It Is A Heart Issue

What better way to start a "blog" after Valentine's Day than with a "Heart Issue". I have been leading worship for 30 years as of this Wednesday, and I am convince now more than ever before that our Heart conditions have kept us out of the very presence of God on a weekly and even daily basis.

I have battled, and agonized and fought and prayed over the traditional, contemporary, too loud, too soft, too something issue for almost all 30 of those years. As I look back on the wonderful blessing that it has been to lead worship, I have only found one consistent truth."When we get out of the way God moves and when we get in the way God waits."

How often we major on the  minor. I cannot tell you how many times the first thing I hear is "the sanctuary it too cold or too hot" or " can we please sing at least one hymn today" or "do we have to always sing hymns, how about something up beat and contemporary" or "did you know that they said this or they said that or they did this".

I have been guilty of being right in the middle of the mess myself. How many worship leaders or pastors find themselves worried about transitions or song selection or soloist or the choir or the praise team or the illustrations or length of the message or, so on and so on. If we stopped worrying about the "SO-ON & SO-ON" and concentrated on "THE SON" then worship my just be that - WORSHIP.

YES, I know that it takes much planning and prayer and even seeming miracles at times to "pull off" what happens on Sunday morning or Saturday or whenever we meet. I just can't help but wonder if we worried more about our own "Heart" condition before we came together in worship if it might not be a better use of our time.

I know that there are no perfect churches and the only perfect person was crucified for our transgressions 2000 years ago. We should always strive to be Christ-Like but does that really mean perfection or does it mean forgiven. To coin an over used phrase "AT THE END OF THE DAY" if we get it all just right. We have the perfect song, and the perfect volume, and the perfect temperature, and the perfect sermon and the perfect illustrations, and the perfect volunteers to watch the perfect children, and we get out at the perfect time, BUT we don't let our HEARTS open or our LOVE show, then it is all just useless noise.

Just a few thoughts, and I certainly welcome yours. How will you let your HEART be open this week or how will your LOVE show?