Well I’m going to give you, I hope, 4 reasons why singing in the Spirit is something that we should be engaged in and involved with. The great Spurgeon said “if your heart is full of Christ, you will want to sing” and singing is a great experience that God has put into us in our humanity. One of the greatest things about singing is, singing together, singing with other people! Singing on your own is fine, it helps you but when you sing together, something happens, there is a social dynamic that happens, there’s a real feel good factor that happens, and let me say there’s nothing wrong with a feel good factor!

Now when it comes to singing in the Spirit, 40 or 50 years or so ago, when God moved by the Spirit in what we call the charismatic movement, it was not an argument, it just happened. I think though out of our desire to be thoroughly Biblical, people have questioned the rightness of it. So let me give you what I think are four reasons why it is something we should be doing as believers, leaders & within our churches.

Theological Argument
We understand theologically that God is Trinity (and greater theological minds than mine have tried to explain it and we still don’t quite understand) but God is a singing God. The Father rejoices over us with singing. Jesus sings, he sings over us and He sings to the Father about us! We read that in Romans 16, which is rooted in the Psalms. Finally, the Holy Spirit sings. So, God is a worshipping Godhead! The Father loves the Son, who loves the Spirit, who glorifies the Son, who loves the Father. God is a singing Trinity, and so when we worship, we become participants in the worshipping Godhead. So, when we sing in the Spirit, we are joining in something that God Himself in His Trinity is doing and we sing His song. So that's the theological argument.

Biblical Argument
In 1 Corinthians 14 and Jeremy mentioned this earlier. We have a certain amount of ambiguity about how churches should function in terms of the Gifts of the Spirit. Now what is clear is that there is to be order, that is very clear, but if you read this passage carefully, there is a certain amount of ambiguity. Is Paul talking about the Gift of Tongues, which needs to be interpreted, not in a prayer but in a Godward prophetic expression? I just want to make that point, so the interpretation of a tongue is not a prayer as such, it’s a Godward expression from your spirit to God that should be interpreted. So, Paul in the context of this passage says, "I will sing with my mind and I will sing with the Spirit". Now is he talking about you individually, well yes he is because you can do that on your own. However, I believe that there is a corporate dimension to that, that when we sing in the spirit together, we the body are participating in the worshipping Godhead and the Spirit weaves that song amongst us, and I believe that is thoroughly Biblical.

Now when we come to the book of Revelation and as you know, Revelation is full of mysterious signs and symbols. John in Revelation 1, says Jesus is in the midst of the candlesticks, Ok. So what’s the candlestick? It’s the church, and John says, the sound of many waters is His voice. Now, I know that I’m arguing from the perspective of experience here of this is what this sounds like, therefore this is what it is. However, John heard the sound of many waters from the voice of Jesus. Now what does singing in the Spirit sound like? The sound of many waters. Now if Jesus sings, what is His voice like? You know, does He sound like Pavarotti? Personally, I love Sting’s voice, but does Jesus sound like Sting? What does His voice sound like? Well, where do you sing from? Now I’ve done vocal coaching, and I teach this, when I teach singing, you don’t sing from your throat, you sing from your diaphragm, you sing with your whole body, your whole body is involved. So, where is Jesus’ body, well, we’re His body! So, when we corporately sing together, we are joining in the song of the Trinity, Jesus’ voice is heard as we sing together. So that for me is a Biblical argument for singing in the spirit.

Historical Argument
Whenever God has moved in 2000 years of church history by His Spirit, singing in the Spirit has always been, or nearly always been part of it. If you read about the Welsh revival and then the rise of Pentecostalism and some of you may have even been at the Dales conferences in the late 70s when the Spirit came on the meeting and the singing in the Spirit was so incredible that there were frequencies (and it’s on the recording), there were frequencies so high that human voices could not have produced those notes, and it’s there in the recording, the Angels were joining in the songs! I know of many other times when singing in the Spirit has been like that, God has weaved this powerfully into the history of the church.

Experience
There is power released in the church when we do sing in the spirit together. Just a very quick story related to this. Some friends of mine were coming back from London in a minibus that was stopped by a gang of thugs. They opened the door of the minibus, and they had weapons, and they were about to rob and beat up the people in the minibus. The people on the bus all raised their hands and started singing in the spirit, and this gang fled for their lives, hallelujah! So when we sing in the Spirit, go for it with all your heart and please, let’s not lose it!