The Voice of the LORD

One of my favorite Psalms is Psalm 29 because it is all about the voice of the LORD.

As someone who spent most of his childhood taking vocal lessons, studying and learning how to make my voice “powerful,” I read this Psalm in amazement at the sheer power of His voice.

I remember a vocal exercise that I used to do, back when I was learning about breath control, where a candle was lit and held up in front of my mouth. The goal of this exercise was to sing with such power and breath control that the sound from my lungs would cause the flame to flicker.

I read verse 7, which in the NKJV says,

“The voice of the LORD divides the flames of fire,”

and I imagine how powerful His voice is that it could put out all those fires in Southern California with a single note. And here I am with my little squeak trying to make a little candle flicker.

The voice of the LORD is powerful enough to level the cedars of Lebanon, which were known throughout the Bible to be huge in lush and thick forests.

My favorite verse in this particular Psalm is verse 9, which begins:

“The voice of the LORD makes the deer give birth…”

The reason this first half of the verse stood out to me so much, is because I am a visual learner, so my notes from my reading usually have a lot of pictures in them to get me to remember them better. This was the picture I drew for this Psalm:

Even with all of my training and studying and practicing, there is no way I could make my voice powerful enough to level cedars and split huge flames and scare a poor dear into labor!

But my number one favorite part of the whole Psalm does not come until near the very end:

“…and in his temple all cry, “Glory!””

            This entire Psalm so far was about the voice of the LORD, and now, at the very end is where we come in. Here at the very end is the whole reason I went through all that training, so that I could use my voice to make a powerful and natural response to the glory of His voice.  Just like the deer responded to God’s glory by giving birth, we respond through imitation. Is this not what musical worship is about? We, those who are “in His temple,” are crying out “Glory!” in response to His glory!

            So next time you are worshipping God through song, make a joyful noise! Sing with power, in imitation of His power! Sing loud! Sing strong! It doesn’t have to sound good. Just as good as you can make it. After all, none of us can make a sound that compares the sounds He makes. Our job as worshippers is to make a gift to the LORD saying, “This is the best imitation I could make of who You are!”