Eph5:19 speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord;
WHEREVER HE LEADS, I'LL GO.
R.S. Jones was a missionary to Brazil. He came home on furlough and he attended a Sunday school conference in Alabama, in the year 1936. During lunch with a hymn writer, B.B. McKinney, at the conference, he told the hymn writer about his health challenges that may prevent him from returning to Brazil, the country he had grown to love. The hymn writer asked, “What will you do?” And through tears, the missionary, R.S. Jones, told the hymn writer, B.B. McKinney, “Wherever He leads, I’ll go.” B.B. McKinney was so moved that he penned the classic hymn that afternoon and sang it that night after Jones had preached, recounts Terry C. Terry, a musicologist who wrote his doctoral dissertation about McKinney. This hymn has been one of the popular hymns rendered on different occasions.
There are are lessons to learn from the stories that birth most of the hymns we sing today. Spiritual men wrote most of these hymns out of a life that is devoted to God. Our generation often despise hymns because we do not know the power in singing hymns especially the hymns that are bible-based, cross centred and devotional. We often see hymns as outdated and unnecessary in our liturgical proceedings. This is an aspect of orthodoxy and apostolic tradition that we must not jettison. Even Jesus Christ sang a hymn with His disciples in preparation for crucifixion: "When they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives", Mt26:30. It is an apostolic tradition to admonish one another with the lyrics of hymns: 'Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you, with all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God", Col 3:16. We can praise God with hymns like Paul and Silas did: "But about midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns of praise to God, and the prisoners were listening to them",Acts 16:25.
Father, I'll follow you till I see you in glory in Jesus name.