My Favorite Song
“Even though we speak like this, dear friends, we are convinced of better things in your case—the things that have to do with salvation… We want each of you to show this same diligence to the very end, so that what you hope for may be fully realized. We do not want you to become lazy, but to imitate those who through faith and patience inherit what has been promised.” Hebrews 6:9, 11-12
I love music, and I have a favorite song for just about every mood and every phase of my life. The wonderful thing about music is the way it allows us to revisit some of our best times. There’s music associated with birthdays and the days when our family members are born. There’s music that we remember our childhood by that may have been heavily influenced by our parents or other family members. I know personally, I have a whole playlist of songs that I relate back to middle school, high school, and college that will undoubtedly follow me for the rest of my life (for better and for worse).
Growing up in the early 2000’s, and then the 2010’s, I experienced the novelty of the music playback feature through technological enhancements ranging from the original iPod to the ever-evolving series of iPhones (I am not an Android lover, but if you are, I am praying for you)! When I was in middle school, I absolutely loved the fact that I could build playlists using iTunes. When I was feeling happy and excited, there was a playlist for those highs. When I found out something discouraging, or when things didn’t go my way, I had a whole list of RnB songs to correlate the experience.
Regardless, there was a soundtrack for every part of my life.
Now that I am in my late twenties, I use Apple Music in the same way. It’s a habit that I’m faithful to. However, only until recently have I become hyperaware of this seemingly harmless action when I found myself in the middle of a setback.
We’ve all been there before. We are moving through life and our circumstances are relatively positive. Then out of nowhere, or at least seemingly so, something changes externally, or even inside of us, and things seem to fall out of place just enough for our minds and our emotions to become disjointed and unharmonious. We feel as though we’ve taken two steps forward, and three steps backward. Then boom – we have a choice to make. How do we move forward to gain ground again?
Well, I went back to my playlist. I wanted a song that seemed to “suit the situation” and that “spoke to me”. For a little bit more context, this setback was situationally new, but it was not personally novel. It was one of those things that I could see coming if I was truly paying attention.
I scrolled through my songs and tried to find something to conveniently match my emotions that seemed to spew all over the place. When I listened to two or three songs, something inside was dissatisfied. Although I felt like the songs could speak to my situation, there was something so stale about replaying a tune that I was familiar with.
Before I move on, I want to share some insight about the truth behind how music, our memories, and our emotions are connected. In a minireview from the BMC Neuroscience, I found an interesting study that validates that strong sense of connection we might feel when we play our favorite songs.
“Autobiographical information associated with musical melodies is evoked when we hear relevant music or when we are engaged in conversation about music or episodes and events in our life in which music has been important. Hearing music associated with our past often evokes a strong ‘feeling of knowing’” (Jäncke, 2008).
What this means is, the information that we hold true about ourselves is connected to the music we listen to, or conversations we have, based upon the events we’ve experienced. When we feel nostaglic after playing a song that we are familiar with, we grasp a sense of “knowing”.
But the question is, is what we know what we really need to know?
I believe the convenience of being able to rewind or replay a song is the same way we sometimes deal with our lives. To some, having the ability, or the perceived ability, to be able to control the beat, the pentameter, the context, and the lyrics repeated for the episodes in our lives may actually be detrimental to our relative progress – emotionally, mentally, and most of all, spiritually.
My overall feeling of dissatisfaction after playing my favorite song pointed to the disheartening reality of my current setback and its origin. Did the setback come by random chance, or had my habit of replaying the same song with the expectation to see new results yield this setback? Was the setback new, or had my general orientation to look backwards hindered my ability to move forward?
What happens when our favorite song, or the way we’ve been used to doing things, contributes to emotional and mental ruts that result in spiritual stagnation?
Could our favorite songs be holding us back when it’s time for an epiphany?
Press Pause.
Something about this setback made me stop in my tracks, no pun intended.
Have you ever felt the notion that if you continue in the way that you are going, you may or may not have the chance to alter the path that you’re on? A side note: it is always interesting to me when we discuss our faith, particularly, when we talk about God’s grace and what Jesus afforded us by dying on the cross, we often dissuade ourselves out of the reality of the finality of our decisions… as if our choices are automatically void of consequence (Galatians 6:7-8).
Through this situation, I had the overwhelming feeling that I needed to stop everything and listen to what the Holy Spirit was saying to me. I felt a struggle inside of me that I was not fully convinced I was going to win on my own. So, I had to surrender, and press pause on everything.
Hebrews chapter 6 was challenging for me to read. It directly convicted my assumptions. If we call ourselves believers, we must be fully convinced about the certainty of God’s promises in our lives, even when they are unfamiliar to us.
Verses 4 – 8 ( I suggest reading these before you go to the next section) got at the notion that once we have been made aware of the Lord and the goodness of who He is, it is actually impossible for us to fall away without disgracing Jesus’s sacrifice. And the way we do this is by receiving God’s blessings through His Word, yet contrarily producing a failed crop that is worthless or useless. And by failed crops, it is my understanding that this is failed spiritual fruits that do not honor the knowledge we have of Him.
Verse 9 goes on to say, “even though we speak like this, dear friends, we are convinced of better things in your case – the things that have to do with salvation.”
When we are fully engaged in our mental and emotional ruts, or our habitual way of doing things, we run the risk of yielding useless spiritual fruit. Verse 9 is encouraging us to pause, and to remember the higher things that are associated with our salvation. This verse reminded me that stopping and acknowledging my “routine blindness” is necessary. Often our familiar thoughts, the situations, and even the people we allow ourselves to become accustomed to may distract us from our heavenly promise of salvation if they don’t fall in line with that promise - not just when we get to Heaven, but especially the freedom we have here on Earth to live our lives.
We must continue to look forward, even when it is unfamiliar to us, but if we don’t, we may continue to be bound.
Read the Lyrics.
To begin, here is an interesting quote from our study:
“Emotional music we have heard at specific periods of our life is strongly linked to our autobiographical memory and thus is closely involved in forming our view about our own self.” (Jäncke, 2008).
We have the unique ability to form thoughts about ourselves based upon the lyrics we repeat.
Here goes the truth of the matter for me. I love a great RnB song, and I honestly think I am a hopeless romantic as some of us like to hide. While I tend to stay on this side of music, many of my close friends understand that I am also a rap enthusiast, and I will quote a song at any given moment that I feel fits a situation.
As a twenty-something year old person, I will be honest and say I cringe when I hear how damaging some of these songs can be to my psyche and to my own personal development because of what is repeatedly being said. If I’m honest, some days I subscribe to this notion, and I am aware of what I’m listening to, and other days, I just want to vibe out to the beat.
I relate this habit to consistently replaying my own thoughts and routinely making the same assumptions because of the comfort in my own perspective.
In our heads, this may sound like, “I know this situation isn’t the best, but it’s not too bad… I mean it’s basically harmless. I’ll pay attention to it when I have to.”
I’ll raise my hand to attest that I’ve thought this way on several different occasions.
It may occur when I find myself judging someone although I know I don’t have all the details, but I feel entitled to my opinions anyways.
It may show up when I know I should be more devoted or diligent, but being comfortable is something I feel like I deserve, and I will work towards it when I feel like I really need to.
Finally, it may be knowing a relationship is causing me pain, but I hold onto it anyway because I am hopeful it will change, even when I have evidence over time of the opposite.
My point here is just as we listen and reengage with songs that we love, depending on what those songs are saying, we may be running the risk of coming to conclusions about ourselves and situations that have no merit or truth in them. The thoughts that we repeatedly engage with may tell us something about ourselves, but if we are not critical, we may miss the meaning of those thoughts and our associated actions which could result in setbacks.
I found verse 11 to be painfully compelling to remain aware and careful – “We want each of you to show this same diligence to the very end, so that what you hope for may be fully realized.”
Although comfortability and familiarity feel nice and controllable, it may cost us the experience of promises fully realized.
Shuffle.
As I conclude, I don’t want anyone to be discouraged. During this setback, I found out how inspiring it is to be open to new possibilities and ways of doing things.
The interesting fact about human nature is while we are creatures of habit, our ability to adapt and to make changes is often superhuman, in my opinion.
Our article lifts the point that “music automatically awakes us, arouses us and engenders specific emotions in us, which in turn modulates and controls many cognitive functions”. (Jäncke, 2008).
This means that music has great potential to enhance the quality of our lives.
The main point that we should be privy to is, while music can enhance, our choice in music, or our choices in our lives, have an even greater impact. And this is my main reason for allowing the Holy Spirit to shuffle my playlist in the middle of my setback.
Hebrews 6:12 tells us, “We do not want you to become lazy, but to imitate those who through faith and patience inherit what has been promised.”
Have you ever been on Pandora or Spotify and they throw in a suggested song to add to your que? I find myself generally being annoyed by this not because the song doesn’t fit well, but because it wasn’t my choice, and who really wants to be open to something new? Due to my genuine affinity to remain habitual in my thinking, allowing the Holy Spirit the space to help me form my thoughts during my day, about myself, and about what I’m facing will make all the difference simply because they are not my original thoughts or perspectives. Even though He may choose a song that does not align with my own taste, because of faith and what I’ve seen it do in the lives of other believers, I have more hope that everything will work out just fine in the end, even if I can’t see it right now.
Give God the trust to shuffle your playlist so that new outcomes can manifest and so that you can fully experience what’s been promised unawares to you.
Sources Cited
Jäncke L. Music, memory and emotion. J Biol. 2008 Aug 8;7(6):21. doi: 10.1186/jbiol82. PMID: 18710596; PMCID: PMC2776393.