Songs will transform your family’s faith

Parenting has a way of exposing your blind spots. Recently, during GCSE season with my eldest daughter, I found myself wondering whether I’d done enough to pass on biblical wisdom to my children. It wasn’t a profound theological discussion that prompted the question, but a surprisingly simple one.

While recalling the answers she’d given in her Religious Education exam, my daughter sought reassurance that the phrase “Don’t judge a book by its cover” was in the Bible. Unfortunately, I had to break the news that it isn’t a direct biblical quote. Her dad and I exchanged nervous laughs while simultaneously panicking, not only because her Bible knowledge wasn’t quite what we’d hoped, but because she’d almost certainly lost a few marks on that question.

Moses was instructed to teach God’s people a song so that they would remember His covenant faithfulness

That conversation made me think about my own biblical knowledge as a child. Much of my understanding of God was shaped not only by Bible stories and church services, but by songs. Even if much of it didn’t make sense to me at the time. At the age of five I didn’t quite understand what it meant to have a flag flying high from the castle of my heart because the King was in residence there. Then there was Psalty’s music. A friend and I still laugh together as we sing Psalty songs to each other, if you know you know!

Only a few weeks ago in church, the pastor referred to the words “El Shaddai”, which means God Almighty in Hebrew. Instantly, the lyrics of Amy Grant’s El Shaddai came flooding back to me. Hearing those words transported me back to my early years, when my parents would often play a tape in the car that included this song. I didn’t understand the words at the time, especially the Hebrew ones, but those truths had quietly taken root. Songs I’d learned decades before had taught me more Scripture than I realised. Maybe my issue wasn’t simply whether my daughter knew the right answer in her exam, but whether I had helped God’s truth take root deeply enough in her memory.

Music isn’t simply an accompaniment to faith; it is one of God’s chosen means of preserving it

Later that week, I was explaining to my two youngest children that, as Christians, we are children of Abraham, numbered among the descendants promised to him in Genesis. As I was doing so, I burst into a rendition of Father Abraham, Has Many Sons, complete with actions and all, to help them better understand the outworking of that promise. That song had helped me to grasp the truth that I was one of Abraham’s many descendants, a child of God, part of the true Israel.

In many ways, this is exactly how God chose to teach His people throughout Scripture. Moses was instructed to teach God’s people a song so that they would remember His covenant faithfulness (Deuteronomy 31:19–22). The Psalms likewise became a living curriculum through which generations learned theology, history, lament, and worship. Music wasn’t simply an accompaniment to faith; it was one of God’s chosen means of preserving it.

If God has always used song to teach theology and express faith, perhaps we should be more open to the power of music to teach our children today.

This pattern continued in the New Testament, where singing remained a means of teaching, encouragement, and spiritual formation. Paul encouraged believers to “teach and admonish one another in all wisdom” through “psalms and hymns and spiritual songs” (Colossians 3:16).

These powerful mnemonic devices to aid memory and recall were not limited to the scriptural age. I’m Irish, and as such I come from a rich heritage of storytelling through song. For centuries, songs preserved history, language, folklore, and community identity, particularly when access to formal education or written records was limited. Music became a powerful tool for transmitting knowledge from one generation to the next. Indeed, songs were often a more reliable source of truth, Frank Harte, a traditional Irish singer, once said, “Those in power write the history, while those who suffer write the songs.”

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If songs can preserve a nation’s history, it should not surprise us that they can also preserve biblical truth in the hearts and minds of the singers. If God has always used song to teach theology and express faith, perhaps we should be more open to the power of music to teach our children today.

I’m seeing this play out with my younger children right now. They attend a primary school where hymn singing is part of the weekly curriculum. From time to time, I hear my seven-year-old singing biblical truths he has learned at school, and I’m reminded of the role music can play in shaping faith and memory.

I also have a friend who is a primary school teacher. He uses musical pedagogy to help embed times tables and key mathematical principles into the minds of his primary four pupils, as well as in those of many others through his YouTube channel. Mr Mercer shared, “We know that children learn best through rhyme and repetition, and they do it at a much quicker rate than adults. Years after learning my maths songs, teachers in the higher grades tell me that even those pupils who struggle with mathematical concepts can rhyme off their times tables by singing the songs we did together.” Listening to him, I couldn’t help wondering whether as Christian parents and as the Church, we’ve overlooked the place of music in teaching and discipleship. If children can remember mathematical formulas through song years later, how much more might they remember Scripture set to music?

every time we sing God’s truth with them or play it over them, we may be planting seeds that will bear fruit for years to come

Looking back, I feel like I started out so well with my first child. The Praise Baby collection and Michael Card’s Sleep Sound in Jesus formed the soundtrack to her earliest years. Slugs & Bugs featured heavily on car journeys in the toddler years that followed. Somewhere along the way, however, I suspect I became less intentional. Perhaps my daughter’s GCSE answer revealed a gap in her biblical knowledge. But it also reminded me that faith is often formed in quieter ways than we realise.

Long after sermons are forgotten and Sunday school lessons fade, songs remain. They lodge themselves in our memories, resurface decades later, and carry truth into our hearts. As parents, we may worry that we haven’t taught our children enough, but every time we sing God’s truth with them or play it over them, we may be planting seeds that will bear fruit for years to come.