Prayerful and Authentic Ideas

Paul Baloche emphasizes the importance of drawing ideas from intentional prayer and scripture reading in his Songwriting Youtube series. He points out that most ideas don't actually originate as strictly "song ideas", but rather as thoughts during time with God. For example, his song "Your Name", came about as he and a friend were simply reading scripture and casually playing the guitar and piano. Baloche also highlights the need to memorize scripture. He calls the Psalms the "vocabulary of worship" and stresses the importance of taking those words off the page and letting them dwell in our minds and hearts. 

Prayer and scripture reading are spiritual disciplines. In case the importance of living with discipline in the Christian life isn't clear, the apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 9 that he disciplines his body so that he himself "may not be disqualified from the race". Isn't that something? That even the great apostle Paul was at risk of losing his salvation if he didn't take discipline seriously. In the same way, we be disciplined, particularly in our prayer and scripture reading lives. Meditating on God's Word and communicating with Him should be regular parts of life as we strive for godliness. 

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