Sarah Reeves: Worshiping With a ‘Sweet Sweet Sound’

Reeves comes from a musical family and dreamed of becoming a big rock star. But when she was 15 God changed everything. At a youth camp she saw teenagers worshiping and radically pursuing God with all their hearts. She knew at that moment God was calling her to be a worship leader. “God humbled me and messed up my life, my way of thinking and said, ‘Sarah, life’s not about you, it’s about Me.”

He opened up doors and Reeves started leading worship for her local youth group at her church, which she still does every Thursday night. Now this 19-year-old Alabama releases her debut album, Sweet Sweet Sound, April 21.

Reeves says it’s been a journey and draws inspiration for her music from Acts 16. This chapter tells the story of when Paul and Silas were thrown into prison for allowing God to work miracles through them. These two men, who were beaten and scarred and bound with chains, started worshiping God and singing to Him. Reeves says she imagines that the other prisoners were looking at them as if they had lost their minds, but Paul and Silas kept worshiping.

God honored them for their worship and sent an earthquake to break off their chains. He opened the prison doors and set them free. Reeves points out that their worship set not only themselves free but also the prisoners around them. Just as He did for Paul and Silas, God will honor us in our worship. “No matter where we’re at, no matter what we’re going through, there is so much power and so much freedom when we let go and worship God,” she says.

Reeves has fallen in love with worship and talking about worship. She says growing up she thought worship was going to church on Sunday mornings and Wednesdays nights. And she’s not the only one who has limited worship. “The church has become so satisfied with just making church our worship, but really it’s so much more than that, it’s truly a lifestyle. It’s how we act when we step outside of the church and we go home or we’re in our cars or we’re in our rooms. We don’t have to be within the walls of a church building to worship. We can be wherever we are or whatever we’re going through.”

He title song, “Sweet Sweet Sound,” she says, is the definition of worship. The first verse declares: “I am an instrument of the living God / My life a melody to His name / More than the songs I sing / Worship is everything / I live to glorify my King.”

“We can honor God and let our lives be a sweet, sweet sound unto Him,” she explains.

Lately, Reeves says, God has put on her heart the word “eternity.” She prays, “God, place eternity in my heart” from Ecclesiastes. “I don’t want it to be about me. … This life is short, definitely too short to play games. And my prayer is that God would just use me to speak and to sing over people who are so lost and don’t really know the power of God, and don’t really know the freedom of Him.”