Stepping Out

1 Chronicles 29:5 “… who then is willing to consecrate himself this day to the LORD?” (NKJV)

This is the season of the year when I listen through “Prosperity” by Randy Gage

This is a CD series on the spiritual principles that he used to transform his life from bankruptcy, dysfunctional relationships and horrendous health to being a multi-millionaire with great health and joyful relationships in his life.

Now, Randy Gage is comes from a Mind Science church, one of those pseudo-Christian movements. He is very New-Age in his mindset and he is quite dismissive of evangelical Christianity. Having said that, his explanations of spiritual laws that correspond to Scripture principles are very clear and fresh.

And he pulls no punches, calling things the way they are. And sometimes, that’s just what we need at times.

Here is something that he taught that really struck me. He had this chapter called “the Return to the Creator” law of prosperity. This is what he called tithing. And he expanded the idea to more than just money. He said that we are to tithe our Treasure (money), Time and Talent.

The first time I heard that was during the season when I was running away from worship ministry. And when Randy Gage spoke about tithing the Talent (which for me was playing for and leading worship), that made me VERY uncomfortable.

Can you imagine? How could I ever let myself be out-tithed by a New-Ager?

That is what I wanted to bring up with you today. If we expanded our concept of tithing to include Time and Talent as well as Treasure, how different would our lives be?

Or in another sense, as King David asked in the passage from 1 Chronicles quoted above, who then is willing to consecrate himself this day to the LORD?

“JJ, you don’t understand. You’ve been playing for worship for many years. It’s so much easier for you than for me to get started…”

Actually, God seems to delight in keeping me in a position where it’s not easy for me either, so I actually DO understand. Just on Sunday I was playing for worship at a church where I may be doing worship training for their worship teams.

• To start with, I was on my WEAKEST instrument, drums. Common sense would dictate that if you are going to some place new, start off with your strongest instrument so you leave a good first impression.
  
• On top of that, I was playing on Electric Drums, not the acoustic ones I was used to. Lots of my secret techniques just suddenly became impractical. Oops…
  
• I was playing with people I don’t know. I didn’t know who was gonna cover any slips I make or what I’ll have to do to cover theirs.
  
• And finally, I was already introduced to the congregation as a music/worship instructor. So the congregation’s expectations were raised higher. And thus I had even more to lose if I flopped.

So, in a sense, it NEVER gets easy. Therefore, you get to see whether you REALLY trust in God more than your skills and experience.

Now, if your music skills are not up to par yet, you of course shouldn’t be rushing off to play for service or cell group this coming week. That goes without saying.

But talk with one of the worship leaders in your church or your cell leader. Tell them of your decision to play or serve in worship and make a firm commitment to begin within the next 3-9 months.

Notice I didn’t tell you to wait till you are ready before you talk with them. Why? Because the biggest struggle many of us have is with our mindset. At our core we don’t really see ourselves as worship ministers, skilled and equipped to serve the congregation with music instruments.

So if we wait till we are ready, what will almost always happen is that something will crop up. Our kids will start acting up when we are going to practice, or our jobs will suddenly have a burst of work requiring OT, or something like that. All these events will delay us and become excuses for us to not pursue the equipping and training we need. So we end up not serving at all.

That’s why I urge you to make a firm commitment to begin serving in worship. Talk with your leaders about it (submission to authority is crucial as a worship musician) and give a definite date.

And once you do that you will tell your subconscious that you ARE committed to serving, and that it is to submit itself to you and work with you to obtain ALL the equipping and training you need.

Now on my part, I am in the midst of compiling and defining what are the music skills needed to play in an average church setting. This will be useful both to those who are interested in serving but need to know if they are skilled enough or what they need to work on, as well as to Worship leaders who are actively trying to recruit new musicians, because potential candidates would want to know what is expected of them before they subject their music skills to scrutiny.

But YOU can just email me about what skills you are gonna need at which level and I can give YOU an answer straight away. And if you are actively taking lessons from me I’ll tell you what else you’re gonna need to be ready.

And by the way, in case I haven’t mentioned it yet, after you start playing for worship, that’s when we can start moving on to the REAL training. Not that you’ve not been receiving real training from me before, but everything I share suddenly seems to take a deeper share of meaning.

Those of you who are actively serving in worship right now, whether at a cell group/small group level or for church services will understand what I mean.

Pray about the question I shared from King David “who then is willing to consecrate himself this day to the LORD?” May you be in that number, and experience the exciting and blessed journey that such a decision will bring.

Be blessed!