As we continue our journey into musical maturity, we have to remember something about all such journeys. The beginning of any worthwhile endeavor is always exciting. Whether it is the first day of school compared to a gray, school day three months later, or falling in love compared to faithfulness in a troubled patch of a marriage ten years later, the excitement of joining the army or navy compared to the smoke of battle, in all such endeavors we find high excitement at the beginning and the need for discipline later on.
In religious endeavors, we often mistake this early zeal for the Holy Spirit. Now of course the Spirit is sovereign, and He uses this zeal just as He can use anything else. But initial excitement is something that nonbelievers can have as well as us. In fact, Jesus even considered a particular kind of early zeal without the follow-through as something that was characteristic of non-belief (Mark 4:5).
When as a congregation we first set ourselves to the task of learning how to sing psalms, and how to sing in parts, that kind of excitement was certainly there. The Spirit was also there using it. But the danger lies in thinking that if that initial excitement cannot be sustained (which it cannot be), then no kind of long-term dedication is possible, which is false. There is a kind of love we are to have for God, and for one another, which is fervent constantly (1 Pet. 1:22). This doesn’t run out.
Some of you recall the excitement of singing a new song, on a number of levels. But some others of you have grown up with this, and have never really known anything else. It is sometimes tempting to think you have to go off and do something else in order to have that initial excitement. But that is not how it works—the new song we have been given is new and fresh for you as well.