As worship leaders, we have all been tasked with making much of Jesus. Lifting Him
above ourselves and making it clear to those around us that He alone is on the
throne of our hearts. A fear of mine is that worshippers will eventually become numb
to what we are doing. Because we often see worship as a once a week experience, worship has the ability to
become part of the scenery, it can begin to blend into the background of our
lives, or even worse become part of the sin in our hearts. Before we enter into worship we need to ask the Holy
Spirit to remove us from routine. My hope and prayer is that our experience become and remain fresh each and
every time we worship. We need to be freed from our inhibitions and rescued
from our own ambitions. When we become ambitious for the stage, worship becomes about our own glory and not God’s glory. We are insignificant in worship without Him. Remember that he alone makes our worship significant. We must make sure that we are being used for the building of His Kingdom and not our own. Too often, we make ourselves more important than we actually deserve. And on this platform - we feel as if we become entitled, unappreciated, misunderstood, selfish, and the list goes on and on. We must understand that our well is the well of the Living Christ. If we are seeking Him we will never be thirsty. The problem that we face, as worship leaders, is most of the time we are drinking from the wrong well. Gregg Scheer says, “Sometimes the importance of worship leaders turns into a ‘cult of personality’ in which the worship leader becomes the center of attention rather than the facilitator for the congregations worship… this is a worship fetish – it is idolatry.”[1] In John chapter 4 the story of the woman at the well gives us a little insight into this type of idolatry.
“There came a woman of
Samaria to draw water. Jesus said to her, ‘Give Me a drink.’ For His disciples
had gone away into the city to buy food. Therefore the Samaritan woman said to
Him, ‘How is it that You, being a Jew, ask me for a drink since I am a
Samaritan woman?’ (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) Jesus answered
and said to her, ‘If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you,
‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living
water.’ She said to Him, ‘Sir, You have nothing to draw with and the well is
deep; where then do You get that living water? You are not greater than our
father Jacob, are You, who gave us the well, and drank of it himself and his
sons and his cattle?’ Jesus answered and said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of
this water will thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I will give
him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a
well of water springing up to eternal life.’”
Granted, there are many things that prevent us from worshiping God. However, this Samaritan woman was sitting next to the Son of God and she did not even realize it. She was lost in her focus of what well she was drinking from, so Jesus told her if you drink from my cup, drink of this living water you will never thirst again. This brings me back to my original point, too often we are not worshiping God because we are drinking from the wrong well. We are operating on selfish ambition, and in turn we are drinking from the wrong well. Our ambition takes hold when we want to be successful or viewed as successful. This ambition is because most of us want to be respected as leaders. If we put our ambition in the place of worshiping God and you have a recipe for disaster. Musicians, how many times have you sat and watched someone else sing or play on instruments and thought, "I could do better than that," "I am better than that," or "I deserve to be up there. These are all thoughts of ambition working itself out through jealousy. If this is the case, then jealousy and ambition have become the well that we are now drinking. The wickedness that is in our hearts wants us to make much of ourselves. But we are not the point, we are not the center of attention. Leading people into worship is not about our own glory. Unlike pop-culture, our worship it is not to make much of ourselves, but instead to celebrate the fact that Jesus died for us and delivered us from this unrighteousness in our hearts. When our ambition becomes the "stage" it becomes less about His glory and all about our own. Don't misunderstand me, there are ambitions that are acceptable, but the good ambitions are demonstrated for the Glory of God. J. Oswald Sanders says, “No doubt, Christians must resist a certain kind of ambition and rid it from their lives. But we must also acknowledge other ambition as noble, worthy, and honorable…When our ambition carries out a burning desire to be effective in the service of God – to realize God’s highest potential for our lives.”[3] Because of the fall, our wickedness can become our undoing, it can become our motivation for worship. But instead of worshiping God we become worshipers of stage time and all that goes along with it. What's worse is in order to worship ourselves; we completely belittle the cross and the sacrifice of Jesus.
[1] Gregg Scheer, The Art of Worship, A Musicians Guide to Leading Modern Worship (Baker Books, Grand Rapids, 2006) 215
[3] J. Oswald Sanders, Spiritual Leadership, Principles of Excellence for Every Believer (Moody Publishers, Chicago, 2007) 11,2
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