Episode Transcript
Welcome to the Neuma Church podcast, wherever you are in the world, we're so glad you've joined us.
Our prayer is that this message will reveal more of who our Heavenly Father is as we all grow deeper in intimacy with Jesus.
Enjoy the message.
Amen, amen, amen.
He is so good.
I have the absolute privilege today of sharing on the topic of worship.
And I want to share with you the power of your song.
It's the title of my message, the power of your song.
And as I was prepping this message, I was reminded of a time in my own life.
I was in my 20s.
I was a touring Christian artist at that time.
And I got very, very sick.
And I was told by the doctors that I probably wouldn't sing again.
I would probably not even be able to.
I remember the doctor actually saying, "You will never sing again, let alone have… You will have trouble leaving your own house."
I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia.
I had nodules on my vocal folds.
And the promise that I'd believe the Lord had given me as a child to sing and to worship, I really thought that was it, that I'd kind of missed it or I'd done something wrong.
Have you ever had things happen in your life and when they happen, you just go, "Must be me.
I've done something wrong."
I kind of went to that space.
And God was so kind in that time because even though I couldn't serve Him, give Him glory, even though I couldn't do the things I thought would make Him proud of me, I actually felt His love and His blessing in a way that I'd never experienced before.
And I couldn't understand it.
And I remember the Lord saying to me during that time, "It's not because of anything you do, Roma, that I love you and I cherish you.
It's because you're my child that I love you and I cherish you."
And it was a real step of faith to pull myself out of that place and believe that the Lord had called me to sing for Him because everything in my body, everything in my energy levels just wasn't letting me do what I felt was in my heart.
And during that time, I had a very incredible encounter with the Lord.
And I started to little by little just step out in faith.
And there was one time where He asked me, "I got invited to sing somewhere."
And with fear and trembling, I'm not joking.
I went and said, "Yes, not knowing how I was going to sing well, how I was going to go with my energy levels."
And of course, you can imagine too, there was a lot of anxiety.
I started to have panic attacks because I didn't know what my body was going to cope with.
The thought of not just let alone going out somewhere, but being on a platform was quite terrorizing to me.
But I knew that I could trust the word of the Lord and the promises that He'd made over my life.
And I remember getting up to sing this song at our church.
And it's a song that you may not have heard of this artist, Twyla Paris was her name.
So anyone who Twyla Paris is, "You have a few people, you're my age probably."
But here we go.
It was "Backing Track Era."
So I took my Backing Track to church and I sang this song in the midst of that time.
And these were the lyrics.
This is no time for fear.
This is a time for faith and determination.
Don't lose the vision here.
Carried away by the motion.
Hold on to all that you hide in your heart.
There is one thing that has always been true.
It holds the world together.
And the chorus went like this.
God is in control.
We believe that His children will not be forsaken.
God is in control.
We will choose to remember and never be shaken.
There is no power above or beside Him we know.
Oh, God is in control.
When I think back on that moment of singing those words, even when I didn't feel He was in control and I look back on the decades that I've lived, been able to sing and worship Him totally healthy and whole.
I am thankful to the Lord for times of worship.
And I want to say to you today that there is power in your song.
No matter what you are going through, the solution is to lift your eyes to heaven and worship Him with the sound that comes from your life.
Psalm 118 verse 14 says this, "The Lord is my strength and song and has become the come, my salvation."
I love that strength and song go together.
And I believe that's not an accident that the Scriptures say that because there is something about releasing the song of worship that brings strength not just to our spirit to our bodies.
And I want to unpack that a little bit.
I'm going to share a little bit of meanings of the word song from the word in Hebrew.
And I'm also going to share a little science which I love.
And I never get tired of talking about this.
But I want to unpack that word song in this Scripture.
There's many Hebrew words for song, but in this particular Scripture, the word song is the word Zamar (זָמַר), Z-A-M-A-R.
And I want to break down the meaning of this word.
Now to do that, it's a little bit technical, but it'll make sense as we go.
So the Hebrew language, every letter of the Hebrew language also is its own word.
So that's the cool thing about the Hebrew language is that when you put all the letters together to create a word, every letter also means something.
So let me give you an example.
The letter A-Lef is the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet.
And A-Lef means leader or it means ox.
If you combine letters, so if I combined that letter with the word A-V, which is father, I would get leader of the house.
It means more than just the two meanings, you bring it together.
So there's these rich meanings, all right?
So the word Zamar is a little bit like that.
It has its own meaning, but then it also has three Hebrew letters that make up the word Zamar.
So the word Zamar, we're going to unpack that and then I'm going to unpack the three letters for you.
And if you're anything like me, it's going to make you want to get up and sing, even if you don't think you're a singer.
So let me go through it.
So the word Zamar is made up of three Hebrew words, zayin, z-a-y-i-n, mem, m-e-m, and resh, but first I want to share what Zamar in total actually means.
So you'd think that the word would translate song, right?
But it doesn't.
You know what Zamar means in Hebrew?
It means pruning hook.
It means a sickle.
Now why on earth would the word for song be called a pruning hook?
Well, in ancient Eastern times, they would have a big long piece of wood with a curved blade on the end and that sickle would just cut back and forth and it would cut things away.
It was the modern, the ancient Israel time of a lawnmower basically, right?
So this sickle, as it would move back and forth, the sound it would make would sound like a melody.
It would have a tone to it.
So that's why the word song is synonymous with a pruning hook.
But here's the cool thing about that because the Hebrews were smart.
They would create word pictures by things that they said.
So what does it mean when it says the Lord is my strength and my song, the Lord is my strength and my pruning hook?
What it means is when I sing the song of the Lord, it cuts away the dead things in my life.
It gets rid of all the stuff that I don't need anymore and there's a song about it when I do it.
So as you worship Him, what you're actually doing is you're getting rid of all the dead things in your life, amen?
Isn't that cool?
It's so powerful.
I just love this idea that the song is all about cutting away the dead things and that's why in that scripture it talks about He is my strength and my song because there's such a strength, isn't there, when all the dead stuff is gone?
And so when you sing this song of worship, you're singing a song of victory.
You're singing a song that declares the Lord has got rid of all the junk.
And here I am in victory, singing a good thing even in a troubled time.
So friends, I want to ask you what's something in your life that has died?
Maybe you feel a little dry like that wheat that grows up or that grass that grows up that no longer has life in it.
I want to say to you it's time to cut away the dead things with the song on your lips.
Worship does that for you.
Worship gets rid of the dead stuff.
It causes us to surrender.
And the pruning hook of the sound of the Lord will make new life spring forth in your life again, amen?
Now let's break down the three words that make up Zamar.
Zayin, mem and resh.
Let's start with Zayin.
Zayin looks like a sword.
If you actually look at the final letter of the word there, that's what we're going to there.
That Zayin is the last letter of that word.
It actually looks like a sword and it actually means a sword.
Your worship is a weapon.
You know the sages used to say that Zayin, like I said, cuts away all the things that are really unimportant and only leaves, which is important.
And that makes sense when you think about the sword, doesn't it?
And that sword is fighting for you.
The song in your mouth is a battle strategy.
It is something that confuses the enemy.
It actually doesn't make sense, does it, to sing God is in control when everything is going crazy.
But there's something that happens in the spirit realm when we choose to turn our eyes to Jesus and not look at all the stuff that is going on around us.
It's hard.
I'm not going to lie.
Maybe you come to church sometimes even and go, I am just so not here.
I've got so much going on on my mind.
Have you ever done this?
You're like, in worship and you're like, I've got to turn the roast on when I get home.
I've got two loads of, maybe only the girls do this.
But no, I'm sure the guys do too.
You're thinking about all the stuff you've got to do when you leave and we get a bit distracted.
What would happen if we were more intentional, we focused our eyes on the worship.
We focused our heart on the Lord.
I actually think there's something to be said about intentionality.
And I'm going to tell you, I have fallen in this trap myself where I'm just looking at the screen.
I'm looking at the words.
I'm singing away.
And by the end, the song's done.
And it's like, sometimes when you're driving and you get to a place and you don't know how you got there, you know, that feeling.
Sometimes it's a little bit like that.
What would happen if we became even more intentional with the sound that is on our lips?
What would happen if we said, I'm turning my eyes and my ears away from the troubles that are carrying me, that are filling my mind.
I am just going to worship you.
You know, it is actually the solution.
The stuff gets cut away.
The solution comes because you're cutting away the dead things with that sword that is your song.
The second letter is "mem," "water."
I love this because this word represents water, but it also represents the revealed knowledge of God.
What does this mean?
Well, let's think about it for a moment.
When you dive into the sea or you dive into a swimming pool, you don't just get a little bit wet, do you?
You don't go, my fingers are just getting wet.
You are totally immersed in the water, so much so that it's going into the pores of your skin.
I said in the first service, "Peninsula hot springs," that's what I think of.
You get in and all the minerals go into your body, you start to feel like you absorb what is in the water.
So when you sing the "mem" in worship, when you sing that song, what's happening is you are singing a song that surrounds you, completely immerses you with the revealed knowledge of God.
If you don't know who God is, if you feel far from Him, if you feel like I don't feel Him, I don't experience Him, you start to worship and you watch what will happen.
You will start to feel submerged in His presence.
You will start to feel the thickness of His glory if you will linger and you will stay in that place.
It's 13 years ago now, but we were trying for a child for a very long time, seven years with our second child, Asa.
It was a hard time.
We were told by the doctors, you might have heard me say this before, we had a 1% chance of falling pregnant with fertility treatment, we were told.
And I remember during that time, I didn't know what to do.
A doctor couldn't fix it, nothing could fix it.
So what did I do?
I had this song that I would just put on repeat.
I don't know if you know this song, I was like, "I believe you're my healer.
I believe you're more than enough for me.
Jesus, you're all I need."
One day I would play that song from beginning to end, just on repeat, nonstop.
You know, something happened to me as I was playing that song and worshipping to that song.
Something happened to me.
I started to not feel despair.
I started to feel hope.
I started to feel like God was going to work a miracle.
And I remember having some friends over for dinner.
And I remember saying to them, "You know, it's so weird, but even though I'm not pregnant, I can see this child.
I feel like they exist.
I know that they're alive.
I feel like they have a personality."
And I remember as that was coming out of my mouth, I didn't even understand what I was saying, but it was true.
I felt like I knew this person.
That person sitting in the second row right now, and his name is Asa, and he's going to die of embarrassment that I've embarrassed him, but it was the worship that saved me, worshipping the Lord against everything that was coming against me.
I was immersed like that mem.
I became submerged in the revealed knowledge of God to the point where the natural didn't make sense anymore.
Only the supernatural made sense.
And I want to say to you, when you offer up your worship to him, he, I promise you, he will surround you with his love.
He will submerge you.
He will immerse you with everything that he is.
He will do it.
I have absolute confidence.
And if you weighed in the water just a little longer, you will experience the fullness of Jesus as you worship.
He will soak into your skin and he'll bring that refreshment to you.
Amen?
The final letter of the word Zamar is resh.
And I love this word.
It means the conviction of the Holy Spirit.
Wow.
Isn't that powerful?
The Resh is the convicting power of the Holy Spirit.
What does that mean?
He enlightens us to the things that need to be cut away.
Sometimes we don't know what needs to go.
We're holding on to things because they have a certain value or a memory to us.
We don't realize that they're dead.
But the convicting power of the Holy Spirit will remind you and say, "Hey, it's time to let that thing go."
I have a moment and I shared this in the first service where this happened to me.
And that was when we had that beautiful time at Neuma City where the Lord just, we encountered the Lord.
If you don't know the story, it was maybe two and a half, three years ago.
I think we'd had four services to go through.
The first service came and went.
We left and halfway through the second service, I was doing my coals shopping for the kids' school lunches.
And I got a call from someone going, "Roma, you have to get back here.
God is doing something."
And so we just dumped the groceries on the kitchen bench, even the frozen stuff.
We just left it there because we're like, "We don't want to miss what God is doing."
And when we went into the church, this was a 12-hour meeting.
It went from 9 p.m. in the morning to 9 a.m. in the morning to 9 p.m. at night.
And when I normally hear people talk like that, I think that's the most scariest thing in the world.
Like, I'll be honest.
When someone goes, "We had a six-hour meeting," I'm like, "Really?
Glad I wasn't there."
I'm being honest, right?
I'm just like, "What did you do for six hours?
Well, now I get it."
That service went like that.
And we were, it was quiet.
We were on our faces.
We were weeping before the Lord.
And I felt the convicting power of the Holy Spirit in that moment.
I remember feeling, "Lord, I'm so sorry that I thought those things about myself.
I'm sorry, Lord, that I thought that towards another person.
I started to ask the Lord to forgive me of things."
And it was really, it was taking me by surprise.
I don't know how I was to explain it.
It's not what I expected.
And I realize it's because as we worship Him, as we give Him glory, as our lives are an offering to Him, the convicting power of the Holy Spirit will rush in and we'll go, "Hey, hey, Roma.
That little thing that you think sometimes.
Do you think that's really true?"
That person, do you realize you've got unforgiveness towards them?
What are you going to do about that?
That's what the convicting power of the Holy Spirit does.
And so this song, this song is a song of repentance as you worship Him.
And repentance isn't a scary word.
Repentance, you know the thing that really shocked me about that season?
And to be honest, it hasn't ever left me.
I feel like I'm sort of still in that space.
It was such a joy to be convicted by the Holy Spirit.
It felt so good.
It feels so good.
It doesn't feel like guilt or shame.
It's like the Lord going, "Hey, if you just get rid of this, you are going to be set free."
And I'm believing the Lord is going to do the same as you worship Him, not just today, not just in a service, but in your lives as we turn away from our sins, as we turn away from the things that keep us from seeing what is really important to us.
And we just see the Father for who He really is.
This is what worship should do.
It should change our hearts.
It should change us.
And I really believe that as we sing that song, that is what is going to happen.
It cuts away the dead things and leaves what really matters, the zay in.
This surrounds and covers you with the revealed knowledge of God.
That's the Mem.
It brings a conviction and a repentance and requires us to live lives of purity.
That's the rush.
And my friends, God created you.
He designed you to release that sound as you worship Him.
It's not just about a song.
It's about a life of worship.
And I want to tell you something.
There is a song that is unique to you.
I have lots of people say to me, "Oh, I'm not a worshipper.
I can't sing."
And I always think of that command in Scripture that says, "Sing to the Lord a new song only if you have a good voice."
It doesn't say that, does it?
It says, "Sing to the Lord a new song."
And you know, when we don't understand the Scripture, we can think that that means God is demanding our worship.
But the Lord is so incredible.
He is such a good Father.
And He knows that as you worship Him, it will also do something in you.
It takes the blinders off.
It draws us closer to Him.
And there is a sound that if you don't release it, something is missing on the earth.
How do I know that?
I'm not just making that up.
Do you want me to share something with you?
Well, you have to say yes because I'm the one with the mic, right?
But there is actually, science is actually proving this to be true.
This is the wildest study that is going to blow your mind if you haven't heard about this.
So in 1986, there was a geneticist and a biologist called Susumo Ono.
And he started to look at DNA sequences.
So there are four, what they call nuclear tides in DNA that have their own numbers and sequences.
So it's just like if you looked at it on paper, when it translates to numbers, it's just a whole bunch of numbers.
And everyone has, as you know, their own DNA, it's unique like your fingerprint.
So it's just a series of four sets of numbers, right?
So he started to think about music and he started to think about, well, music is mathematical, right?
So if you're a musician here, if you've studied music, you'll know this.
You can do a chord progression that might be C, G, F, but you can actually also do it like a mathematical equation.
So a C is a one, a G is a five, an F is a four, right?
And some musicians, that's how they think.
I was saying in the first service that I used to be in a band where the bass player, that's how he would always call out the chords and I hated it.
I'd be like, what's the chords?
It'd go one, five, four, and I'd, can you just tell me the flippin' chords?
I don't, my brain can't work like that because my brain's not a maths kind of brain, right?
But that's actually what happens.
Music is mathematical.
So this geneticist decided I'm going to translate this series of DNA sequences and I'm going to translate it into musical notation and see what comes out.
And this is what he discovered.
He discovered that the musical notes created a song.
Isn't that incredible?
So he took the DNA of a mouse.
He took a sequence of it and he got Chopin's Nocturne 55 was heard.
He took the cancer cells of a mouse because I don't know if you know this.
When I was studying the research, I discovered this myself.
And that is DNA can change when you have extreme illness in your body, right?
And so cancer aids changes the sound basically of your DNA.
So he took the cancer cell of a mouse and he did the same thing and he got a section of Chopin's funeral march.
Incredible.
I love what this doctor said.
Larry Dossy, a well-known American doctor.
He said when listeners have taken these DNA-based compositions of their own soul, they hear the music of Bach, Brahms, Chopin and other great composers.
These melodies are majestic and inspiring.
Many people hear them for the first time and they're moved to tears.
They cannot believe their bodies, which they believe to be mere collections of chemicals contained such uplifting, inspiring harmonies that were musical.
Isn't that incredible?
Your DNA is a song and it's unique to you.
And when you sing, you're releasing something that no one else can release because it's not about the melody people hear.
It's not about the song that's coming out of your mouth.
It's about a life of worship that is given to the Lord.
You know, I think of it like an orchestra when there's like the timpani and there's the first and second strings.
When you're not singing, there's a piece of the orchestra that is missing.
And as you release that fragrance to the Lord, it's so precious to him.
And he knows it because he made you.
He's searching, I sometimes imagine him just like going like this, like, "Where's that song?
Oh, there's Dom.
Oh, there's Jerry.
I can hear him singing this song."
Now I felt like I had to play you some DNA music so that you could hear it.
Would you like to hear some?
Yeah, because it's pretty cool.
So this is, there are DNA composers around the world, which is pretty incredible.
So I'm going to play you now, the music of a dolphin.
And I want you to, I feel like the music reflects what I'm explaining to you.
See if it sounds like a dolphin to you.
Go for it, babe.
That crazy zap.
I can't believe that's DNA.
Is anyone else amazed by that?
Or is it just me?
I'm still getting excited about it.
All right.
This is the DNA of Swan, which is next.
[MUSIC] All right.
And then this is the music of a human being.
Human DNA is much more complex.
Here you go.
[MUSIC] Sounds like a movie track.
All right.
Thank you, Paolo.
It's amazing.
It is incredible that our lives are a song.
You know, I didn't want to play it in church, but I've also got a sample of someone who had AIDS playing their DNA.
And it's so messy and it's got disharmony in it.
And it sounds all over the place.
And it's really interesting because certain things that I didn't know that DNA could be manipulated by sickness, but it actually can.
And there's actually science that is going on right now where they're experimenting with taking DNA banks.
So they're taking the healthy version of people's DNA.
And people are just storing it for if anything ever happens in the future.
If they get sickness or some sort of disease, they're like, what would happen if we played the healthy DNA over them in times of sickness?
And they're discovering that it is doing, it's like the body realigns itself to its original design when that happens.
Powerful stuff.
This is our God who created this.
This is not some new age thing.
This is science going, wow, we are have an original design.
And you know, I've actually got a friend who tells this story of a friend of his who is a guitarist and he wanted to get his DNA done.
You can pay.
It costs thousands of dollars, but he got his DNA done.
It was so funny the story because this guitarist would always fiddle on his guitar in rehearsals.
And if you've ever been in a rehearsal before, that can be super frustrating because everyone likes to fiddle on their instruments, right?
And he would just play this little riff, just this little thing that he'd always play when he was warming up.
Well, when he got his DNA song back, he wept because that's that riff that he would play all the time was in his song.
It's incredible.
It's incredible stuff.
Now, as I'm saying this, we're coming to a close in a moment, but one of the comments that I get a lot from people is, well, I'm always depressed or I have a really difficult life.
Maybe my song is a sad song.
And I want to say God doesn't create those kind of songs.
There are things that happen in our lives.
There's sickness, there's disease, there's depression, there's things that have happened that can kind of force you into singing a different song with the sound of your life.
Maybe someone's tried to make you something that you're not.
Maybe you believed things about yourself that are simply not true.
I want to tell you, God has created a joyful sound that is meant to be released from you because that is the kind of God he is.
Life might try to rewrite the song.
But if you can lift your head to heaven and worship him, it will change everything.
There's actually a quantum physics theory.
I love all this stuff called the principle of entrainment.
The principle of entrainment basically states that if the strongest vibration in something, if you bring another vibration close to it, so vibration is the frequency of a thing, if you bring another frequency close to it, whatever is the strongest vibration will eventually align itself, it will align itself to that.
So for example, a Dutch scientist developed these beautiful clocks in a Dutch square in the 1700s, I think it was, and he wanted the, what are they called, the time things, the what?
Pendulums, that's a word.
He wanted them to be separate, he wanted them to go like this, but it didn't matter what he did, they would eventually always swing like that.
When you put a stick in the water and it's got a strong current, it's never going to go the other way, it's always going to go whatever the current is, isn't it?
It's an incredible theory that talks about whatever the strongest vibration is.
You know, two twins, they discovered this when twins were born and one was weak and about to die and the other one was strong, they put the weaker twin into the crib and that weaker twin started to get healthier because the stronger frequency, the stronger vibration was in that child and so the other one was healthy.
Well let's think about that idea for a moment in worship.
Maybe you came today and you weren't feeling great.
Maybe you don't want to be here, maybe you don't feel like worshiping, but then you come in, have you ever had this experience and the worship starts and you're like, I'm so glad I'm here, I am so glad I came.
That's the principle of entrainment in action.
The greater vibration is the God vibration.
The greater presence in this room is the Lord and that's why worship is so powerful.
When you're feeling like I just can't get through this day, I can't get through this, I don't know what the solution is Lord.
As you start to worship, you align yourself with the sound of heaven and it changes everything.
Now I've given you a very scientific view of something you probably already know, but I wanted to take a different slant on why worship is so powerful and I want to say to you today, we're going to just spend the next last few minutes of this service, would you worship with me with this new revelation?
Would you worship with me?
And as you do that, let's just pray that the dead things will be cut away as we worship Him.
Let's pray that we'll be immersed in the knowledge of the Lord as we worship Him.
Let's pray that we'll be convicted by the Holy Spirit about whatever it is in our lives that maybe needs to be re-addressed or aligned.
And as we worship Him, the sword that is in our mouth will align ourselves with the sound of heaven.
So why don't you stand with me?
Thank you for joining us.
We hope that you enjoyed today's podcast and we realise that not everyone has had the opportunity to respond to the good news of the gospel.
And for this reason, in all of our services and platforms, we want to extend to you the opportunity to follow Jesus.
The Bible teaches us that we have been created for a relationship with God.
However, sin, which is essentially disobedience, independence and disbelief or are simply missing the mark, entered the world and separated us from God.
Romans 6 verse 23 says that the wages of sin is death.
And a debt was owed and the Bible tells us that he, Jesus, demonstrated his love for us, that while we were still sinners, he died for us.
Jesus paid the penalty for our sin.
John 3 16 says, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
God so loved the world that he gave us Jesus, that whoever believes in him will be saved.
All that is required of anyone is that they believe in Jesus, the Son of God, who came and lived, died and rose again so that we could be forgiven, made right and given the right to become children of God and to have life forevermore with him."
Today you can begin a relationship with Jesus.
To believe in him is to simply to respond with faith in our hearts and confess with our mouths that he is Lord.
And we do that through a simple prayer.
Follow along with me.
Dear Jesus, I believe that you are the Son of God.
I thank you that you love me and came to forgive me of my sin.
I repent from my old way of life and I turn to follow you.
I receive the free gift of eternal life and I ask that you fill me with the Holy Spirit so that I can live a life of following after you.
I thank you that I am born again as a child of God and that I am a new creation in Christ Jesus.
Amen.
If you prayed this prayer for the first time, we would love to connect with you and connect you to your next step and the local church in your area.
You can contact us on our website at neuma.church.
Thanks for listening.
