On My Facebook Wall

I received this message on my Facebook wall.

"Thank you so much for your help in music ministry! People have NO idea how taxing being a Worship Pastor is, and your instruction makes it soo much easier! I have tried some of your techniques, and they REALLY do work...talk about a move from God! May God continue to bless your ministry as well as your instruction! Blessings!"

Min. Warren Gilmore
Worship Pastor
Urban Outreach
East St. Louis, IL USA

One thing about Warren, he isn't a newbie to worship ministry or leading worship. If you check out his Youtube videos you can see that he is a fantastic singer and musician. On top of that, he can do something I cannot do, choir arrangements.

In other words, he is someone I would not presume to teach. He's got the charisma, music skill and enough experience in the things of God to make things work even if everything else goes wrong. Telling someone like him that I've got an easier way for him to get results in worship ministry is like approaching a billionaire to tell him you've got ways for him to save money in his day-to-day expenses. He can make it easily without my advice, why should he take it?

But he did, and even more than that, he was kind enough to tell me about how my Invisible Worship Musician has helped him. And that humbles me deeply.

This incident drives home to me a lesson about what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15:10.

1 Cor 15:10 (NIV) - But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.

This verse summarizes Paul's ministry – it began with a touch from God, Paul responded with all that he could humanly do ("I worked harder than all of them"), and yet realizes that even that was from God ("the grace of God that was with me").

And that also describes where I am now. I began my ministry with a touch from God (all the insights and experiences I detailed in Invisible Worship Musician) and responded with all I could humanly do (write the book, set up the site and do marketing work). Some people have felt my promotional work was too extreme, that I was too boastful about my abilities and that if I truly trusted God I would have toned down on my marketing efforts and spend my time praying instead.

You can guess that I didn't pay much attention to those people!

(marketing for Christians, a topic for another blog post?)

And Warren's post on my Facebook wall strongly reminded me that ultimately even the best of my natural efforts are still God working in me. If what I have can be a blessing even to someone like him, then it really must have come from God.

Now I find myself in a funny position. I used to find Christians who deflected praise cheesy. Do you know what I am talking about? I'm talking about those who, when you affirm them in some way or other ("Hey, you played the drums really well today!"), would say things like "All glory to God, it's all his grace". I thought there was something wrong with how they seemed unwilling to acknowledge that they put in effort and made themselves available to God to be used by him to bless his people.

But that is where I am now. All the human efforts I have put in (and which I used to be proud of) just look so lame now compared to what God did through it. So now I have to say, like those I found cheesy, that it's really God's grace working through me.

The point of what I am sharing is this:

There are believers who spend their time talking about God working through them, but they so busy waiting for God to zap them into inspired action and they miss the little steps they can take right now to become the right person in the right place for God to use for a supernatural work. Why? Because they don't see God working through the ordinary, the unexciting and the un-glamorous in their lives.

There are others who get so caught up with the human efforts that they even resort to methods they would be ashamed to acknowledge. One Christian marketer I know used an automatic article spinner to produce many different versions of an article he wrote and submitted those mass-generated articles to many sites to get Google's attention. The problem is, those articles ended up un-readable, with poor choices of synonyms, and therefore of no help to people reading them. And he did all this for the sake of tricking Google's search engines.

It is so difficult to navigate through life, to find that right balance where we labour as unto the LORD and yet fully trust him to work in us, through us and for us. So if you know God has brought you to that point, rejoice in him! And then expect that he will still have some more growing for you to do. And you disagree with what I write here, that's OK too. I'm still growing in the Lord myself, and if I am wrong it's only a matter of time before God will teach and convict me about it. I'm sure of that!

Be blessed, everyone!


P.S. Do take some time to enjoy the Youtube videos of Minister Warren Gilmore I find them very inspiring!