Theology Makes My Heart Sing

I stole the title of this post from an old blog post, a short justification of my love of theology, that I wrote more than eight years ago. When we were in the planning stage of Out of the Ordinary, one of the things we discussed was what kind of posts we wanted to write. It wasn't a difficult question for me to answer; I wanted to write "theology for girls" posts. Eight years on, I still love theology and I want to share that love with you.

As Kim wrote in her previous post, "right living begins with right theology." Fundamentally, this is because so-called "right living" is not right living at all if it is not done for right reasons. It's here in the why of our obedience that theology operates. Theology tells us who God is that we should worship him, and what he's done that we should love him. Learned well, theology grows our love for God, and love spurs our obedience to him. As Jesus said, "If you love me, you will keep my commandments."

If you were to ask me what practical use there is for theology, this is the answer I'd give. Right living begins with right theology; solid theology builds solid women. 

But theology is much more than motivation for right living. It soars above the practical to the doxological; it is down-to-earth—and up-to-heaven, too. The overflow of the love for God that grows from theology learned well is praise. Theology writes the hymnal of the Christian heart. 

I pray that as I study and write my posts, my love for God will grow. I pray that as you read, your love will grow, too. And I pray that our growing love for God will foster growing obedience to him. But most of all, I'm praying that solid theology produces women whose hearts sing!