Welcome to Verity Podcast. I'm your host, Felicia Mason-Himer, and I am here to

teach you how to know what you believe, to live it boldly, and to communicate it

graciously to the world around you. I believe that women are ready to go deeper in

their faith than ever before, and they don't have to go to seminary to do it. I am

so glad you're here, and I hope you'll join me on this journey because every

woman is a theologian. Hello friends, and welcome back to Verity Podcast. Today's

episode is one long requested, and we're going to be talking about discerning theology

and worship music. But before we do, I wanted to first thank you for reviewing Verity,

because your reviews not only mean the world to me and the every woman of theologian team,

but they always help other listeners find the podcast. So if you have enjoyed Verity Podcast,

would you take a few moments to leave us a star review or write out why you enjoy it?

Because that would help us get the word out to more people. Thank you so much for listening.

All right, so this week, as we look at this topic, I want to first just make sure that our

approach to this, as we think about this, is not one of hypercriticism or a critical spirit,

but a desire to truly honor God with our words and to worship Him rightly. I think that's

so important going into this. What I've found when it comes to worship music is it's very easy

to descend into this hypercritical, cynical attitude. And I'm just going to put it out there

and say it bluntly, cynicism is not of the Lord. Jesus is not cynical. He's full of hope and joy

and peace. Look at scripture, look at revelations specifically. There is no place for cynicism

in the body of Christ. And when we allow it to reign in our hearts, we will find fault with everything

that we can. Certainly, there has been worship music that has been not accurate, not biblical,

or even just ridiculous, as we will see in a moment. But there's also been a lot of good worship

...