Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Enriched Affections- A Purposeful Album


Over the years I have had a lot of time to think about worship. I was raised a pastor’s kid, with my dad being a full-time worship pastor. In college I even developed a personal philosophy of worship. Throughout all that time, I fell in love with God and worshiped Him through music. But it is so easy to fall in love with the music we worship God with, to get caught up in the emotion of it all, and to not really know the object of our worship. Sure, what we sing may be true, but is there enough truth in it to eliminate all other objects of worship so that the only possible being we are worshipping is God?

As plans for this album began almost two years ago, I began kicking around the title of Enriched Affections. If you notice the first post on this blog, you’ll see that the idea for this phrase came out of Together for the Gospel and also a few trips to New Attitude. C.J. Mahaney had a phrase he mentioned… “If you want to feel deeply, you need to think deeply.” All of this made me think about the affections.

All of us have affections, or emotions, desires, wants, things that make us want to do what we do. In worship, often those affections are lifted up with an upbeat tune, or an intricate harmony. Too often however, there is no substance to go with the emotional lift. Thankfully we have had a number of artists step up over the past few years to help with that problem. Sovereign Grace Music has produced a number of albums that accomplish what I am trying to also do with this album.

In a proper worship song, there is a beautiful marriage, an intricate harmony if you will, of text and tune. There is theology that acts like fertilizer in a nutrient deprived soil. When this theology enters into our hearts, our affections become enriched with God’s Word and we can truly worship the God of the Bible. That is my goal with this album, to properly fertilize our hearts so we can worship God joyfully in spirit and in truth.

I don’t know where it will lead in the future. My hope is that it will become a tool that many churches can use to help their congregations worship God more effectively. But that is up to God. I’m content with whatever He decides.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be posting the lyrics to the songs on the album and explaining a bit about the doctrine and the history of each song. I hope you enjoy.

Grace and Peace- Josh Huff

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