ReformedInSweden
Puritan Board Freshman
I've a question for you! I just read the thread "I'm EP", which wasn't a very big deal for the person who had come to the conviction of EP. Just skipping the hymns and singing only the psalms basically.
But what would you do if you came to the conviction of being EP, while living in a country where metrical psalms simply do not exist at all? Where no one has ever heard of EP? Where no one has even ever heard of this phenomenon of singing the psalms from the Bible? Where the word "psalm" means "hymn"? Where the words "book of psalms" would be interpreted as "hymnal"?
I myself namely became convicted that singing the psalms was the only right thing to do in worship years back. This, together with other Calvinist doctrines, made me end up entirely alone with no church at all for years, because there didn't exist any reformed church in Sweden back then. After some years I just had to go back to the Lutheran church because I was in a miserable spiritual state.
Recently I found a tiny baptist congregation reasonably close to where I live, which I consider to be a true gift from heaven. It's the only one of it's kind in Sweden. Now I can hear the doctrines of grace in the sermons! I don't have to go to a Lutheran church any more! (There's also a Presbyterian congregation many hours away. That's the only one in Sweden. And that's it when it comes to reformed churches.)
But singing the psalms? It just doesn't exist here....
But what would you do if you came to the conviction of being EP, while living in a country where metrical psalms simply do not exist at all? Where no one has ever heard of EP? Where no one has even ever heard of this phenomenon of singing the psalms from the Bible? Where the word "psalm" means "hymn"? Where the words "book of psalms" would be interpreted as "hymnal"?
I myself namely became convicted that singing the psalms was the only right thing to do in worship years back. This, together with other Calvinist doctrines, made me end up entirely alone with no church at all for years, because there didn't exist any reformed church in Sweden back then. After some years I just had to go back to the Lutheran church because I was in a miserable spiritual state.
Recently I found a tiny baptist congregation reasonably close to where I live, which I consider to be a true gift from heaven. It's the only one of it's kind in Sweden. Now I can hear the doctrines of grace in the sermons! I don't have to go to a Lutheran church any more! (There's also a Presbyterian congregation many hours away. That's the only one in Sweden. And that's it when it comes to reformed churches.)
But singing the psalms? It just doesn't exist here....