Lesson (Apparently) Not Learned

Leading worship last night was really tough for the second time in a row. First of all, I had come down with a cold so my voice was really struggling. (Fortunately I had already asked Melody to sing with us this week. In addition to rocking out the songs she was leading on, she was able to cover for me on another one as well!) Even so, the vocals I did do were shaky at best which made me very uncomfortable. On top of that, we were just not “tight” at all as a band. There were lots of little mistakes that maybe weren’t even noticed by most people, but kept me off balance the whole time. Its hard for me to actually worship myself and try to lead others to do the same when I am having to concentrate intently on every little thing just hoping we make it through the song without falling apart.

Afterward, honestly I felt like crying. I felt like the music was not good at all, that we were possibly even distracting people from worshipping God instead of leading them to Him. Then all of a sudden, in the middle of my frustration, God reminded me of what he tried to teach me last time. Its not all up to me. He chooses to use us and I think we should seek excellence in all that we do, but in the end it is He who does the real work in hearts and lives. After the service last night, when I was really discouraged, a couple of different people (whom I respect and appreciate for always telling it like it is) told me how good they thought the music was; that they really felt God’s spirit in the room and that people really seemed to be responding to Him. So here I am again, back in the same place 2 weeks later. If only I could learn to just do my best and leave the rest up to Him…..

Late Night

Congratulations, you are the successful bidder! Now I am not an ebay junkie by any stretch of the imagination, but it is a pretty good feeling to see that message flash on the screen when you are bidding on something. I am now the proud owner of my first electric guitar, a sweet Fender Stratocaster! In order to be sure that I won the auction, I had to stay up till it ended just now at 1:55am. Been killing time on myspace and facebook for the past couple of hours. Man, those things are addictive. Ok…Im rambling…. off to bed…..

Chaos, But Not Really

Thanks to all of you who prayed for me about leading worship this weekend! It turned out to be a wild afternoon and evening on Sunday. To start with, since several of the guys live in Anderson we were not able to have a rehearsal before Sunday. The plan was to set up the sound system, do a quick check, and still have time to run through the songs. Well, you know what they say about the best laid plans…. Once we got everything set up, for some reason the entire right side of the system was not working. Not good.

After 30-45 minutes of troubleshooting, we finally found out that the right output of the soundboard itself was dead. By the time we figured out a way to work around it, there was very little time left to go through songs. This was not that big a deal for the band guys since they play together all the time, but for me who has not led worship in over 2 years, it was more than a little stressful. So guess what happened. In the end – in spite of all the chaos, stress, and nervousness, God showed up anyway. Over 200 people came, (by far the most ever) and there was a great spirit of fellowship and worship over the whole evening! Sorry God – for a couple of hours there I started thinking it was all up to me for some reason! If only I could remember not to do that in all the areas of my life…..

Surprises

God is really cool sometimes. Sometimes he is mysterious, sometimes distant, sometimes frustrating, (see previous post) but sometimes he is really cool. Now of course he is way more than just “cool” to ever love us, save us from our doomed selves, and allow us to have a relationship with him, but thats not what I am talking about here. Sometimes he is cool and surprises us with things we hadn’t even been asking him for or didn’t even know we wanted.

Through some of the things that have been going on with our church, (see “Changes” post below) I am going to be leading worship at Midtown for a while! Funny thing is, leading worship has been so far off my radar screen for so long I almost forgot how much I love it. Music has always been a huge part of my life, and once God showed me in college how I could use it to point others to him it took on a whole new meaning for me. Over the past few years, my path has taken me more to helping out behind the scenes, running sound for the worship bands. So now that I have the privilege of leading worship again, it all of a sudden hit me how much I have missed playing and singing music! So God surprised me. Very cool.

As always when preparing to lead worship, I have all kinds of thoughts and emotions swirling around inside. Excitement and joy about playing and singing, nervousness about possibly screwing up, and a sense of humility and responsibility to bring glory only to him. Please pray for me that above all the latter would happen – after all, that is the whole point. Thank you God for being so cool!

Relationships (Take 3)

Here are some thoughts that I wrote a couple years ago, and have reposted a few times. They became relevant again this week and can’t say it any better than I did the first time, so here they are again….
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Relationships suck. People say that it is worth all the trouble when the right person comes along, but in the meantime they suck. Even when both people are very open and honest and mature about the whole thing, they are complicated and confusing, and someone (or both people) always gets hurt.

Good Movies

If you haven’t seen The Prestige yet, go check it out. Its a good one. From the directors of Batman Begins and Memento. Unique story and keeps you guessing to the end!

On DVD – Mission Impossible III. Easily the best of the trilogy, written and directed by some of the creators of Lost and Alias. Finally an action movie that has a good storyline and not just stunts and special effects.