The second half of my army experience was a very lonely one for me, as I was the only Christian along with a bunch of sinners whose only ambition in life as to see how much they could drink in one night. They would spend the night in the bar so I had the dorm to myself and I would sit with my guitar and worship God until His presence was so strong on me that I couldn’t hold the plectrum anymore, or get my fingers to make chords and that point I would lie back in His awesome presence. I have fond memories of this.
Fast forward 17 years. For someone who is digging his guitar our and dusting it off, warming up my figures and trying to remember the chords of all those old songs. I have been playing at home church and really having a hard time with the people there who don’t really seem to care about worship. It really makes me feel like I’m wasting my time with them. I am trying to decide if I should even go back to this as it’s really off putting. That’s a side note however, the main point is that I feel within myself that things aren’t what they used to be and I have really been struggling to get into worshipping the Father again like I used to. Just by myself. I loved it and now it feels like a real drag…
So we arrive to just a few minutes ago when I’m sitting on our upstairs balcony in the cool of the night playing guitar and trying to make it sound good. I played around just trying to get a tune that sounds nice and then went onto an old worship song and sung that. It was at this point that a revelation hit me. I think I totally suck!!! This is my core belief and it’s affecting everything I do concerning music. Like God’s blocking his ears or something - I think not. No wonder my hearts not in this. No wonder He’s not into it either. It’s like I’m giving Him a 99c gift and I know it’s cheap. Ouch!!
So what is the offending cause of this all? Musical excellence – a nasty one. I’ve heard of him before when God told me that He hates it but I never saw it in me like this. It’s strangled every bit of freedom I have within me because I have this notion that I’m tired of being this strummer boy and want to play better, more like the pro’s, don’t have the time to practice all day so what’s the use but I’m certainly not the old Steve just happy to strum away to a song. I want to make it sound great, have a full band playing along (I'm tired of paying alone) and inspiring myself to worship with a full heart. It’s this striving that has grounded my worship to a royal halt!
So now what?
I know God has said I must just come to Him and worship and believe that He can make up the excellence that I need and crave. To do this I’m assuming that I now need to get over my need for this excellence and learn just to worship Him like before. Which brings me back to being happy to just strum again and like it…. So how does one do that?
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2 comments:
Food for thought. Doing it for the love of it, without the pursuit of excellence.
How you get there? No Idea. Guess you are really looking for the soul of a man, we all seem to leave behind at some point.
It sounds like you're struggling just as much as I am. I have found that the more we want to do something right for God, the more we tend to get in the way. It wasn't until I started asking God for th music that things started working for me. I used to think if I practiced hard enough, played often enough and warmed up long enough, I could dazzle the audience. God stopped my fingers though. In 3 consecutive performances, fingers froze. I had the music in front of me, but I couldn't read it. Since then I have asked God for the music every time I perform and it happens. Also, it takes a long time to get back on the music horse. I took my last exam when I was 16. I am now 27 and I am about to write my first exam in years. We want to be as good as we were then, but we don't remember how long it took to get there. Hang in there Steve. God will put the music in you when he wants it there.
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