Do you love to succeed?
Do you love to hear that you did a good job?
I hope you do. It feels amazing, empowering, life-giving. But what do you do when it’s not there?
How do you truly measure success?
When I received the “call” to go into worship ministry it wasn’t just because I could play some music. In all honesty, I kinda sucked back then. But this I knew – the voice of God reverberated through my frame loud and clear:
“Your ministry will be an extension of your personal walk with Me.”
Ministry is putting your private life of worship on display.
That floored me.
Brought tears to my eyes.
I think about THAT everyday.
No, no I don’t, actually.
That was a total lie.
Sometimes I think about who is singing my songs, who is complimenting me, who is commenting on my blog, how many people RT me on Twitter. I even think about what people are thinking about me. If I were completely honest, I’ll be depressed if none of you compliment me on this post today.
Sadly, the praise of man drives me.
On good days, I feel like a celebrity. On bad days, I feel ready to quit everything.
The praise of man is an awful measure of success.
Why?
- Because sometimes it’s there, sometimes it’s not.
- Because sometimes the crowd cheers. Other times, they jeer.
- Because your life is not based upon your ministry. Your ministry is an extension of your LIFE in Jesus.
- Because it waters down your art. It becomes less about art and more about garnering attention.
- Because the love of God is enough.
I know that if my personal hunger, love, and desperation for Jesus is strong, I’m on the right track. It’s not helpful to keep track of all the nice things people are saying about me. It’s a drug that takes hold of your entire being.
There needs to be a strength that lies behind all the compliments and all the criticism – a heart that knows and believes God’s love is enough.
Question: How do you effectively deal with the praise and rejection of man? You can leave a comment by clicking here.
This post was horrible! Just kidding…I’m with ya on this one. I get very depressed (overstatement) when there are not very many comments on my posts.
But, I would rather have a life changed and no comments than tons of comments that just flatter me!
I’m with you Brandon!
This is great! This issue is one that I think if we were all honest, we would say we deal with. But I think you got it exactly right in saying that our confidence and assurance needs to come from “the call” that we know God has placed on our lives. People and their praises come and go. My responsibility is to answer to what God has asked me to do. Not to try and get as many “atta boy’s” as I can.
Good Stuff man! You’re not alone
Definitely!
Thanks Nathan. You may have said it better than me!
I just wanted to say that I love the statement “Ministry is putting your private life of worship on display”. That’s so true & something I don’t think we as worship leaders think about often enough. Definitely something I’ll be praying through to make sure my worship isn’t only an on stage Sunday morning thing but, something I live everyday no matter who’s watching.
Thanks for this!
No problem Keri! That’s the only way to be authentic as a worship leader – baring your heart on stage and living what you sing.
“There needs to be a strength that lies behind all the compliments and all the criticism – a heart that knows and believes God’s love is enough.”
I get depressed to if I don’t here how great I was…and at the exact same time i feel akward and uncomfortable when some one does come to me and says wow man that was great! ….I don’t know why….maybe I already feel guilty for wanting the praise and then I actually get the praise…all in all…a cliche statments pours out of my mouth…Na…it’s all HIM…it’s true…I do do it to worship HIM….but deep down…i like to get a little worship too…at that’s where the guilt comes in I imagine…
great one david!
You don’t need to feel guilty, Arny. Accept praise and accept criticism but don’t base your self-worth on it. That comes from the cross. Appreciate your comments bro!
I doubt there’s any honest worship leaders out there that don’t struggle with this. It’s certainly not an excuse, but God is always faithful to remind me that it’s a journey. My prayer used to be something along the lines of God taking away my pride and helping me not to care what people think before I went into doing some ministry, but when you start thinking about how awesome you hope people think your voice or guitar sounds when you’re playing, you start beating yourself up for caring what people think. You are going to have thoughts about yourself when you’re up there. That’s part of the gig. Maybe somebody somewhere has that figured out, but I know I’m not there yet.
Instead, my prayer has switched to, “God, we both know I care way too much what people think about me and struggle with my own pride. Help me to change and to put my focus off of myself and onto you…but until then, use me anyway as only You can in spite of my own stupid pride.”
God wants to impact other people through us – whether we’re broken or not (we are). I don’t think you’ll find too many occasions where He decides to not impact a whole bunch of other people because we’re an idiot, but we probably could be a whole lot more effective. Either way, He wants our worship – not our worship leading.
The more we grow a relationship with Him, the bigger we think He is. The more we grow our ministry, the bigger we think we are. (I love cliché sayings)
Killer thoughts, bro. I’ll take that cliche any day 🙂
I appreciate your honesty here. You’re right, God uses us in spite of our pride and weakness. I just don’t want to get my life sustenance off the praise of people. I want to know and be satisfied by the love of God more and more every day.
I’m thankful God is in the business of using broken people to build His Kingdom 🙂
I love your thoughts on growing our relationship with God rather than being concerned with growing our ministry. That really put some things into perspective. Thanks for being transparent here, bro.
i so like your prayer..and i think that too is my personal prayer..that’s one of the millions of reasons, why i just can’t help but worship my God – his love and grace, you know loving me in spite of myself,really just blew me away and am just in awe of Him.
thanks for sharing your thoughts..such a great encouragement and reminder as well
“Ministry is putting your private life of worship on display” – these are very powerful words and so true.Now, this cause me to think at this very moment, probably the reason why am having some issues with my ministry is because i got some issues with my own private life of worship?..yes i know, only me can answer that. anyway, thanks again David for such an encouragement and reminder. am always learning a lot here, even thru the comments/reactions from the readers.
“Ministry is putting your private life of worship on display”.
I love this statement. It’s a great reminder.
“How do you effectively deal with the praise and rejection of man?”
I’m still working on it. One person every couple months or so will say how much he likes my group…. compared to the others. It’s that last statement that makes me shreak internally. I’m always scrambling for words.
One time, other people were present and he said the same thing. This time, I was amazed at my comeback (cause I’m not real outgoing). I said, “Yeah, he says that to ALL the worship leaders” (with a little attitude, but obviously joking). Everyone laughed, and we easily moved on to the next topic. I was so surprised that worked as well as it did.
As far as rejection? I’ve got a long way to go. It can throw me into depression. It can consume my thoughts. One thing I do know. I don’t “love” everyone’s style; so likely, not everyone is going to “love” my style. That helps keep me open to adding additional teams, understanding people’s comments/critiques, encouraging new team leaders, and not taking every spot that opens up. It helps me keep true to the style God has given me.
Great perspective!