The more you do something, the more familiar it becomes.
The more familiar something becomes, the less you think about it.
The less you think about it, the easier it is to fake it.
To be honest, I feel like a fake more often than not.
I’ve lead worship for a lot of years. I have enough musical aptitude to flow on numerous instruments. I know how to make up spontaneous songs on the spot. I can put on a really passionate worship face.
That scares the heck out of me.
To ponder the fact that I could lead worship with a completely disengaged heart is horrifying. To think that I could be a worship leader but steeped in private sin is a most sobering thought.
That’s why I think the more you lead worship, the more you need to prepare your heart. It’s akin to preparing coals to burn. Without lighter fluid, nothing will happen. The longer your lead worship the more intense that preparation should be.
Here’s why:
1. Worship is a matter of the heart – It’s not an external observance of religion or songs or liturgy. It’s the response of your heart. If you don’t prepare your heart, you’ll be more prone to engage emotionally but be passive spiritually.
2. It helps you realize your dependance on God – preparing your heart is a reminder that you can do nothing apart from the moving of the Holy Spirit. You are dependent on God to have an encounter with God.
3. You may get a sense of what the Holy Spirit wants to do – when you prepare your heart before leading worship, it’s possible that you may hear from God about what He wants to do. It’s always nice to enter into a worship service with a vision or word from God.
4. It makes you more sensitive to how the Holy Spirit is moving – when you prepare your heart for leading worship, you’re more sensitive to his voice as you’re leading. You’re more inclined to see how He is moving and what the congregation needs to do next.
5. It keeps you focused on what matters – when you’re spiritually prepared, you’re not as concerned about songs and arrangements. Those things are important, but the engagement of the congregation and the presence of Jesus are so much more deserving of your attention. When you ignore the preparation of your heart, trivial matters tend to steal the show.
Worship Leader, guard your heart. Guard your personal worship. Guard your childlike faith and dependence on the Holy Spirit.
Question: How do you prepare your heart for leading worship? You can leave a comment by clicking here.
This is a great post. I feel the same exact way when I have to get on the platform. I discovered your blog a few months ago and love it. I’m not a worship leader but I am in full time ministry, your content is applicable all across the board. I too am a worship music geek/fan whatever you want to call it, and your recommendation of Harbour Church Live (Ft. Lauderdale) was right on! Sooooo – Write On!
Sandy, good to meet you! Thanks so much for reading. Nice to hear that a non-worship leader reads as well. Yes, the Harbour album is fantastic!
Remembering that feelings change from day to day..God does not change. I often look within…and think of that Psalm ..Create in me clean heart O God and renew a right spirit within me..cast me not away from your presence O Lord..don’t take your Holy Spirit from me..restore unto me the joy of my Salvation..and grant me a willing spirit to sustain me!…Why a prayer like this?? Your blog was so right..it is easy to do routine..but the difference is known inside…the battle rages..life goes on and things creep in…subtly..Aware of inner weakness and human error…and ‘being weighed in the balance and found wanting’ is so often the case..but looking within…makes you more willing and determined to look and rely on Christ…you have to…our worship here is imperfect…always will be..but having a clean slate and a clean heart..makes the difference..between me and God…enabling worship..to be real…to be honest..and to be for Him..and Him only!There are times when you don’t feel up to the task..but being able to recognise why..makes a difference…The devil does not want us to be worshipping God here on earth..he hates it..with a passion that no-one will ever understand..it probably reminds Him of what He has lost out on..and he does not want to hear it! It is one thing you praising and worshipping God on your own…that.. as far as he is concerned is bad enough…but leading others too??? He hates it..only because the praise and worship is going to God and not Him..and he will never be part of that ever again…He has missed out..and wants the rest of us to miss out too! He knows that we will not miss out eternally..and that he will..he knows that..and if he can drag us down far enough and remind us of our own weaknesses and failings..he could steal our joy and desire to worship here on earth…. I recognise that when I am feeling empty…and not feeling like ‘worshipping’ or leading praise..it is not of God…but it enables me to take a check..on my heart and life…God lifts us up when we do that..in order that we can praise and worship Him again for the great grace giving and merciful God that He is..who deserves more than we can ever give…but loves us and moves us on…
This scares the heck outta me too. Anyone in full time ministry knows that there are some really busy seasons throughout the year. Our responsibilities as pastors can make us think that it’s ok to neglect our spiritual preparedness “because we’re pastors” and hash out things like a cool Easter opener or some kickin’ secular tune we’re doing in the middle of pastor’s sermon.
Yesterday I was reminded of this same concept from an article shared with me out of Enrichment magazine by Dallas Willard. He wrote that Personal Soul Care, that is, maintaining daily spiritual health, is “the secret to a strong, healthy, and fruitful ministerial life.” Which makes complete sense, but he went on to say that “allowing service for Christ to steal our devotion to Him is a radical failure in personal soul care.”
What a wake up call. And I have to reiterate again, this scares the heck outta me. I don’t ever want my flesh to get in the way of what God wants to accomplish at my church. To ever think that I have what it takes to “do” worship apart from God would be a tragedy.
And once again, God took me to the story of Mary and Martha. Martha busied herself with cleaning house and cooking for Jesus’ guests. In a sense, she was busying herself in her service for the King. But when she asked Christ to rebuke Mary for her lack of contribution to the work, He said that Mary found what was most important — sitting at the feet of the Master.
May we never get caught up in our service for Jesus and allow ourselves to think we can do what we do apart from Him.
Well said, Ryan. I love that idea of personal soul care. So good.
This is one of the bravest admissions I’ve ever heard:
“I’ve lead worship for a lot of years. I have enough musical aptitude to flow on numerous instruments. I know how to make up spontaneous songs on the spot. I can put on a really passionate worship face.”
There’s been times I did everything possible – pray, fast, time in the word – and still didn’t “feel” spiritually prepared. There’s been others times when, for whatever reason, I could not put in the effort to be as prepared as I knew I should be. Those are by far the more frequent.
If we’re in a good place, we can get proud. If we’re in a bad place, we can feel guilty.
In every circumstance, what has helped me is to simply lead “by faith”. Sometimes my heart is well prepared, sometimes not. I just have to trust God’s grace through Christ.
I love the way you ended your post “Guard your childlike faith and dependence on the Holy Spirit.” Beautiful post DS!
Thanks Rob! My posts are simply me documenting all the mistakes I’ve made 🙂
This post speaks volumes. Thank you so much for bringing these things to our attention. Thank you for being so honest and allowing us in on your journey. It helps us all to keep focus on the purpose of our own journey and how we are making out staying on track. God Bless your ministry.
its 3:15 am sunday mourning and i cant seam to sleep. i lead the music in my church with my guitar and am feeling burdened that i too often lead in my flesh and not by the Spirit. John 4:23-24 says we are to “worship in spirit and in truth” and “put no confidence in the flesh”. phill 3:3 now what does that mean? to worship in spirit? well,lets first look at what the word worship means. it has the idea of placing Him in a high place of honor by acknowledging who He is. now,our spirit is what communes with God. so it is to worship out of a relationship with God by declaring “truth” about Him. now the problem is our flesh get in the way and makes us prideful by thinking that we can do it in our own strength. when the flesh has no ability to please God, the flesh is opposed to Him. witch is why Christ said in matt 16:24 that we need to deny our flesh, take up our cross and follow Him. so to sum this up. in order so properly worship God we must put our flesh to death, and meditate on who God is. honor Him with that truth, and in doing that the Holy Spirit can commune with our spirit to make our worship acceptable to God. o that we may be found acceptable to Him. Amen!
Hey Jeremy, this is good. Thanks for your humility and insight. God gives grace to the humble, but He opposes the proud. So to prepare for worship, we humble ourselves in the sight of the Lord.
May the Lord be with you today and fill you with His spirit in an awesome way. Have a great Sunday!
Man I got to be honest with you, I don’t really know how to prepare my HEART for worship. Before I was leading worship I would jam loud for hours by myself before work daily and just sing those songs and feel it! Now I feel like all I do is play catch up and email people. I guess writing this makes me realize that I gotta talk to my pastor about this. I don’t want to do fake worship. I have done it before too and some people get blessed but I’m pretty sure that’s not what God wants for me, to be fake. Matt Redman said that “worship should never be a performance, but an overflow of the heart.” I think he’s right about that, and maybe that’s why it’s such a big deal to prepare your heart- because if it doesn’t overflow you just gotta push it out and fake it. Pretty sure I’m overcommitted in most areas of my life and I am finally learning to have better relationships and boundaries, maybe this is the next part of that. Ughhh… Thanks for posting this brother
Don’t be discouraged, Jesse. We all have ups and downs, and we all certainly have successes and failures. Sometimes we wander off the road we’re on and get distracted by things that we shouldn’t. I would definitely encourage you to share your concerns with your pastor.
But one thing you can do on your own is evaluate how you’re spending your time throughout the week. We creatives struggle with time management, a lot 🙂 But there are some practical things we can do. As someone who has struggled with the very thing you’re talking about, I’ve become a list and calendar freak, which has really helped me stay on task and set aside time to spend with God, read my Bible, etc. David has some great posts on this blog, one from earlier this week even, that would be great for you to check out.
Thanks u r speaking to me firefly. G of bless. U
Wow thank you D S, my nw doing some introspection God bless u for sharing such truths!
Steve i appreciate your honesty it s what we all need to do and admit that we have failed as worship leaders or even as christians for me it has been liberating when i admitted i cant do it and i have found when i admit that and seek the Lord for his strength he gives it immediately.When God stripped my fleshly life away i felt useless i lost confidence in what i could do and almost had a breakdown. The old foundation built on me was unstable Jesus became my new foundation.What a revelation and a transformation everything changed.I still see myself as a worship leader but not in the sense of the old me i dont have to be up the front although i think the time will come when the Lord will promote me to that position but i am not seeking it.I am happy to use the gifts God has given me to build up and encourage and pray for others in our worship team as i trust God I am amazed at what God is doing as i seek him in this way.This weekend we are preparing for a worship service practise on friday and the actual service on sunday.In preparation i have emailed the team and just let them know i am praying for them and ask that we all pray for each other and especially the worship leader as we are in a spiritiual battle.This is a way we can help build up one another and encourage each other it keeps us humble as its not just about us but about the body we cannot achieve anything without prayer will keep you posted regards brent
We had our worship service on sunday and it went really well amazing how the Lord can knit it all together.Feed back was excellent and people enjoyed it and we felt the prescence of the Lord was with us.For the next couple of weeks we will be having cds as our main music with a couple of us singing in the background this works well and people are happy with this.Fourth sundays we have a family service which is really good as well with a different group of musicians children are involved with these which is awesome..One good thing with the variation is that the load is shared its hard when people are working to be the full time worship leader this way different people get the opportunity to be involved in the music ministry.For me as a new person on the block it was my choice to work in with the people involved rather than to run things my way.As they have been faithful to the church with the work they have done it would be wrong for me to take over have been in that position of being pushed out and it isnt very nice We are a body no one is above another we are a team and work together for the Lord. using the gifts we have for his glory.
Dear David, please I can not say it all but am so humbled for this teaching I have printed and will have to share it with worship leaders here in Uganda