Something I’ve been doing on and off for years during ‘ministry time’ in gatherings & conferences is, instead of praying for folks, sometimes I simply sing over them, sing scripture, sing what I see or sense in trying to discern what the Holy Spirit is doing at the time.
The effect has been profound.
I got this recent email from one of our translators at the Vineyard Worship conference in Lithuania. There seemed to be many there living under a heavy weight of depression so we invited anyone who could identify with that to come forward and we played and sang over them.
Here’s what Adone said:
I also wanted to share with you an amazing thing that has happened to me. When you guys invited people who feel heaviness inside to come out in order to play worship music over us, I did because I’d been living with it for a long time. I didn’t feel anything particular happening at that time but during the next two days the heaviness that I used to feel gradually left me completely. I used to pray that God would restore the joy I once had but he did something different – he gave me a new joy.
Worship & prophetic music can be a powerful thing. In fact my understand of it’s effect was really helped by something I read on Dave Wainscott blog a while back.
He quoted this.
While searching for the chemical origins of life, Shsumu Onnu found something unexpected: a waltz. Bored with tedious mathematical equations, the geneticist decided to convert chemical formulas for living cells into musical notes. He figured listening to the complex genetic codes, rather than staring at them, would make elusive patterns easier to detect. In the process, Onnu discovered genes…carry a tune. The tunes he found were not just the interesting random notes which other scientists had predicted…Onnu found genuine music…sometimes with an uncanny similarity to the works of great composers.
Translated into sheet music and performed on the piano, a portion of mouse RNA…sounds like a lively waltz. Except for its quicker tempo, parts of the mouse RNA Waltz are dead ringers for passages in Frederick Chopin’s “Nocturnal Opus 55.”
The musical score within a cancer-causing oncogene sounds somber and funereal, while the gene responsible for bestowing transparency on the lens of the eye is filled with trills and flourishes…When Onnu translated a funeral march by Chopin from notes to chemical equations, “entire passages appear identical to a cancer gene found in humans…the same patterns which govern the movement of planets and galaxies also appear in genes and in music.” -Dr. Jill Niemark
