note to the band...
I send a weekly note to the worship band trying to encourage and challenge them as we prepare our hearts for each weekend of leading the rest of the body in musical worship. This is the note I sent this week...I include it because it shows some of what God is doing in my heart currently...
Note to the band:
It seems to me that once you catch a vision for something, you can't go back to the way it was before. My whole life could be summed up in that one sentence. Once you taste something fresher, truer, deeper, richer...it's impossible to supress what you've experienced and make like it didn't happen. It arouses something inside of you, wakes something from a terrible infinite slumber that has silenced and deafened the core of who you are, your heart.
I can vividly remember moments in my past when I encountered something that would forever change the tragectory of my life direction. Meeting certain people, going certain places, hearing certain songs, having certain conversations, seeing certain movies, watching certain tragedies unfold, feeling certain emotions surface...these things shave and shape, mold and make you who you are and who you will become.
Worship is like this. When you engage it on a level that is special...you aren't satisfied until you return to that pure and passionate place. When you see the freedom of an atmosphere, the power of a presence, the passion of a people lost in God's greatness...it's hard to come back to predictable, rote, and banal church sing alongs. You want to be unleashed again. You want to be unhindered again, you want to be unabashed again. You want to be overtaken, taken over. You can't just stand and sing songs into a mic or into thin air, you have to sing them into the heart of God with piercing and personal love. You realize more is going on than sound bytes flying through the building. God is afoot, his presence astir, his love afresh.
I hope that you are allowing yourself to be consumed by God in worship. I hope you aren't standing at a distance singing words across a huge chasm of cold space. I hope you are drawing near in your heart to His. I hope you are letting the words flood in and flow out. I hope you are spending time at home with this God and inviting him over to your world as often as you can. I hope you don't just meet with Him at church...He's bigger than that; He's better than that.
I just feel like the last few weeks my spirit is deeply sensitive to these things in my own life. I feel awakened to the need for a deeper consciousness in my worship. I want to be zealous in my preparation to meet with God and in my actualizing of worship, and in my response to having worshipped in song. This has to be more than music and those moments on that stage...if it's not, nothing is actually happening on that stage at all, despite what we may percieve as humans so easily fooled by the flesh. This has to be our vision as a band or we will not only lose focus, we will lose God.
I'm sensing God stirring something special as of late. I hope you are sensing that as well. These last several weeks have been quite powerful and personal. I see God engaging people's hearts left and right...and it's downright bodacious. I've been praying for you guys, that God would lead you and follow you and come along side you all at the same time each and every day of the week. I hope you are reading the Psalms and getting swallowed by God.. I can't wait to see you this weekend for our gatherings...God will move again and we will get to be a part of it.
Note to the band:
It seems to me that once you catch a vision for something, you can't go back to the way it was before. My whole life could be summed up in that one sentence. Once you taste something fresher, truer, deeper, richer...it's impossible to supress what you've experienced and make like it didn't happen. It arouses something inside of you, wakes something from a terrible infinite slumber that has silenced and deafened the core of who you are, your heart.
I can vividly remember moments in my past when I encountered something that would forever change the tragectory of my life direction. Meeting certain people, going certain places, hearing certain songs, having certain conversations, seeing certain movies, watching certain tragedies unfold, feeling certain emotions surface...these things shave and shape, mold and make you who you are and who you will become.
Worship is like this. When you engage it on a level that is special...you aren't satisfied until you return to that pure and passionate place. When you see the freedom of an atmosphere, the power of a presence, the passion of a people lost in God's greatness...it's hard to come back to predictable, rote, and banal church sing alongs. You want to be unleashed again. You want to be unhindered again, you want to be unabashed again. You want to be overtaken, taken over. You can't just stand and sing songs into a mic or into thin air, you have to sing them into the heart of God with piercing and personal love. You realize more is going on than sound bytes flying through the building. God is afoot, his presence astir, his love afresh.
I hope that you are allowing yourself to be consumed by God in worship. I hope you aren't standing at a distance singing words across a huge chasm of cold space. I hope you are drawing near in your heart to His. I hope you are letting the words flood in and flow out. I hope you are spending time at home with this God and inviting him over to your world as often as you can. I hope you don't just meet with Him at church...He's bigger than that; He's better than that.
I just feel like the last few weeks my spirit is deeply sensitive to these things in my own life. I feel awakened to the need for a deeper consciousness in my worship. I want to be zealous in my preparation to meet with God and in my actualizing of worship, and in my response to having worshipped in song. This has to be more than music and those moments on that stage...if it's not, nothing is actually happening on that stage at all, despite what we may percieve as humans so easily fooled by the flesh. This has to be our vision as a band or we will not only lose focus, we will lose God.
I'm sensing God stirring something special as of late. I hope you are sensing that as well. These last several weeks have been quite powerful and personal. I see God engaging people's hearts left and right...and it's downright bodacious. I've been praying for you guys, that God would lead you and follow you and come along side you all at the same time each and every day of the week. I hope you are reading the Psalms and getting swallowed by God.. I can't wait to see you this weekend for our gatherings...God will move again and we will get to be a part of it.
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