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You arrive early for the orchestra concert. The symphony players arrive, unpack their instruments and begin to warmup. After a while the concertmaster stands and plays the concert pitch "A" and everyone listens and begins tuning. But then it seems that all the players are suddenly doing their own thing; if you didn't know better you would think it was chaos. But to the trained ear of the concertmaster it is "music" to his ears. Then the conductor steps up and the concert begins. The orchestra now transforms into a luscious combination of many pitches coming together in harmony and form. Alas, you smile, "now this is music." As we come together to celebrate and to worship our Lord, a similar tuning process takes place. We begin by turning our minds from ourselves to giving to the Lord. We sing a songs of praise, engaging our minds to do just that. We progress to songs exalting the Lord. All during this time we apply our minds, singing from our hearts B that is our part of tuning, an act of our will. As we sing, our Concert Master, the Holy Spirit plays forth the concert "A"-- He bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God and that we have received not a spirit of slavery, but a spirit of adoption as sons.1 And as the Spirit of God opens our spiritual eyes, our spirits begin to tune. We are tuned by the Spirit to the awareness of the "new" song - a song of salvation, of redemption, of freedom, of love..2 Our Maestro steps up and we are drawn to Him, to the communion we have with Him who is our Father. Our hearts, now spiritually attuned, begin to sing songs of adoration and intimacy. And we sing, no longer alone, but with the orchestra of others caught up in the music of their communing spirits also. We can praise by an act of the will, and our emotions and minds can be stirred. But without the Spirit of God tuning our spirit to communion with God, there will be no true worship. For true worship is that which is in spirit and in truth.3 As spirit worship happens, the mind becomes illuminated by the light of the Truth who is the Way and the Life. The mind is energized to think His thoughts as He renews our mind. The heart and soul are enlivened by the overflow of the spring of living water bubbling up.4 And as our tuned spirits are energized, we can spiritually appraise all things, knowing the Lord and having the mind of Christ.5 He speaks to us through the teaching of the Word and we continue to worship within, relating and communing with Him, for we are Spirit-tuned. Now this is music!!! 1 Romans 8:16,15
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