our voice sound. Our voice is sculpted with history. Our composer has used history and the shameful parts in our past to show the beauty of our redemption song and let the beauty resonate in a deeper richness in our voice. So as these girls hear our songs, many don’t even just sit listening to our song, but they want to experience it. These girls who are sitting next to us as we sing, start moving their lips to the words to the song we are singing. As they move their lips to the lyrics “Your praise will ever be on my lips” they not only get to hear that there is a song for them but they get to experience it from the composer himself. They might not have let the composer write their song yet, but they are fascinated by the lyrics the composer has written for our song.
So here I am in Viet Nam. This is a country where only 1% believe in Jesus as their composer. This is a country where it is illegal for people pray for people in public. This is a country accepting if people are different religions but scared of how powerful the Spirit empowers us when we let our song change our life and those around us. But in the midst of it all God has taught me to never stop singing with my Spirit because someone’s lips will start moving with curiosity.
If we have a song that has been created for us in union with our creator how can we not sing this song for others to hear?
He put a new song in my mouth; a song of praise to our God. Many will see and fear, and out their trust in the Lord. Psalm 40:3
