Y’all, some of my favorite music is rap.

Now, I don’t mean rap like regular rap, I mean Christian rap. Because I don’t know about you, but I do not want to hear music about sex, drugs, and filled with profanity every five seconds.

I was recently watching a Forrest Frank video of him performing his song Altar with Christian rapper Hulvey. It had the caption ‘Christian rap is evil???’ and somebody had made a comment on one of Forrest’s previous videos saying that ‘anything with that rap beat is not of God.’ Watch the video below and see if you agree with her.

I’m not here to hate on this person for their comment—but I thought it’d make a great post.

So fun fact:

The sound of the worship is not what defines the worship.

Your worship music can be a rap song praising Jesus, you could be spitting lyrics crazy fast, you could be wearing baggy pants with brand new Nikes—and it’s still worship.

There are a bunch of Christian artists who make music that has gotten criticism because it sounds like ‘secular’ music and has a fire beat, but believe it or not, God isn’t paying attention to the ‘secularness’ sound of it, he’s paying attention to the people, their hearts, and the fact that they are worshipping and loving him.

Worship comes in many forms:

Acts and services, words, sounds, physical forms, and many other ways!

You can worship by serving in your community, you can worship by singing (or rapping 😉), you can worship by exercising.

We shouldn’t be so hasty to judge the sound of other’s worship either! In some churches I’ve been to, I’ve found that I’ve judged their worship because it wasn’t as good as some other churches or that their singers aren’t necessarily Grammy-worthy. But they still mean it from their heart—and that’s what matters the most.

Paul writes this in Colossians 3: “Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts.” (Colossians 3:16 NIV)

He says, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts. He doesn’t say, “You must worship with a finely tuned acoustic guitar and Brandon Lake leading worship.” (Brandon Lake is a really popular Christian singer who is also a worship leader at his church.)

And if you remember, this same dude, Paul, praised God while he was in prison—with just their voices—and it broke the prison walls. (Acts 16:16-40)

Another verse in Isaiah 29 says that ‘These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.’ (Part of Isaiah 29:13 NIV)

If your mouth is praising God, that’s fine. But if your heart isn’t? That’s like lying to the God of the Universe. (Which we have all done at some point, I’m pretty sure.🙃)

So in conclusion?

Your form of worship may come in different ways depending on how you were made, but God isn’t focused on the form, he’s focused on your heart.

Thanks for reading!
~Willow <3