Last night I had my first opportunity to lead worship at our evening service. Well, I was actually the only person on stage. Thankfully I had someone on the sound board and another on the power point presentation to display the songs we would sing. My thanks to them both.
So I was sitting on the stage with my guitar, prayed up and ready to go. I started strumming the first song and began to sing… oops. For the life of me I couldn’t sing that song. The beat and the words refused to co-operate with each other. I stopped and chuckled to the congregation. Apologizing I explained that when I lead worship at our substance abuse meetings on tuesday nights something usually goes wrong. I said that at least we got “the” mistake out of the way and now we could proceed. It is nice to have a group of people who have grace and show mercy.
Gathering up my courage I started once again with the same song. This time we could all sing the song. Four other songs were played in succession. My voice held up pretty well but the guitar playing began to suffer. I have arthritis and other problems that sometimes make it difficult to play. My chording hand began to go numb and I failed to play the chords cleanly. Foretunately the people singing along did not seem to notice the difficulty I was having. At the end of the service many came to me and said that I did a good job of leading worship.
I sometimes find it hard to accept compliments. I have a defensive mechanism that kicks in and I usually try to minimize anything someone says to me. This was actually improper of me to do. Why? Because I didn’t have the grace to accept a kind word spoken to me. The Holy Spirit is such a gentleman. He used a feather of thought to convict me. I apologized to one person in particular for my attitude.
You see, I know that when playing the guitar I am limited. What I forget is the grace of God. Before I play I always ask God to help me out. That my mistakes don’t pull attention to me but that everyone will keep their eyes on Him while we worship and praise. He is faithful and has always helped. My problem is that I see the errors and not the grace. I am, however, learning. I’m just not finished growing in character and understanding of who He is and His grace toward me.
 It is always a privilege, never a right, to minister to other people. He is wonderful and I always thank him for every opportunity to minister.
I definitely understand your self-imposed defense mechanisms, and have also had to apologize to those around me. I also know that our Christian community is one full of grace, and who love to worship. I really doubt that anyone noticed any missed words, or chords not played as strongly as you may have liked. That is something truly amazing about CF…we are more focused on God during our worship than we are on each other. I’m certain you did an absolutely fantastic job…you have one more leading experience under your belt – bravo!
We are always our own worst critics. I think everybody appreciated your honesty in starting over on the first song and understood. You did a great job leading us into the throan room. Nobody noticed any missed notes or mistakes, we were to busy worshipping. I think you make a great worship leader. It was kind of refreshing just having the guitar. Hope you do it again soon. It was a great night!
Thanks for your comments of support. I will be playing again on the 12th of August for the evening service. Perhaps this time my hands won’t give me any trouble. I played last Tuesday night and didn’t have the problem. Comes and goes. Some day it will be gone for good.
I, too have a hard time accepting compliments.
Accepting compliments is hard for a lot of people, I think. The world is harsh and does a lot of things to us. Our Father is a perfect one and these little things can be what are called “corrective emotional experiences†if we let them in.
Of course, as I say that, I know I’m terrible for not accepting compliments.
That you are willing to even make an effort to work through arthritis and play your guitar to praise God is beautiful and God honouring.
“I know I’m terrible for not accepting compliments.â€
That’s kind of a funny sentence to me!!
Joe – I heard you did a great job!
I think it’s hard sometimes to accept compliments because…sometimes they are for the purpose of manipulation…or sometimes it makes us feel somehow vulnerable to the one complimenting…like we’re letting them know that their compliment is valuable to us…and lots of times we think accepting a compliment means we’ve got a pride thing going on, or we think we don’t need to improve.
And yet…words of grace and life and love are soul-food!!! Take them with thanks!
manipulation… yup
vulnerable… yup
pride… yup
don’t need to improve… chuckle… sure do
soul-food… YUP!