Praise and Worship Songs
Tom
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Posts by Tom
Godly Success In Three Easy Steps!
Feb 12th
Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go. Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful.
- – Joshua 1:7-9
What God is doing here is laying out to Joshua His strategy for success. As Joshua takes over leadership from Moses God wants to ensure that Joshua will leader Israel into victory and live a successful and prosperous life.
God Wants You To Be Successful
But before we can look at God’s plan for success in our lives we mush first understand what true success is. The dictionary defines success as:
The achievement of something desired, planned, or attempted
So putting this into God’s point of view, we are successful when we acheive what God has desired fulfilling the plan he has for our lives.
I don’t know about you, but I definately want to be successful in God’s eyes, so lets pull that verse in Joshua apart and look at 3 things that we can do to ensure that we are doing all that God has called for us to do.
- Guard Your Heart And Your Tongue
I love the Message version of Proverbs 18:21Words kill, words give life; they’re either poison or fruit—you choose.
Words are powerful. Think about it, God formed the universe with His words, He spoke and light was. This is why He says to Joshua: ‘Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth.’
God wants us to be speaking life into situations, into people and into ourselves. He wants us to confess His promises, His laws and His love. However His promises have to be in us before they can come forth from our mouths. They need to be ingrained into our spirit before we can speak them with authority.
I love Luke 6:45 where it says: ‘Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.’
How often do you hear someone says something that is hurtful, only to add ‘I was only joking.’ Maybe you have done this yourself. I know I have many times, which is why this verse really hit home with me. Usually when we say these things, they just come out, before we can stop ourselves we have already blurted out this hurtful statement – because out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.
Knowing this, I decided to make a change. But instead of trying to stop myself from saying these things, I went to the root of the problem - my heart. I had to examine what I was allowing into my heart, and put up walls and set boundaries to stop certain things from influencing my heart.
But stopping things from getting into your heart is only one part of seeing God’s heart flow abundantly out of our heart – and mouth. We need to make sure we are letting God’s word in. More >
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Justice Is Worship: Talk Is Cheap
Feb 11th
Learn to do right! Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow.” — Isaiah 1:17
This verse was written by Isaiah in a time when God’s people were living for themselves. Infact verse 18 says, ‘…your sins are like scarlet.’
I find it interesting that when God tells them to trun from their ways, He doesn’t tell them that they need to be in church – that they need to worship Him with their words or their voices. Infact He says, ‘Stop bringing meaningless offerings.’ and. ‘even if you offer many prayers, I will not listen’.
Instead He says, ‘Take your evil deeds out of My sight! Stop doing wrong, learn to do right. Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow.”
You see,TALK IS CHEAP! How easy is it for us to live our own life and continually come to him and ‘worship’ Him with our songs, using phrases such as:
- All I am is Yours
- Send me, I will go
- Take all of me
- Youre the only one that I could live for
Yet we leave the same way as we came in – living for ourselves, with no second thought to how we live our lives. TALK IS CHEAP!
That is why God calls us to action. He wants to see if our hearts are really committed to Him. He calls us to justice and our response becomes our worship to Him.
But how is feeding the hungry an act of worship? And why is befriending the friendless what God desires to see us doing more than voicing words to Him?
Because GOD IS JUST!
Wasn’t Jesus the most perfect example of this. The way that He would hang out with the poorest, the weakest, the most sinful. How He wouldn’t let the thousands of hungry people on the mountain leave before they had been fed, or how He dined with Zacheaus even though everyone was gossiping that he was having dinner with a sinner.
Now if God is just then would not the biggest compliment that we could give Him as His ‘followers’ to actually follow His example and do what He does?
As we give to the poor, we are saying to God that we want to be like Him. As we feed the hungry we show that we have chosen His way and His path!
That is true worship! And that is why justice and worship cannot be separated.
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What is the difference between praise and worship?
Feb 10th
For so long in churches praise and worship have been stereotyped as ‘praise being the fast songs, and worship being the slow songs’. I don’t know about you but this has never sat right with me – because sometimes I feel like I am praising even during slower songs at church and worshiping in parts of the faster songs. There has to be a better way of describing the difference between praise and worship.
Let’s take a quick look at a couple of verses that mention praise and worship, then we will discuss them as well as a few dictionary definitions to try and find the difference between praise and worship – when we look at it from a music perspective in church.
The Difference Between Praise And Worship – Verses On Praise:
By Him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, this is, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His name. – Hebrews 13:15
Sing to him, sing praise to him; tell of all his wonderful acts. – 1 Chronicles 16:8-10
Then David said to the whole assembly, “Praise the LORD your God.” So they all praised the LORD, the God of their fathers; they bowed low and fell prostrate before the LORD and the king. 1 Chronicles 29:19-21
The trumpeters and singers joined in unison, as with one voice, to give praise and thanks to the LORD. Accompanied by trumpets, cymbals and other instruments, they raised their voices in praise to the LORD and sang: “He is good; his love endures forever.” Then the temple of the LORD was filled with a cloud. 2 Chronicles: 5:12-14
You can see from these 4 verses how large the scope of what praise really is. We have:
- A sacrifice of praise
- Singing
- Telling of his wonderful acts
- Bowing – being prostrate
- Musical instruments
That is from4 verses on praise. However praise is mentioned 351times in the Bible and gives us a lot more ways to praise God. The reason for this is because of our English language. The english language has one word, praise, for 7 Hebrew words – each giving a different definition for praise. They are:
- Hallal: “to laud, boast, rave, to celebrate” – It is used approximately one hundred times in the Old Tes tament.
- Yadah: “to worship with extended hands, to throw out the hands” – It is used over ninety times in the Old Testament. (Yad means “hand.”)
- Barak: “to bless, to declare God the origin of power for success, prosperity, and fertility” – It is used approximately seventy times in the Old Testament as praise to God.
- Tehillah: “to sing or laud” – It is derived from hallal and is generally accepted to mean “the singing of hallals.” It is used over fifty times in the Old Testament.
- Zamar: “to pluck the strings of an instrument, to praise with song” – It is used almost exclusively in the Psalms and occurs approximately forty times in the Old Testament.
- Todah: “to extend the hands in thanksgiving, a thank-offering” – It is used only a few times when trans lated “praise” but occurs many other times in connection with thanksgiving.
- Shabach: “to commend, address in a loud tone, to shout” – This is the exclamatory form of praise in a special sense and is found only about seven times in the Old Testament.
You will notice ‘Yadah’ which actually means to worship with extended hands. Does this mean that worship as we know it is actually just a form of praise?
As we continue to discuss the difference between praise and worship lets take a look what the Bible has to say about worship.
The Difference Between Praise And Worship – Verses On Worship:
Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice,acceptable to God, which is your spiritual act of worship. – Romans 12:1
Then the man bowed down and worshiped the LORD. – Genesis 24:25-27
God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.” – John 4:23-25
I guess when we are looking at the difference between praise and worship from a worship service perspective that praise seems to be more an outward showing with hands raising, clapping, dancing, bowing and singing. Whereas worship is something much deeper. It is where we are offering our bodies, and ourselves, giving them to God to have his way.
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This Is Our God: A Visual Journey [PICTURES]
Nov 29th
Have you ever really stopped and thought about how great of God really is. About how incomparable his size is compared to our minute bodies on our tiny planet? Then again our tiny planet is just in a small corner of our galaxy – that just so happens to be one of 100′s of billions (that’s 1,000,000,000,000) of galaxies! Our God is massive – are you getting it?
I love how Isaiah paints the picture and so I want to take you through a visual journey of the greatness and grandeur of OUR God from different passages in Isaiah 40!
Who has scooped up the ocean in his two hands?
or measured the sky between his thumb and little finger?
Who has put all the earth’s dirt in one of his baskets,
weighed each mountain and hill?
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Listen To My Latest Song – 'Meet Us Here'
Jun 8th
Press the play button below to preview!
[audio:meet-us-here1.mp3]
Meet Us Here, the song above, is the first song that I have ever had even semi-professionally recorded (all the rest have been home recording jobs).
I wrote this song with my fiance Fiona a couple of weeks ago and last week we had the opportunity to show our worship pastor – who allowed us to come into church to record a sample of the song on the digital sound desk – so that it could be work shopped further!
I am really happy with how it turned out and would love to know your thoughts on everything about the song – lyrics, music and singing 
Vocals: Fiona Steele
Guitar: Thomas Sinfield
Meet Us Here Lyrics
VERSE 1
I will lift my face
As I look to You
Come meet me here
VERSE 2
I will reach my hands
Up to You
Come and meet me here
PRECHORUS
Show me all that You are
I want to know You
I want to know You
CHORUS
Come and meet us here
Where we are
In this place
Come touch our hearts
Show me love
Show me everything You are
BRIDGE
Show me Your love
Show me Your love
Show me Your love
Pour it out
Copyright Thomas Sinfield & Fiona Steele 2009
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Writing Kids Praise And Worship Songs
Jun 5th
As a kids praise and worship song writer, I am constantly not only writing my own songs that allow kids to praise and worship their creator, but I also try to listen to other kids praise and worship albums to constantly keep my writing fresh. Now I am not saying to copy other writers styles, because I believe that everyone has their own writing style and what works for Hillsong Kids may not be the same thing that works in your local church.
This is one thing that I really struggled with when I first started writing songs for my local church City Church – Sunshine Coast. I would sit down and start writing and come away with something I was proud of, but I would always stop and think – but this doesn’t sound like the kids praise and worship songs that I have been listening too! The thing is, you just have to find what works in your local church – because the songs of mine that we have introduced to our kids ministry have quickly become favourites.
Today I wan’t to take a look at a couple of things that I have learnt about writing kids songs, that will hopefully help you.
Tips To Writing Kids Praise And Worship Songs
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