If we walk according to the Spirit, our spirit will be filled with God. This is what Ephesians 5:18-19 refers to: “Be filled in spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and psalming with your heart to the Lord.” Once we are filled with God in spirit, we will spontaneously sing psalms, hymns, and songs with our heart, speaking to one another and praising the Lord. How many songs did the Chinese scholars of Confucius write? Among all the scholars of Confucius whom you know of, how often do they sing, and how often do they sigh? But we sing every day. Although we do not sing that well, we Christians are those who have songs. We Christians are a singing people.
Ephesians 5:18 says, “Do not be drunk with wine, in which is dissoluteness, but be filled in spirit.” We should not be drunk with wine, but we should be filled in spirit. If we are to be filled in spirit, we must sing. When we are filled in spirit, what we have within will spontaneously be expressed without. We will begin to sing. I always sing. Every day when I go for a walk, I sing. Singing is one outstanding trait of a Christian. I am the worst in music, but I like to sing more than anything else. I always sing off-key. Sister Lee always tells me to stop singing. But I criticize her also. She has been teaching school all her life. Her mind is very clear, but she would not sing.
Praise the Lord that we have so many hymns. For example, this morning I was singing a hymn:
Give up the world, Christ to obtain,
He is your heart’s very need.
Hymns, #1025
I wrote this hymn in 1947. During that year I conducted a conference in Shanghai, and after that conference I spent a day resting in a scenic area. As I was strolling there, I was humming some random melodies to myself. While I was thus musing, verse three of the hymn came to me:
Though very great is all the world,
And very small is your heart,
Yet the great world with all its wealth,
Never can fill your small heart.
Now I would ask all the brothers and sisters over sixty years old to stand up and sing this verse. Your singing is too proper. There is no need to be so proper. You have to sing like I do. I break all the rules of singing, yet I stir up others’ spirits. All of you older sisters should go to sing in your home meetings. You have to fire up everyone there. Do not think that only the young people can catch fire. If all the older ones sit still in the meeting, how can we have a good home meeting? But if the older ones would sing, their singing would surely cause the meeting to come alive. On this point I would ask you older ones to learn of me. Do not sing too properly. When you break the rules, sometimes you sing even better. Today I may be the oldest one among all of you. I do not sing well, but I sing with life. Please do not act like an old man or woman. You must be bold to sing.
Previously, when I went to a home meeting and saw that six out of eight were older ones, I would ask myself, “How are we going to meet?” But just now I saw some older ones singing with boldness. Of course, I do not mean that we should sing in a disorderly way. What I mean is that we should sing to enliven others. Now our concept is changed. I believe if the older brothers and sisters would go to the home meeting and sing, the whole meeting will come alive. Besides these older saints, we still have a group of brothers and sisters between the ages of forty and sixty. All of them must go and sing in the home meetings. In addition, we have an army of young ones from twenty to thirty-nine years old. All of them must not take a leave of absence from the home meetings. They must function properly in these meetings. But this is not all. There is a commando unit in the church, composed of those from age one to nineteen. If these four groups of people would sing in the home meetings, the meetings will surely be enlivened.