Music For Our Souls - Life-Changing Hymns of Isaac Watts

Where would we be without music? When God created us with the desire for song, to invent an endless array of instruments and rhythms, He knew that such a gift would speak to us in a million ways, and that sometimes we would actually need music in order to speak the deep things of our hearts. We use music to express praise, joy, sorrow, longing, hope, blessing--pretty much every emotion we can name can also be expressed with music. There many verses of Scripture which tell us the benefits of music and list occasions for singing or "making melody". Ephesians 5: 18-20 says it most clearly.

"Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ."

Oftentimes, when I'm working on writing a novel, a hymn or other piece of music will pop into my thoughts that helps me to express the heart of my story--or better said--the heart of my characters. And why not? Since music offers such vitality of spirit to our lives, wouldn't it imbue a character's life also?

In my recent release, Courting the Country Preacher - Four Stories of Faith, Hope, and Falling in Love, my hero Everett Shepherd (The Angel and the Sky Pilot) preaches a sermon to a rough and tumble logging crew in which he uses the lyrics of a beautiful hymn to express what God did for him. Overcome with humble passion for Christ's transforming power, Isaac Watt's hymn At Calvary describes Everett's own conversion story.

Isaac Watts himself, was the author of hundreds of hymns, some of which the only record is the title, but many others we still enjoy today. He was born July 17, 1674 in Southampton, Hampshire, England, the son of a schoolmaster. He was already writing verses at seven years old. At the age of sixteen, he became a student in the non-conformist academy of an independent minister, Reverend Thomas Rowe. Watts preached his first sermon when he was 24 years old, and went on to become a pastor in London in 1702.

His first published hymn, written at age twenty, is said to have been composed for religious worship. It was titled Behold the Lamb. While Watts's writings included sermons, treatises, poems, and hymns, and he developed a very large collection, it was for the writing of psalms and hymns that he is best known. His published hymns alone number more than eight hundred.

Watts died November 25, 1748. He was known by his friends as a man of great learning and piety, with generousness and largeness of heart. He was buried in a Puritan resting place at Bunhill Fields, but a monument was erected in his honor in Westminster Abbey. Many other monuments have been erected this famous Christian writer over the centuries. 

But it might be said that the best monument of all, is the monument raised in song whenever we sing or play one of his many rich hymns.

Photo: Isaac Watts, Westminster Abbey Memorial, Wikipedia Commons (14GTR)

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Read into the New Year with

Courting the Country Preacher!

Four Stories of Faith, Hope, and Falling in Love

Meet Everett and Angeline in The Angel and the Sky Pilot

Can a new preacher earn the respect of hard-living men—and still respect himself—after a trader's daughter joins the all-male congregation?

HAPPY NEW YEAR, AND HAPPY READING!