Have You Lost Your Song?

INTRO.- Have you lost your song? Have you lost your ability to sing? Or it may be that you never had it in the first place. Have you lost your enthusiasm for living? Have you lost your joy for living?

ILL.- Listen to the story about Chippie the parakeet. A Texas newspaper carried this story one time.

A Galveston housewife had a pet parakeet named Chippie. The woman, however, made some terrible mistakes with Chippie. There are just some things that you don’t do with parakeets!

While vacuuming the carpet one day, she decided to clean out of the bottom of Chippie’s cage with her vacuum. MISTAKE NUMBER ONE.

The phone rang and she turned to answer the phone with turning off her vacuum cleaner. YOU GUESSED IT. Sssssp! Chippie got sucked through the tube and into the canister. MISTAKE NUMBER TWO.

She dropped the phone, shut off the vacuum cleaner, and opened the canister. There was Chippie – feathers ruffled, dirt all over his little body. He was stunned but alive. She rushed into the bathroom, BIRD IN HAND. MISTAKE NUMBER THREE. She held Chippie under the faucet and turned it on full blast.

Then she spotted the hair dryer. MISTAKE NUMBER FOUR. She turned it to “hot” and “high.” The blast of hot air did the trick, but it nearly finished poor Chippie.

The next day a reporter called back to check on the bird. “How’s your poor parakeet?” he asked. She said, “Well, Chippie doesn’t sing any more. HE JUST SORT OF SITS THERE AND STARES.”

Is that you? Can you relate to Chippie? Perhaps you feel as though you’ve had your cage vacuumed. You’ve been sucked the dirt bag of life, stuck under the faucet, and hit with a blast of hot air. And you don’t sing much anymore. You just sort sit there and stare!

As we all know, life doesn’t always deal us a good hand. In fact, there are times when it’s downright horrible. Still, we must learn to sing. We can sing in life.

Acts 16:25 “About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them.”

Get the picture. Paul and Silas were thrown into jail because of their faith in Christ. THEY WERE IN A DARK, DIRTY, DUNGEON-LIKE JAIL, BUT THEY WERE SINGING! They hadn’t lost their song like so many of us.

God wants us to sing! God wants to experience life to its fullest!

John 10:10 “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”

Phil. 4:4 “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: REJOICE!”

ILL.- Hank Williams used to sing the line “I was born to boogie.” I know about this boogie business, but I do know that God wants us to sing!

No doubt about it. God wants us to sing! God wants us to experience greater joy and fullness in life!

PROP.- I would like for us to consider what causes us to lose our song and how we can get it back.

1- Song stealers

2- Song producers

I. SONG STEALERS

- Complaining

Phil. 2:14-15 “Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe.”

The only way I know how to shine like stars in this crooked world is by not being a chronic complainer! Complaining does not draw people to Christ. It pushes them away. Chronic complainers do little good in this world.

ILL.- Take, for example, Jerry Falwell. I think Jerry does a lot of good in this world by preaching the Gospel of Christ. At the same time, he makes a lot of people mad by always fighting against this and that: the Civil Liberties Union, The Gay movement, etc.

I believe that he is right about these issues. I’m on his side but to the unbelieving world he often presents himself as a chronic complainer. And I’m not convinced this is the best way to win people to Christ. However, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. He may be right and I may be wrong.

I just believe that you catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar.

God never meant for His people to be a bunch of chronic complainers and gripers. Such people are song stealers. They steal the joy right out of people. Out of themselves and out of others.

ILL.- Preacher Marvin Phillips tells about riding on a plane one time with an elderly couple seated next to him. They were talking louder than they realized and the wife was complaining, “I don’t like riding on these airplanes. Folks get on them with guns and knives and they take you places you don’t want to go.”