Now then...about me.  I LOVE all different types of music...except for Classical...it usually gives me a literal headache, but then they started playing it on the monitors at school, for some crazy reason it doesn't give me a headache.  Maybe it's just certain types of it or something weird like that...anyway.  My best friend loves it...I take Tylenol or Aspirin with me when I'm at her house...seriously I do.  When I was growing up, I listened to either Southern Gospel music or hymns.  Later on in life, when I was about 17, I started wanting something a little bit harder.  I soon discovered the beauty of Contemporary Christian music and Praise and Worship songs.  As I went through a rough time in my life, I found things even harder than Christian Contemporary.  I got into R&B and the lovey-dovey songs of the '80s and '90s.  When I started going to my church, I met the singles group.  I had gotten back into Contemporary Christian.  It is and always will be my favorite type of music.  I was also battling inside over whether or not R&B and the "lovey-dovey" songs were ok or not.  The reason for that battle was this: I liked that kind of music because sometimes, Christian artists are too busy saying "Praise God, Hallelujah" that they never write about the 15 year-old that just got raped and how she feels...they never write those depressing songs.  I personally feel that God would rather us have a mixture of music that is just a bunch of words saying how much we love and worship Him and music that tells a story and says, "If you're the 15 year-old girl this song's talking about, Jesus loves you."  I went to a friend of mine in the singles group.  She is older than I am and  I respect and love her very much.  She is a model Christian in my mind.  I asked her if she listened to a particular radio station in between listening to her favorite Christian stations.  The radio station I had in mind is a station that plays a lot of the R&B music, love songs, oldies, you name it, they play it.  They even play Christian songs on there.  She said that she did listen to that station.  That pretty much ended my battle with that.  So that's my take on it, any kind of music that has the label Christian in front of it (Christian Rock, Christian Contemporary, Christian Rap, Christian Pop...etc.) is what I like best and what I listen to the most, however, I feel that people shouldn't put down others for listening to Country and other types of music as well. 

 

 

Last I checked, the word shout meant making a really loud noise with your mouth and lungs and voice box.  When you're at a ball game and your team's winning, you're up there going crazy in the stands.  You're shouting till your throat hurts and you go hoarse.  Why?  Because you're happy that your team is winning.  You should be even happier about what God has done, is doing, and is going to do in your life, so why not shout about it...in the middle of church...on the streets to school etc.?  C'mon Christians!!  Let's rock the planet with a great big shout for joy because of what God's done for us.  If someone asks you what's wrong, just look at them and say very excitedly, JESUS IS COMING BACK AND I'M GONNA GET TO GO HOME WITH HIM!!  If they think you're weird, that doesn't matter, if you're a Christian you aren't meant to be "normal".