Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and advising one another in all wisdom and singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.  Colossians 3:16

Today’s verse comes right in the middle of Paul describing what it looks like to follow Jesus in the midst of a non-Christian society. So the entire passage is important to understanding how to get through each day. But, interestingly, right in the middle of it, he mentions two keys: teaching and worship. And while there’s many ways to express our love and awe to our God, the specific form of worship he talks about here is “singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs”.

Paul does something similar in Ephesians 5 where he uses singing out our thanksgiving as an introduction to his teaching on marriage and family relationships. In today’s church culture, where worship and teaching are firmly separate activities (with announcements and offering in between <grin>), why would Paul see teaching our Christian faith and worshiping our awesome God in such an integrated way?

Why is worship so important? For that matter, with all the ways we might worship God, why is singing our worship so important to Him? Why would God give music and song such a prominent place, not only in official “worship services”, but in all of life?

Because singing bridges the gap between our heads and our hearts. It connects our minds and spirits and unifies them in purpose and power. Singing enables “the word of Christ” to dwell in (us) richly–to fill all of us, not just our heads. God’s plan is not that the “thoughts of His heart” would be something external to us–a vital resource we can go to; His plan is that His Word will literally dwell within us (and that’s not just memorizing verses, by the way). And one of the ways that happens, and happens abundantly and comprehensively, is through singing out our worship.

God took a cognitively accurate way of communicating His truth (teaching His Word) and united it with a powerful way of getting that truth into the fiber of our very lives (singing out His praise). And the outcome is that our hearts are united with our minds to know Him much better–more intimately than we could if we just had one or the other.

That’s worshiping in spirit and worshiping in truth (Jn 4:24).