This is a subject to which I can add something from my experiences. Music was almost everything to me at one time and for many, many years. I heard The Beatles on my little AM transistor radio, I saw them perform every time they were on the Ed Sullivan TV program on Sunday nights, along with all the other new bands that performed on Mr. Sullivan’s variety program, and I began playing music with an accordion, then an acoustic guitar, electric guitar, a bit of organ, many other guitars, electric bass guitar, and I worked with various rock bands in the late 1960s, early 1970s, and eventually a jazz fusion group.

I owned well over 2,000 LPs at one time. Various genres. I listened to Classical, Jazz, Blues, and a lot of Rock. I even listened to Bluegrass. Eventually, yes, coming to know and really like some Country [the real kind].

I worked in the biggest and most well-known music store in the Midwest for a while.

I was so into music that when I was in high school, working a couple of part-time jobs, and having my own money I became a regular at a record shop in a nearby shopping center. A great place. I was such a good customer, buying at least five to as many as a dozen LPs a week the manager began allowing me to go through the store, and pick out as many LPs as I wanted to and I didn’t have to pay for them until I came back the next time, if I didn’t have enough cash with me. Yes, it was a very different time.

I heard British bands from the British Invasion on their first U.S. tours. Seeing some in very small intimate venues. Sitting within a few feet of the stage. Many that never became mainstream, household names, or what would be considered known to a huge audience.

I listened to music constantly. Mostly rock, but I also was the only teenager I knew that also listened to and bought classical, jazz, and blues LPs and listened to them all the time.

I knew musicians. I hung out with musicians. I went to as many live concerts as I could.

This was my life for many years. Decades.

I had some people I knew from the time I was a teenager and as the years went by coming to me about a new band, a new record and asking me what I thought, and I introduced a few folks to music they might not have found, or at least found when it was fresh. First out.

All those classic rock songs that have been playing for the past 50, 60 years and have been heard about 76,967,336 times? I heard those the day, the week they were released. A lot of them were on what at the time was considered underground FM. One of the eventual nationally known FM rock stations was located in the city I grew up in. And late at night, it switched its programming from the usual fare to album rock, what is now called progressive rock late into the night.

That FM radio station is credited for bringing the recording artists David Bowie and Bruce Springsteen to national attention. It was that big a deal at the time.

Yeah, music was a high thing in my life. For many years.

It still is.

But here’s the thing…

And this is but one visible, audible, physical evidences of an individual being truly renewed of mind and spirit, transformed from within, a change not only of mind but of heart, by the Supernatural working of the Spirit of God.

One day the music that I gravitated to, didn’t hear or see anything objectionable, or wrong with, the music I had grown up with, owned, and listened to regularly — the very next day I no longer found the same pleasure in hearing.

It may have sounded very familiar, but it resonated differently within me.

Kind of hearing a wonderful bit of music, perhaps wonderfully arranged and played with various stringed instruments, in a major key, all nice and feeling good suddenly turning to all dissonant chording and note playing changing to minor sharps and flats with unsettling structure.

It was like that inwardly.

I know some folks I’ve told of this don’t understand it, others don’t believe it, and still, others don’t see how music can play such an influential part in the path they take, where their heart and mind are. It’s more than just something to dance to, pass the time, or create mood and feeling — ahh, there it is! Yes, music takes people to places as few other things can. Right where they live. In their vehicles. Any place. Any time. All an influence of one kind or another.

The music that we listen to, spend the most time listening to, and allow into our hearts and minds influences us greatly. Especially music with certain lyrics. Ahh, the lyric…that other part of certain music.

What we listen to fashions us.

What we read, the music we listen to, what we watch in the way of television programs or films, the places we go, and the people we associate with for a good part of our time.

Everything influences everything fashions. Even if there is great denial regarding this truth.

The big shrug.

Brushing the total impact aside. No big deal, eh?

No, it’s a huge deal. It really is.

I used to idolize The Beatles. Listened to every track, listened to every part, listened to every word.

Once in the Word of God, regenerated and transformed by the grace of God, the working of the Holy Spirit within me those lyrics now resonant totally different than they had for decades.

In the twinkling of an eye.

Yeah, the ears, the mind might like the sounds, the words, gets the feet moving, the body moving, the mind moving — all in the wrong direction.

Away from God.

Because the music we listen to the most, love the most also has a hold on the heart.

Where God ought to reign and take priority.

And let’s not continue to make excuses, pass all the dung around of not being impacted, influenced, affected, and fashioned by the music we listen to.

Baloney. Marlakey. Rubbish.

And every person knows that to be true.

And the beat goes on…

…what are the sounds, the music playing within your beating heart?

Of the world? Or of God?

This might be old — the man presenting the message died in the early 1960s, but his message rings as true and relevant today as when he first delivered it, and it does not become dated, antiquated, or no longer applicable;

On Fashioning Ourselves as Christians by A.W. Tozer 

Will the music you listen to condemn you to hell? Only if you remain an unbeliever, opposed to God, the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit, and resisting daily and nightly the truth, not repenting, not receiving forgiveness and salvation, but that won’t happen due to your music choices, but your heart, spirit, and mind choices to continue to rebel against and turn from God —  but if a believer? No, the music you listen to will not condemn you to hell for eternity, but if it is music that is not pleasing to the Lord, that can and is impeding your walk with the Lord due to your not letting go of that music — the music that each of us listens to can, does, and will affect, impact and have a direct relationship to our relationship with God, with Jesus, with the Holy Spirit, and with the Word of God. It does fashion us.

That might not be music to your ears, but it is the condition and state of the heart and spiritual health and well-being, spiritual growth, and eternity that ought to matter more than anything else here on earth.

Even the sounds of your life coming from a radio, on vinyl, a tape, a CD, live in concert, from a TV screen and speakers, or from any available format…especially what you find yourself humming…

For just as the Lord says, it isn’t what enters the mouth that defiles a person, it is what comes out of their mouth that defiles a person and reveals the content of their heart…

You can look that up if unfamiliar or not believing Jesus said that.

Everything we partake of fashions us in some way. And there are only two ways to be fashioned, shaped, and led in reality. God’s or the world’s.

RELATED:

On Fashioning Ourselves as Christians by A.W. Tozer 

Three Tests for Diagnosing Idols of the Heart 

Ken Pullen, A CROOKED PATH, Sunday, August 6th, 2023

Music to Your Ears? What About to Your Heart?

The music you listen to will either further or impede your relationship with God.

Friday, August 04, 2023

By Darrell Harrison

Reprinted from The Stand

As professing Christians, the music we choose to listen to can have an adverse effect in terms of our walk with, and witness for, Jesus Christ. Regardless of genre, music can be a tool the enemy uses to draw believers into a state of dullness and apathy about the things of God which, consequently, can impede our spiritual growth (Col. 1:10; 1 Pet. 2:2; 2 Pet. 3:18). As the seventeenth-century Puritan, William Spurstowe (1605-1666), warns in his book The Wiles of Satan, 

“Satan is wholly bent to evil, and makes it his only study to dive and search into men so that he may better fasten his temptations upon them. . . . He does not go forward a step without noting every man’s estate, temper, age, calling, and company so that he may with greater advantage tempt to evil, and thereby bring men into the same misery and condition as himself.”

Music, as well as other forms of media, is not merely a static proposition. What I mean is that the music we choose to listen to never only enters our ears and that is as far as it goes. It is also through our ears that music—and the messages it conveys—enters our minds and, subsequently, our hearts. There is a spiritual relationship between music, the mind, and the heart. That is why biblical discernment is so important (Phil. 1:9-10). As Dr. Burk Parsons, senior pastor of Saint Andrew’s Chapel in Sanford, Florida, writes in the July 2017 issue of Tabletalk magazine,

“Entertainment affects our minds, our homes, our culture, and our churches. Consequently, we must be vigilant as we use discernment in how we enjoy entertainment—looking to the light of God’s Word to guide us and inform our consciences. Entertainment isn’t evil in itself, and we can enjoy it as we remember that in whatever we do, our chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever as we live coram Deo, before the face of our omniscient and gracious God.”

In Phil. 4:8 (NASB), the apostle Paul exhorts believers to dwell only on those things that are “excellent and worthy of praise.” The Greek verb “dwell” (λογίζομαι) implies a deliberate and purposeful focusing of the mind on those things that are (or aren’t) deemed “worthy” in God’s estimation. I repeat—in God’s estimation—which is to say, in God’s judgment, which, ultimately, is all that should matter to any professing believer in Christ (Rom. 12:2; Gal. 6:14).

So the question we must ask ourselves is: Is the music I’m choosing to allow into my ears, mind, and heart considered “worthy” in light of the character of the God in whom I profess to believe and obey (Lk. 6:46)? Consider that question against the backdrop of what songwriter Bob Kauflin says in the book Worldliness: Resisting the Seduction of a Fallen World,

“What does music have to do with worldliness? To answer that question, we have to ask a few more. What motivates us to like the music we do? Is music entirely neutral? Why does music affect us so deeply? Does the music I listen to affect my thoughts or behavior in any way? Does it say anything about my relationship with God? Most important, are my music choices consistent with the gospel that has saved me? If these questions don’t seem important, think again. Music can be more dangerous than most of us realize. It has the potential to harden our hearts and weaken our faith. In fact, a wise Christian understands that listening to music without discernment and godly intent reveals a heart willing to flirt with the world.”

Scripture teaches that all good gifts come from God (Eccl. 2:24-25; 1 Tim. 6:17b), and music is one of God’s good gifts. Sadly, however, many professing Christians today view music as an idol, a “golden calf” that they serve and worship and that they do not want to part with (Ex. 32:4). But as those who have been spiritually reborn in Christ (2 Cor. 5:17; Gal. 2:20), we must not carry on as if music, or any other medium of entertainment in which we engage, is somehow a separate area of our lives to which God’s Word does not apply.

God’s people are to have a biblical worldview about everything and the music we listen to is no exception. Music is a gift of God’s grace and kindness that we, His people, are to enjoy for His glory (Ps. 105:2). That is the case regardless of whether the music we listen to is secular, ecclesiastical, cultural, or liturgical.

“. . . so that no advantage would be taken of us by Satan, for we are not ignorant of his schemes.”– 1 Cor. 2:11(NASB)

RELATED:

On Fashioning Ourselves as Christians by A.W. Tozer 

Three Tests for Diagnosing Idols of the Heart

Do You Know the Enemy?