The Importance of Music Principles

From a Parents Perspective

For many years I have wanted to encourage others in the search for God's will in the area of music.

One day in quiet time I was impressed, I believe, by God to start a ministry called Tuning the Heart. This was the beginning of the fulfillment of a lifelong dream to use the music talent and knowledge that God had taught me over the years to encourage others. It is not an easy assignment! For some reason we humans tend to get very emotional and irrational when we discuss our music. Music is so much an expression of what we feel and how we identify our selves.

So let me begin with my testimony.

As a very young child I loved music! It was a vital part of my early memories. I loved to sing so much that I remember being told to be quiet. I loved to listen to my father's records and sang along. I would lie outside on the grass and compose symphonies while watching the clouds blow by. But as I grew older I became infatuated with a different sound that came to the music in my world.

The sixties brought in the drums and guitars, the long hair and rebellion that appealed to the fallen heart of a generation of young teens.

Somehow I knew that there was something in all those new sounds that was wrong. But it appealed very strongly to the developing adult within. I tried to listen with my friends and even once to dance with them. But I ended up leaving the party feeling so lonely and guilty.

I heard the adults in the church around me say “rock 'n roll” was wrong and of the devil. Some even said that the guitar was an instrument of the devil. But no one told me why. No one gave me information to base a decision on. I chose to be a Christian at the age of 15 but did not really have a principle to base my music choices on except other peoples' opinions.

As time passed the sounds we were told were “from the devil” came into the church and were mixed with the music of praise and worship. This creeping compromise affected my sensibilities so that I was singing and listening to things that before I would have rejected.

Then God sent me light that has blessed me with a solid understanding of right and wrong in music.

My husband and I attended a seminar at Andrews University on the Language of Music by Wolfgang Stefani. He never told us that one kind of music was right or wrong. He just led us to recognize what music was saying. We made our own choices about what was right and wrong for worship, church and our own personal lives.

I will not here explain those principles because those lectures are or will be available to you to listen to on this website.

But this information gave me solid ground to plant my feet on in the decision making process and I began to throw out music from my collection that did not fit the principles of righteousness.

This experience and knowledge gave me tools for helping my own teens through the maze of music that was getting worse and worse.

You, dear reader have even more challenges to face as Satan has brought in a flood of hypnotic music into our church. The common fires of the world are burning in almost every sacred service in our land.

You must choose for yourself.

May God help you as you seek to Tune your Heart for Heaven!

Sheila Cameron

“Every true child of God will be sifted as wheat, and in the sifting process every cherished pleasure which diverts the mind from God must be sacrificed.” Maranatha p.48

Come Thou Fount of Evey Blessing. Tune My Heart To Sing Thy Praise!