Lift it up! Sing it out! Raise your hands! Get your praise on!
Sometime worship leading can sound less like encouragement and more like jazzercise.
Worship leaders, I get it. I completely understand. You want nothing more than for your congregation to revel in and drink deeply of the blessings God has for them in worship.
Your heart burns for them to experience joy and peace and satisfaction in the presence of God as they passionately pour out their praises to Him.
You long for the day when your church would be known as that place where 1 Chronicles 16 worship happens, where your services are described by Psalm 96, and where Colossians 3 worship is expected and happening.
Sing to him, sing praise to him;
tell of all his wonderful acts.
Glory in his holy name;
let the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoice.
1 Chronicles 16:9-10 (NIV)
Worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness;
tremble before him, all the earth.
Psalm 96:9 (NIV)
Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.
Colossians 3:16 (ESV)
We long for this as artists and worship leaders because somewhere along the way we’ve tasted and we’ve seen. We’ve stood still in the thin place between heaven and earth. We have seen what can happen when the people of God turn back to the cross, lift their eyes to God, fall on their faces, confess their deep need of grace and mercy, and celebrate the goodness of God in every circumstance of life – this is worship and we want everyone to experience this!
Somewhere along the journey something clicked for us. “I’ve experienced this and know this is true and good and possible. I want nothing more than for other people to experience the same thing and find this same reality of the presence of God.” We were given opportunities to do that, encouraged, trained, developed and resourced so that now we are in the scary-yet-secure position of standing before people and helping them to do these things we know can be possible.
Turn from your sin.
Lift your eyes to God.
Celebrate His goodness and His grace.
Drink deep from the blessings He has for you.
Please. I beg of you. You need to do this.
In our desire for our congregations to seek the good things of God in worship, we can sometimes make the focus about the experience and not about God. We make it about the songs and not about the Savior. We make it about the art and not the Artisan.
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