Jamie PrinceMore than twenty years ago, when my husband David and I rekindled our relationship that we began in college (maaaany years ago), we, like most couples, had a favorite song. Ours was a bittersweet tune by Dave Matthews Band about a complicated love affair. As time went on, I began feeling a deep, underlying angst about that being the song that we identified with as a couple. As you can see, I’m not even brave enough to include the name of the song here… that’s how much it’s bothered me.
Fast forward to about six years or so ago. I received a stirring in my Spirit, which I have worked hard to train myself to listen to, coupled by the command: “Sing a new song.” Have you ever clearly heard a Word from the Lord but had no idea what to do with it? Yeah, that was me in that moment and, if I’m honest, for a long time following that little divine download.
I’ve spent countless hours pondering, guessing, and assuming what I believed the Lord meant by that. I’ve searched for “new songs” for David and me, etc. In looking back at these rookie response tactics, all I can say is, I was totally clueless about what God really wanted me to do.
And so, once I had exhausted myself in failed attempts to read the mind of God, I set the quest for a new song aside. You know what comes next, right? Yes, as soon as I put it away, God took it out and laid it square in front of me again. It was after the second or third course in song searching that God, in his mercy, began leaving breadcrumbs for me to follow.
One day, while reading my Bible, I stumbled across Psalms 33.
Sing joyfully to the Lord, you righteous; it is fitting for the upright to praise him. Praise the Lord with the harp; make music to him on the ten-stringed lyre. Sing to him a new song; play skillfully, and shout for joy.” (Psalms 33: 1-3 NIV)
It was at this point that I began to understand that God wasn’t trying to reveal to me a new song for my relationship with David. He wanted me to find a new song for my relationship with Him.
Indeed, it’s astounding how many times in the Bible God uses the words “a new song” and the command to sing praise to the Lord, and it’s no surprise that most of them are found in Psalms, the book of songs. Here’s a snapshot:
“He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear the Lord and put their trust in him.” (Psalms 40:3)
“Sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvelous things; his right hand and his holy arm have worked salvation for him.” (Psalms 98:1)
“And they sang a new song before the throne and before the four living creatures and the elders. No one could learn the song except the 144,000 who had been redeemed from the earth.” (Revelation 14:3)
In Deuteronomy 31, when the Lord spoke to Moses and Joshua about the fall of humanity that would come once Moses’ leadership came to an end, he gave Moses a song to write down and to teach the Israelites, so that when all had gone to hell in a handbasket, they — and the generations that followed them — could have a restoration of faith and security amid their sin and distance from God. He calls it his testimony to the Israelites, and as we know, testimony is one of the most powerfully sacred weapons against the enemy (Rev. 12:11). As you read The Song of Moses (which is God’s song as written down by Moses), I think you’ll recognize the many ways that these eternal words of the Father foreshadow the eternal atonement offered through the sacrifice of his Son, Jesus, who came so that death may die and that we may live in Christ forever. It’s a song not only for me, or for David, but for all of us. A warning to heed, and a comfort to know.
The Song of Moses (Deut. 32:1-43)
“Listen, you heavens, and I will speak; hear, you earth, the words of my mouth. Let my teaching fall like rain and my words descend like dew, like showers on new grass, like abundant rain on tender plants.
“I will proclaim the name of the Lord. Oh, praise the greatness of our God! He is the Rock, his works are perfect, and all his ways are just. A faithful God who does no wrong, upright and just is he.
“They are corrupt and not his children; to their shame they are a warped and crooked generation. Is this the way you repay the Lord, you foolish and unwise people? Is he not your Father, your Creator, who made you and formed you?
“Remember the days of old; consider the past generations long past. Ask your father and he will tell you, your elders, and they will explain to you. When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, when he divided all mankind, he set up boundaries for the peoples according to the number of sons in Israel. For the Lord’s portion is his people, Jacob his allotted inheritance.
“In a desert land he found him, in a barren and howling waste. He shielded him and cared for him; he guarded him as the apple of his eye, like an eagle that stirs up its nest and hovers over its young, that spreads its wings to catch them and carries them aloft. The Lord alone led him; no foreign god was with him.
“He made him ride on the heights of the land and fed him with the fruit of the fields. He nourished him with honey from the rock, and with oil from the flinty crag, with curds and milk from herd and flock and with fattened lambs and goats, with choice rams of Bashan and the finest kernels of wheat. You drank the foaming blood of the grape.
“Jeshurun grew fat and kicked; filled with food, they became heavy and sleek. They abandoned the God who made them and rejected the Rock their Savior. They made him jealous with their foreign gods and angered him with their detestable idols. They sacrificed false gods, which are not God — gods they had not known, gods that recently appeared, gods your ancestors did not fear. You deserted the Rock, who fathered you; you forgot the God who gave you birth.
“The Lord saw this and rejected them because he was angered by his sons and daughters. ‘I will hide my face from them,’ he said, ‘and see what their end will be; for they are a perverse generation, children who are unfaithful. They made me jealous by what is no god and angered me with their worthless idols. I will make them envious by those who are not a people; I will make them angry by a nation that has no understanding. For a fire will be kindled by my wrath, one that burns down to the realm of the dead below. It will devour the earth and its harvests and set afire the foundations of the mountains.
“I will heap calamities on them and spend my arrows against them. I will send wasting famine against them, consuming pestilence and deadly plague; I will send against them the fangs of wild beasts, the venom of vipers that glide in the dust. In the street the sword will make them childless; in their homes terror will reign. The young men and young women will perish, the infants and those with gray hair. I said I would scatter them and erase their name from human memory, but I dreaded the taunt of the enemy, lest the adversary misunderstand and say, ‘Our hand has triumphed; the Lord has not done all this.’
“They are a nation without sense, there is no discernment in them. If only they were wise and would understand this and discern what their end will be! How could one man chase a thousand, or two put ten thousand to flight, unless their Rock had sold them, unless the Lord had given them up? For the rock is not like our Rock, as even our enemies concede. Their vine comes from the vine of Sodom and from the fields of Gomorrah. Their grapes are filled with poison, and their clusters with bitterness. Their wine is the venom of serpents, the deadly poison of cobras.
“Have I not kept this in reserve and sealed it in my vaults? It is mine to avenge; I will repay. In due time their foot will slip; their day of disaster is near and their doom rushes upon them.
“The Lord will vindicate his people and relent concerning his servants when he sees their strength is gone and no one is left, slave or free. He will say: ‘Now where are their gods, the rock they took refuge in, the gods who ate the fat of their sacrifices and drank the wine of their drink offerings? Let them rise up to help you! Let them give you shelter!
“‘See now that I myself am he! There is no god besides me. I put to death and I bring to life, I have wounded and I will heal, and no one can deliver out of my hand. I lift my hand to heaven and solemnly swear: As surely as I live forever, when I sharpen my flashing sword and my hand grasps it in judgment, I will take vengeance on my adversaries and repay those who hate me. I will make my arrows drunk with blood, while my sword devours flesh: the blood of the slain and the captives, the heads of the enemy leaders.’
“Rejoice, you nations, with his people, for he will avenge the blood of his servants; he will take vengeance o his enemies and make atonement for his land and people.”
The Lord has reinforced in so many ways what Pastor Frank Lybrand, who officiated my and David’s wedding, advised us on the altar: to make sure that our marriage was structured like a triangle, with the base points being David and Jamie, and the apex being God. The new song was a command to me, but I also believe it is one for David, too (not sure I’ve ever told him this… we will see if he reads this, ha!).
My “new song” — my and David’s “new song” — is praise for the Lord’s goodness, his holiness, and his eternal and uncompromising love. We are to sing it using all of our gift and talents to our Father through our adoration of Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit. This is the song of our lives, the song we were always meant to sing. This is our story. Our story is His story.
This is my story, this is my song; Praising my Savior all the day long….
Lyrics to the hymn “Blessed Assurance”
Perhaps all the years that we were attached to the original song, which was completely secular, and all the years I spent pining away in search of the true meaning of the Word I received so clearly, were basically voice lessons. Voice lessons train us, refine us, strengthen our vocal cords, and expose us to challenging practice in order to ultimately sing the song we are meant to sing.
Closing Prayer
Lord, teach me your song. Teach me how to sing it. In Jesus’s holy and precious name, Amen.
