We concluded our series called “Mixtape” at Gateway Church in Austin.
Music has always had the power to shape the way we think, feel, and live. Every song does something to us, whether it’s the anthem that defined our teenage years, the breakup ballad that got us through heartache, or the worship song that lifted us closer to God. Lyrics carry messages. Melodies stir emotions. Rhythms embed themselves into our memories. The songs we put on repeat become more than background noise, they become the soundtrack of our lives.
In this series, Mixtape: The Formative Years, we’ll explore how the music around us forms our perspective on life, love, identity, and faith. Some tracks speak lies that pull us away from God’s best, while others point us toward truth, hope, and worship. God invites us to be intentional about the soundtrack we live by. He wants to rewrite the playlist of our lives so that His Word and His presence set the rhythm for our future.
Digging Deeper:
Message Video from Gateway South Austin:
Message Audio from Gateway South Austin:
Message Notes from Carlos Ortiz, Jr.:
Happy Thanksgiving weekend…now we can let the Christmas songs run freely. In our house, Christmas doesn’t truly start until everyone hears me play Mariah Carey’s “All I want for Christmas is you”…on REPEAT!! Isn’t that what happens around this time, songs about joy and Christ, presents and family, they are all on repeat for the next month.
Every generation has its soundtrack. For some, it was the crackle of vinyl spinning Motown harmonies. For others, the unmistakable intro of a 90s ballad that could make a whole room sing on cue. And for many of us, it may have been the songs sung in church—simple, steady hymns that somehow knew how to speak to the human heart in both joy and sorrow.
In this Mixtape Series we have tried to drive home the truth…that music has a profound way of shaping us, sometimes more than we realize. It is, in a sense, one of the earliest spiritual disciplines we practice without even knowing we’re doing it.
Long before you understood theology, you probably understood a melody. Long before you knew the vocabulary of singing as part of worship, you felt something stir when you heard a spiritual song sung by a group of people who believed the words deeply.
We’ve been referring to the words of Paul who writes to the Colossians 3:16 (NIV)
“Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit.
Aligning our hearts to sing with and to each other about the truth of who God is is vital, because…
The truth you and I sing becomes the truth we live.
If music is one of the tools God uses to form His people, then we should pay attention to the soundtrack of our souls.
This week, as we explore the theme What’s On Repeat?, we’re leaning into this idea: The songs we repeat don’t just entertain us, they form us.
Hymns—structured, truth-rich songs about the everlasting character of God and His attributes, that are passed on from generation to generation. These are God’s gift to anchor us in what is real, especially when life gets noisy.
Let’s look at three truths about what we put on repeat.
1. What You Repeat, You Remember
“Repetition isn’t mindless; it’s how the heart learns what the mind forgets.”
– Mother Theresa
4 Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. 6 These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. 7 Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 9 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates. – Deuteronomy 6:4-9
There are two important parts about this particular passage:
First, the beginning part of this passage is called the Shema in Jewish culture. It’s repeated at least twice a day, once in the morning and once before bed, it’s also recited on someone’s death bed. For the Jews this is vital to understanding God and passing on to the next generation.
Second, look how we are supposed to live on repeat: “These commands are to be on our hearts, impress them on children, talk about it at home, when you walk along the road, when you lie down, when you get up, tie them as symbols on your hands, bind them on your foreheads, write them on doorframes, and on your gates.
That short passage tells us to repeat these commands a total of 10 different ways. Repetition is vital to remembering!
Now we do have to be careful to not repeat things from rote memory without meaning or importance. Actually, Matthew chapter 6 warns us against vain repetition, or using a lot of empty words, but it doesn’t downplay the importance of repetition that matters.
There’s a reason certain songs unlock memories we thought were lost. A melody from childhood can instantly transport you back to the backseat of a minivan, staring out the window on long car rides. A chorus from a youth-group retreat can refill a moment with God you had forgotten. Even the first two seconds of a 90s pop song can bring back the smell of your high school gym.
Why?
Because repetition builds memory.
This is how God designed the human mind: what we rehearse becomes what we remember, and what we remember begins to shape who we become.
If you repeat a message long enough, whether consciously or subconsciously, it becomes part of the architecture of your inner life.
If you continually rehearse worry, your mind becomes a sanctuary for anxiety.
If you continually repeat criticism—about yourself or others—your heart becomes fluent in negativity.
If fear is the background noise of your mind, eventually it becomes the background of your life.
But the inverse is also true.
When you repeatedly rehearse truth—peace, hope, the promises of God—those things become the scaffolding that holds you steady.
Paul, in Philippians 4, wasn’t simply giving us a list of things to think about; he was giving us a practice. Think repeatedly about what is true. Think repeatedly about what is noble. Think repeatedly about what is right and pure and excellent. Why? Because truth repeated becomes truth remembered. And truth remembered becomes truth lived.
This is why hymns matter. Why worship matters. Why Scripture songs matter. God built your mind so that whatever you put on repeat sinks deeper than intention—it becomes identity.
We don’t drift into spiritual maturity; we rehearse our way into it.
2. Pay Attention to the Lyrics
I remember someone once saying something like “The stories you listen to eventually become the stories you live.” I don’t remember who said it, but I know they are not my own words, but they still ring true for me, and it points us back to a simple but profound statement about stories and how they shape us.
Romans 10:17 says, “Faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.”
The context for this verse is that the same people of Israel who were repeating the words of God, and whose heritage lived through the stories with God, are now the same people not truly understanding the lyrics of the song they are singing.
So now Jesus comes to the earth, lives his sinless life, is preparing for the cross, and drops the bombshell…this truth, this life, this God is for EVERYONE. And now we’re being told in Romans that faith will grow outside of the Jews and is now inclusive of the Gentiles. We, as gentiles, are to grow our faith as we hear, and that hearing comes from the words of scripture about Christ and what he taught. He’s saying, pay attention to the lyrics!!!
Many of you know that as a kid I was a fan of all types of music. I loved the up and coming genres of hip hop and rap, but I also loved the metal music that was coming up in the shadow of glam rock in the 80s. This one band did it for me, Metallica. I listened to them all the way through high school when the black album hit its peak as one of the best selling albums of all time. After the black album I never purchased another album. So when people would refer to them in subsequent years, I acted like I knew the band and say things like, “I love Metallica…especially the garage band days.” Oh yeah, Lars is the best drummer, James Hetfield’s voice is iconic, but I wasn’t actually listening anymore. I would say things about hip hop artists that I wasn’t listening to anymore. I got stuck on repeat of the old and didn’t incorporate any of the new music.
We do this to God! “Oh yeah, I believe in Jesus. I know the stories, I know the songs, I have a base of theology that will get me by…” but you aren’t living out the wisdom of Proverbs 4…
Proverbs 4:23
“Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.”
What goes in eventually comes out.
This is true of food.
It’s true of thoughts.
It’s true of the content we consume.
And it’s especially true of the messages we hear again and again.
Input = Output.
Every lyric, headline, TikTok, playlist, podcast, and conversation is doing something to you—forming you, shaping how you see the world, how you interpret your life, and what you believe about God and yourself.
You might notice that I quote Tim Keller quite a bit. He was a pastor in NYC, and had a front row seat to loving people who are on the front lines of societal and cultural change. He wouldn’t denounce the culture, but instead wanted people to know that EVERYTHING around us is making an impact on us, if not IN us. They’re all tools of discipleship. They’re telling us what matters, what happiness is, what identity is, what love is, what freedom is.
And because we often have these stories playing in the background, we absorb them without examining them.
Some songs rehearse the story of self—follow your heart, be your own truth, you do you.
Some rehearse the story of despair—nothing lasts, life is random, love always fails.
Some rehearse the story of self-salvation—your worth is in your hustle, your beauty, your performance, your willingness to grind.
And yet Paul tells us in Romans 10 that faith comes from hearing—hearing the story of Christ, hearing the truth of the gospel, hearing the words that re-narrate our world according to God’s reality.
This is why hymns and truth-filled worship matter so deeply. They serve as counter-formation. They give you a different set of lyrics, a different story, a different narrative. When the world is loud, hymns are how the heart remembers what’s real.
Consider what happens when you sing:
“When peace like a river attendeth my way…”
or
“Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father…”
or
“On Christ the solid rock I stand…”
These aren’t just songs. They’re practices of spiritual formation. They are truth set to melody so that your heart can carry it long after your mind forgets it.
Proverbs 4 says, “Guard your heart.” That is not an invitation to fear—it’s an invitation to discernment. Guard what enters your inner life, because your inner life shapes your outer living.
So ask yourself:
What are the lyrics shaping your imagination right now?
Who is narrating your world?
Is your playlist discipling you toward truth or away from it?
3. Keep Truth on Loop
Psalm 40:3
“He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and put their trust in the Lord.”
Psalm 119:105
“Your word is a lamp for my feet and a light for my path.”
We’ve all had songs get stuck in our heads—sometimes welcome, sometimes very unwelcome. The reason is simple: repetition doesn’t stay in your ears; it settles in your heart.
Spiritually, the same thing happens. When you keep God’s truth on loop, when you rehearse His character, promises, and presence, something begins to shift inside you. Not instantly, not magically—but steadily, quietly, formationally.
Hymns were designed with this in mind. They were written to help the church remember what is true across generations. They are theology wrapped in melody, doctrine you can hum.
Psalm 40 says God puts a new song in our mouths.
He doesn’t just give you truth—He gives you truth that can be sung.
Why?
Because what you sing, you keep.
When you put truth on repeat:
Truth on repeat becomes peace in the storm.
Not because the storm disappears, but because your heart becomes anchored in something unshakeable.
Truth on repeat becomes strength in the struggle.
Not because the struggle gets easier, but because your soul becomes more rooted in God’s presence.
Truth on repeat becomes hope when you need it most.
Not because life gets predictable, but because God’s character becomes your foundation.
Psalm 119 tells us God’s word is a lamp. Notice: not a floodlight, not a spotlight, not a full map. A lamp. Enough truth for the next step. Enough light for the next moment. But if that light is not on repeat, if it’s not fed regularly into your heart, you begin walking in the dim light of fear or confusion.
This is why your spiritual playlist matters. Because formation is happening—always. Your mind is meditating on something. Your heart is believing something. Your soul is absorbing something. The question is not whether you are being shaped—but what is shaping you.
So keep the truth on loop. Keep the gospel close. Keep the promises of God loud. Keep the hymns of faith nearby so they can rise in your heart when circumstances fall apart.
BUILD A BETTER PLAYLIST
When Paul tells the Colossians, “Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly,” he’s not giving them a suggestion; he’s giving them a survival strategy.
He’s telling them—and us—
Make sure the loudest thing in your life is the truth of God.
Make sure the dominant soundtrack in your soul is the message of Christ.
Because that message has the power to reshape your imagination, recalibrate your fears, strengthen your faith, and steady your future.
So ask yourself today:
What’s on repeat in your life?
If your playlist has been full of fear, you’re not stuck there.
If your inner soundtrack has been negativity, there’s a new song waiting.
If your mind has been repeating lies about who you are, God wants to rewrite your playlist with truth.
Let the message of Christ dwell in you richly.
Let the hymns of faith echo in your heart.
Let truth be the soundtrack of your life.
And may the God of peace put a new song in your mouth—a song that leads others to trust Him, and a song that carries you into the future with courage, clarity, and hope.
