A Sweet Sound

I love you, Lord, and I lift my voice to worship you…take joy my King in what you hear; may it be a sweet sound in your ear. These are the words of a simple but beautiful song of praise. In this verse, we ask that our song would be a sweet sound to God. What is so great about singing? “I will sing to the Lord, for he has been good to me” (Ps. 13: 6)… “Sing joyfully to the Lord” (Ps. 33:1)… “Sing praises to God, sing praises” (Ps. 47:6)… “Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord” (Eph. 5:19)… The Bible makes many references to music and singing as an important way to praise and worship God; and rightly so. Often times it seems that music and singing can touch people’s hearts and give them joy in a way that normal words can’t reach. What a tremendous blessing God has given to us, with the gift of music.

In the past few months, our Taichung mission team has been blessed with using this gift of song for God’s glory. Because many of our English students love to sing, we were able to start a choir of about 10-12 students last September. They would stay after English class on Thursday nights to practice songs from 9:30-10:30 p.m. We started with 3 songs (including I Love You Lord), which we practiced for the first 2 ½ months every Thursday night.

Since this was the first time we had a choir and it was somewhat of a trial run, we were unsure of how the group would feel about singing in public. However, when the suggestion of singing for a church service was mentioned, they expressed much enthusiasm about a public performance. We jumped on this opportunity that God had given us, and scheduled a performance for a Friday night church service in mid-November.

The only small concern of our mission team was that students might not be able to come to the service, and that we would be stuck with only 3or 4 people who would show up to sing. This culture seems to be one of last-minute decisions and it’s hard to plan ahead, so getting the whole group to come to church on a Friday night could have been a potential challenge.

However, the Lord soon showed us that He is watching over us and we don’t have to worry. God repeats this promise to us so often–that He is in control and will always do what’s best for all of us; and yet somehow those comforting words seem to go in one ear and out the other. I’m fairly certain that at one time or another, all of us have tried to put our trust in ourselves and what WE do, instead of trusting in God, and it’s hard to accomplish much that way. Thankfully, we have a loving God who is forgiving and who keeps working in our hearts, and on the Friday night of our first choir performance here in Taichung, God showed us just how powerful and good He is. The whole group of students came, ready and excited to sing. We sang all three songs, and it was a nice treat for the members of church because this was new for them. The students loved singing the songs so much that we sang them all again at our Thanksgiving celebration, and we learned another song to sing for the Christmas service. For this song, one of the students even had a solo, and she sang it beautifully.

After a week of no classes for Christmas break, we started up again with class and choir in January. At our most recent choir practice, 15 people came. We even had 5 men, which was enough for them to have their own male tenor section. When we’d first started the choir, there was only one male voice. Right now we are learning a few songs to sing around Easter time, and we are also going to be working on some secular songs to sing for a talent show at the end of the term. This choir has definitely been one of the highlights of teaching here so far, and it’s been a great opportunity to share God’s love through music. I am so thankful that God has blessed the work over here. We have so much to praise and thank Him for, and it is my prayer that we can continue singing His praises and sharing with the world the sweet sound of Jesus’ love.

Kristin Lehmann

(Kingdom Worker English Teacher—Taichung, Taiwan)