Lessons from the Olympics

Singapore won an Olympic medal, FINALLY!

For those of you who are not from Singapore and don't understand why this is a really big deal, you need to know first and foremost is that Singapore is basically a social experiment on a national scale. Everything good that we have (business success, living environment and all that) was the result of careful planning, strategizing and government intervention (either direct or indirect).

(That's why, by the way, telling a Singaporean to let something just naturally happen is so difficult. It's directly opposite the inclination ingrained into our Singaporean DNA...)

And that is what happened in the Beijing Olympics. The Singapore Table Tennis Team was anchored by three athletes who were born in China, not Singapore. They were carefully wooed over to Singapore and offered Singaporean citizenship to compete for Singapore. And when our first Olympic medal in 48 years as the result of this deliberate effort, it vindicated the efforts (and money) spent on pursuing this policy.

But when it was announced that our table tennis team was in the finals (and thus assured of a medal) the nation pretty much forgot where these athletes were born. All we cared about was that we knew we were finally going to get a medal of some sort, and suddenly even those apathetic towards sports in general began following the Olympic Games to see how our team would do.

"And what does that have to do with us, JJ?"

Did you know that we, as believers, also have people following us in our lives and cheering us on to win glory for God?

"Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us." (Hebrews 12:1, NIV)

Think about it. In Church history, we have heroes who have accomplished great things for God. We have the early believers who withstood the persecution of insane Roman emperors, reformers who struggled to bring the truths of God's word back to the people of God, to missionaries who gave up their creature comforts, families and their own lives to further the spread of the Gospel of Christ.

And they have passed the baton to us, for us to continue the race marked out for us. It is now time for US to run the race, to perform the best we can with our earthly lives, and, if Christ should tarry, pass the baton to the next generation. And cheer them on, just as the believers who have gone before us are cheering us on right now.

What the Singapore government did for the China-born athletes, wooing them over from a different country to win sporting glory for our own, is what God has done for us in Christ.

"All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath." (Ephesians 2:3, NIV)

We were by nature no different from the sinners of this world, the unsaved. And yet God chose to seek us out, to woo us over to another kingdom, the kingdom of heaven. Then he sent us forth with the charge to win glory for the name of Jesus.

One interesting thing I learned from the table tennis saga is how much winning a medal can cause people to overlook mistakes and bloopers. One of the athletes from the men's team played without a coach by his side and performed dismally. The head of the Singapore Table Tennis Association announced that serious action would be taken against those responsible. Rumors that the head coach and the team manager would be fired ran rife.

And the nation went into an uproar. No one condoned leaving an athlete coach-less during the Olympics, but the head coach and team manager also shared in the credit for our medal. And so the furor grew against the supposed unfair and harsh treatment awaiting the coach and team manager when they returned to Singapore. The women's table tennis team, instead of coming back like victors, returned to Singapore with their heads bowed low because of the uncertainty over what would happen to their coach and manager.

And I believe the heavenly witnesses are feeling the same about us when we slip up. They don't like us sinning, causing shame to the name of Christ. But they stand on our side, urging us on and defending us against those who seek to discredit us and our contributions to the body of Christ. And that is how we believers here on earth ought to look at our fellow team-mates who stumble in their race for Christ.

But what if we have not been living our lives to win glory for the name of Christ in this race of life?

"... One thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus." (Philippians 3:13-14, NIV)

Really, there is no better time to start than now. If you are struggling with some sin or hindrance in your Christian walk, get help from a pastor whom you trust. If you know what you are supposed to do and have been neglecting it (happens to me too, trust me) get up, dust yourself off and get on with it. The heroes of our faith are watching you now in heaven and they are cheering you on!

May we be able to say one day, together with the Apostle Paul,

"I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing." (2 Timothy 4:7-8, NIV)

Sin And Restoration

Words cannot express the shock, dismay and grief I felt when I came across this story:

HE preached to thousands about his terminal illness and tugged at hearts with a hit song.

The problem is the pastor wasn't dying at all

Michael Guglielmucci, who inspired hundreds of thousands of young Christians with his terminal cancer "battle", has been exposed as a fraud.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24216087-5006787,00.html

"Why does this dismay you, JJ?"

First of all, it's a brother-in-Christ who fell morally, who sinned. Paul in 2 Corinthians 11:29, said:

"Who is weak, and I do not feel weak? Who is led into sin, and I do not inwardly burn?" (NIV)

That's what I am feeling right now, an inward burning. Whether I like the guy's music, his church or his doctrine is immaterial right now. A brother in Christ has fallen publicly.

Also, I am expecting the vultures to begin swooping in to discredit everything good God has done through that man. Seriously speaking, he's got the churches, denomination and now even the police looking into his life. His own conscience would have been troubling him all this while, and now he has to deal with the fact that he has deeply hurt his own family and betrayed AND discredited his fellow ministers.

He needs our prayers now, even more than before. And on our part we need to be ready and not caught off guard, for there will be even more cases like this in the future. That's what the Bible has already predicted.

"Some of the wise will stumble, so that they may be refined, purified and made spotless until the time of the end." (Daniel 11:35, NIV)

So be prepared! When a prominent minister of Christ falls, we need to remember what the Bible teaches us to do:

"Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently. But watch yourself, or you also may be tempted." (Galatians 6:1, NIV)

Restore him gently. We are commanded to bring healing, not condemnation. Yes, I know that the faith of many has been damaged and people have turned away from the Lord because of scandals like this. But God's Word still tells us to seek to bring about restoration.

This verse is both sobering and encouraging at the same time. Paul tells us that the spiritual seeking to restore the fallen sibling-in-Christ have to be cautious of being tempted. No matter how strong we are in the Lord, remember that Paul addressed his warning to the spiritual amongst them, not the carnal. This tells me that the spiritual can still fall, if they are not careful. "No temptation has seized you except what is common to man..." Sobering, isn't it?

But the encouraging part is this: if even the spiritual can be tempted, then being tempted does not mean that we are not spiritual. Many believers assume that as they grow more spiritual they Lord and see his hand in their lives they will be less prone to being tempted. And when they are tempted and tested (the word used in the Greek carries the idea of being tested, examined and disciplined) they begin to doubt their spiritual growth and the Lord's work in their lives.

Don't doubt yourself or the Lord. The testing and temptations you face mean only one thing: that you are still human. You may be a spiritual human (I certainly hope so!) but you are still human none the less.

"Carry each other's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ." (Galatians 6:2, NIV)

We can see in the context that this verse not only refers to helping one another in day-to-day living, but also specifically when a sibling-in-Christ has fallen. They fall under burdens that they cannot carry by themselves, and we, the rest of the body of Christ, are to help them AND to permit others to help US. We need to live in genuine fellowship with each other in order to fulfill this command to carry each others' burdens.

It's my firm personal conviction that if this pastor was totally open with at least ONE brother-in-Christ he respected before he started living a life of deception, this ONE brother-in-Christ would have been able to keep him on track before the lies and deception ballooned to monstrous proportions. Just ONE, that's all it would have taken to prevent this entire scandal and fiasco.

And we are talking about a pastor already used powerfully by God. If HE, with all his theological training, understanding and experience in the Lord, needed the help and support of the Body of Christ, how much more the rest of us!

"If anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself." (Galatians 6:3, NIV)

This verse is not referring to having a lousy opinion of oneself. It refers to acknowledging that we all need help. We all need the fellowship of the believers, people who will help us carry our burdens as we help carry theirs.

Why would someone NOT want to let others help carry his or her own burdens? Fear. When we need other people to help us, we become vulnerable. Such people can hurt us by simply refusing to help, even worse they are also in a better position to betray us because they know our weaknesses and struggles.

So that is why I am deeply honoured whenever anyone chooses to share with me their own personal burdens and struggles. I suspect it's the favour of God upon my life, that I've got friends who share with me deep, intimate secrets about their personal lives. I'd like to think that it's because I have the wisdom of God to help them; but most of the time I only know enough to pray for them.

But don't underestimate the power of knowing that a sibling-in-Christ accepts you for who you are and is consistently praying for you. This is often enough to break the power of shame in our lives.

The best definition of shame I ever read is this: shame is the nagging feeling that, deep down inside, there is something inherently wrong with me. And together with shame comes the fear, that if people know me, really know the REAL me, they would turn away from me and reject me.

What makes shame so insidious is that anyone, even those who look as if they have their lives in shape, can have it. In fact, it can be worse for them because there doesn't seem to be any way out. A jobless man who has shame can believe that his shame will go away once he finds a job. Usually it doesn't, it hides for a while and appears in another area of his life. Someone with family problems can believe that if the problems are fixed the shame will go away. But those who have their lives together and still have shame are stuck.

"Each one should test his own actions. Then he can take pride in himself, without comparing himself to somebody else, for each one should carry his own load." (Galatians 6:4-5, NIV)

Here is where I speculate on the reason for this deception.

And no, I don't believe it is for money. Why? Well, this pastor is the youth pastor of a powerful church in Australia. And they don't pay shabby. Let's not forget also he has royalties coming on from 60 songs already, so I don't believe money is the issue.

I believe it is because he was dissatisfied with the load he had to carry in this life and felt it had to be something else in order to really bring glory to God. Hence the need to 'help' God make his own personal message more 'glorious'.

It would be fantastic if you write a great worship song about God's healing while you are suffering from terminal disease, that song becomes a hit and you see God's healing of your body later on. What a great testimony to Christ!

But does it become any less glorious if all you did was write a great worship song about healing and you have no personal testimony about it? It's all about being true to the load you have to carry in this life.

Yes, other people may have great testimonies, and those testimonies make their message powerful. But do not despise the message you already have and the testimony you already are by being faithful to the load you have to carry in this life.

Yup, it's tempting sometimes to embellish our testimonies a bit, especially if we didn't come from shady backgrounds and thus don't have much 'street cred', as they'll call it in the hip-hop scene. Or if we weren't delivered from crippling addictions, or a few million in debt, or whatever. But in such moments all we can depend on is God empowering the songs we sing and the words we speak. And when we see God touching the lives of others through us we know it is entirely because of God, not of us.

And, for me at least, I think that is more than good enough!

Announcement

Hi, everyone!

You may have noticed that my website was down for the past few days. Putting it simply, I made a huge mistake and had to rebuild my website from ground up. Thank God I still kept copies of my text!

Well, I used the opportunity to redo my site (what else could I do?) and make some changes that have been on my mind. I've decided that I'll post the non-worship ministry stuff here on my blog and put up some how to articles on my site as a reference for you. You can check out these articles here, a lot of them were written over the past three weeks.

And if you have any ideas and suggestions for articles that you'd like me to write, do send me an email or leave me a comment here.

Be blessed!

Detox Your Mind

I'm kinda on a detox programme.

That means I am eating even more fruits than usual to substitute for processed foods. I usually gulp down lots of water daily, and I'm careful to monitor my exposure to toxic chemicals in my environment. But I recently decided to turn things up a notch with even more fruits.

Someone from church noticed me gulping down fruits last Sunday, and, much to his amusement, heard my two sons clamouring for the fruits too. When he commented on that I suddenly remembered what I learned years ago: We can be satisfied and sated with taste of natural food, but with processed foods (loaded with additives and artificial flavourings) we can't, so we'll keep eating them over and over.

Kinda like the way the thinking of this world, being unnatural to who we are as born-again believers, can actually be quite addictive to our thought patterns. And I suddenly saw the parallel between using fruits to detoxify the body and using the Word of God to detoxify the mind.

"… offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind." (Romans 12:1-2, NIV)

Notice that immediately after we are admonished to offer our bodies as living sacrifices (a form of worship), we are told to renew our minds? One aspect of renewing the mind I personally struggle a lot with is the removing of wrong and erroneous ideas so that they can be replaced with the truths of God's Word.

For example, if you struggle with fear, you will have to meditate on God's love, because perfect love (obviously comes only from God) casts out fear. If you struggle with ill-health, you will have to meditate on God's forgiveness, because often people who struggle with ill-health don't really believe, in their very heart of hearts, that they are forgiven of all their sins in Christ.

So to correct all my wrong beliefs and to grow even further in my salvation, I will labour and strive to feed my mind with the truths of God's Word. I am deadly serious about this matter, I consider it a life-or-death issue in the area of spiritual growth.

Why do I put in so much effort in this area? Because I want the results: transformation. I want to live life the way Jesus would, and that comes from thinking the way HE thinks and not the world's way. For that I had to force myself to actively engage in God's Word everyday, until my soul acquired a taste for the things of God. Once I got to that point, I had to press on until my soul acquired a hunger for the things of God. And I found, to my pleasant surprise, that I actually enjoyed spending time in God's Word.

However, I soon found that I was beating myself up emotionally when I slipped. It's even worse to slip if you're spending a lot of time in God's Word and seeking him in worship and prayer. Because you think you should know (and do) better than that. Therefore it's way too easy to come down hard on ourselves when we slip up.

Ever been there?

Why is it that detox-ing the mind (removing the wrong ideas and thought patterns) can be difficult at times? Two reasons:

1) We don't realize how much mental junk we've accumulated over the years.

Stop and think: we are continually exposed to worldly thinking and all that pretty much from birth onwards. It can be in major things (copying the behavior of the people in Hong Kong soap operas) or even in minor things like the way we speak.

For example: do we say "I feel angry" or "I am angry"? If we use the word "feel" we give ourselves room to feel other emotions too, besides anger. But when we say "am" we are telling ourselves that anger is part of our innate identity, the way I'd say "I am Junjie, I am a father, I am a compulsive teacher, I am… "

All those things are part of my identity, I will always be those things. But when we add negative emotions to the mix, like anger, frustration, laziness, and all that, we are wiring all that into our personal identities. And we then become more prone to all these emotions.

They then become self-fulfilling prophecies. Sneaky, right?

I spent some time as a pub musician doing Chinese and Cantonese pop songs, and I'd tell you one thing: Usually the songs that sell (and get requested more often in pubs) are songs about messed up romance lives. I find it very disturbing that many of the professional pub singers also have messed up romance lives also. You'll find lesbianism, single mothers, lousy marriages or other problems amongst the singers.

Just goes to show how much damage mental junk can do in people's lives. We can accumulate so much of it unthinkingly, so we need to give ourselves much more time to let God clear it out of our system.

Seriously, seeing all these just made me realize how much power there is in a song. Because what people sing often becomes their reality, we worship leaders and musicians have been entrusted with a very heavy responsibility in the lives of God's people.

2) We don't realize God's role in this process.

And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory… (2 Corinthians 3:18, NIV)

I must confess that for years I subconsciously read the above passage as "… we transform ourselves into his likeness…" And Romans 12 as "… transform yourself by the renewing of your mind". I was wrong.

God is the one who transforms us. We renew our minds, God transforms us. We reflect the Lord's glory, he transforms us.

If we fall into the error of believing that we are the ones transforming ourselves, we deny God the opportunity to work his power in our lives. When we try to do what only God can do, we doom ourselves to frustration and failure. We may not see it immediately, but it's only a matter of time before it becomes obvious.

This principle is a parallel of the one that applies to God's word: we think, ponder and meditate on the Bible, God is the one who gives the understanding. (This came out in my blogpost here: http://jvworship.blogspot.com/2008/01/bible-regime.html)

No matter how I turn, I still keep coming back to the wineskin and wine analogy: we can produce the wineskin, but only God can give us the wine. Our role is to prepare a wineskin that can adequately hold and contain the wine of God. His is to give us the wine of his Spirit.

Don't make the mistake of thinking that by creating the wineskin we're automatically creating the wine too, get what I mean?

In conclusion, I'd like to urge you to always be on the lookout for ideas, assumptions and thought patterns that will contaminate your mind with the thinking of this world. And when you feed yourself with the truths of God's Word, remember that you can feed yourself, but only God can transform you to be more like Jesus. Be blessed!

Isolation vs Community

I know this sounds rather morbid, but I always had a fascination for criminal psychology, cult mentality and other fields of human stupidity. I have this burning question within: what makes intelligent people do really stupid things?

And when you take this fascination and apply it to the book of Proverbs, you get interesting insights. As most of you know, I've built a congregation-first paradigm for worship ministry, based on the forgotten commandment, love your neighbor as yourself. Because many people don't see the worship ministry this way, there are still a lot of performance-minded people in the worship ministry.

I've said it before, Performers, because what they do need not take the specific needs of the congregation into account, can end up separated from the rest of the Body of Christ. If they ever encounter any opposition or misunderstanding from the body of Christ they face the danger of ending up offended and resentful. They can see themselves as modern-day Jeremiahs, misunderstood and persecuted by some elements in the body of Christ, and they start being defensive and easily offended. Once they go that route it is only a matter of time before they become hardened and calloused in their hearts. They start to hold ideas like “As long as God is with me, I can ignore the rest of those back-slid, lukewarm, pew-warming people who are pitiful excuses for Christians. I don’t need them…”

What I recently found out (Thanks, George!) was that there already was a verse that described this situation, Proverbs 18:1.

A man who isolates himself seeks his own desire; He rages against all wise judgment. (NKJV)

What are the possible factors causing a person to isolate himself from the rest of the body of Christ? One factor is unresolved offences with other believers. These can cause a believer to develop a persecution complex, believing that everyone else is out to get them, that they are the only true believers left, while everyone else is backslidden and used by the devil to whack them. Performers are especially prone to this deception.

Another factor is basic temperament. Some people are just socially inept by upbringing, or really shy by nature (or both, like me for example). More serious, however, are cases when a person hasn't been brought up to care for other people.

In child development psychology, this is called egocentrism. It doesn't mean that the person is proud, it means that this person doesn't (or can't) see things from another person's point of view. In the developmental paradigm of Jean Piaget (you can look him up on Wikipedia) children go through a stage when they are caught up in egocentrism (usually between the ages of 3 to 8 years old).

At that age, children may do selfish things, not because they are selfish but because it is difficult for them to conceptualize any better. What becomes a problem is when a child is not nurtured past this stage, or because of some traumatic life events a person regresses back to this stage. Then we get what's described in the NIV translation of this verse:

An unfriendly man pursues selfish ends; he defies all sound judgment. (NIV)

Yet another factor that can lead to a person isolating himself/herself from the rest of the Body of Christ is a lack of confidence or self-esteem. In fact, this is the story I actually wanted to share with you in this post.

There was this season when my personal confidence was very much shaken. I had things go wrong on me and received about one major blow per day that season. And I started retreating into myself and shutting myself up from other people. I was going down the path of isolating myself and losing my clarity, judgment and discernment.

Pretty much out of nowhere two of my friends got in touch with me again. They are the ones who have always been encouraging and supportive of my crazy ideas… or shall we say, my crazier ones, since there are people who think all my ideas are crazy. They didn't know what was going on, they just had some stuff to contact me over.

And just the reminder that they were there, and the memories of all the help, encouragement and advice they gave me in the past, was enough to snap me out of my persecution complex and my pity party.

The lessons I got out of this incident were:

1) God himself wants you to stay in community with other believers. He will arrange for people to contact you when you may be tempted to isolate yourself, or he will prompt you to contact other believers to bless them by your presence and encouragement.

In either case, don't dismiss the work God wants to do for you and through you. If you are beginning to isolate yourself, swallow your pride and share with that sibling-in-Christ your struggles and burdens. If you feel led to call up a sibling-in-Christ out of nowhere, make the call, send the email or mobile phone text message NOW. Don't make the mistake of thinking "I'll do it later." I'm so glad my two friends didn't delay…

2) You too can proactively seek out other believers to encourage them. The reason these two can minister to me just by contacting me is because we have lots of shared experiences. And these didn't just happen, we put in effort to nurture our relationships before. The three of us had our fair share of misunderstandings, bloopers and tough conversations when we messed things up. And my friends were able to minister to me (probably without knowing it) because WE (not just I or they, but WE) worked through things and kept the fellowship intact no matter what.

Of course, if you know that a sibling-in-Christ has suffered a disappointment or setback recently, you might want to get in touch with them to make sure they're ok. These setbacks can be crushing if they come one after another. Your sibling-in-Christ might be having the courage and strength crushed out of them by their circumstances, by one setback after another, without you knowing it. It's better to just take the chance and get in touch with them, just to be sure.

… encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness. (Hebrews 3:13, NIV)

That's about it for now. I'll be posting some other stuff soon (fingers crossed). In the meantime, be blessed, everyone!

Engaging with the Proverbs

Worship, then wisdom. David, then Solomon. In the bible, after the Psalms we have the book of Proverbs. This tells me that as we live lives of worship, we find ourselves better able to access the wisdom of God, especially the wisdom of the book of Proverbs.

The problem with the Book of Proverbs is this: the treasures don’t yield themselves to a superficial glace. Let’s face it, a large number of Proverbs seem to be stating the obvious. Like Proverbs 14:5, for example.

“A truthful witness does not deceive, but a false witness pours out lies.” (NIV) Reading that makes me want to say “Duh! Tell me something I can’t figure out already using some common sense!”

But if you want more of the Book of Proverbs to come alive to you, you’ve got to deeply engage with it, to ask yourself questions about what it says and how it all links together. Let me show you an example.

Proverbs 14:1 (NIV) - The wise woman builds her house, but with her own hands the foolish one tears hers down.

Let’s stop to think about this verse. Does the ‘house’ in this passage refer to an actual brick-cement-and-mortar building? Unlikely, since women don’t usually build or tear down those (we have construction workers and demolition teams for that). So, this passage will refer to the family. A wise woman builds her family, a foolish one tears hers down.

Now here’s the crux: what could possibly make a woman do things that tear down her family? And what kind of actions would tear down a family, sunder the relationships and leave it in tatters? Once you draw up even a small list of actions that destroy a family, start to imagine what emotional state a foolish woman would be in to engage in such behavior.

Any deep insights yet? If not, let’s move on to another one.

Proverbs 15:1 (NIV) - A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.

I know this sounds very obvious. But here’s my next question: why would someone give a harsh word that stirs up anger?

To backtrack a bit, this verse is really applicable in an argument. Let’s say the conversation may start normally, but someone says something that offends you. And at that point you have to make a decision: gentle or harsh?

In real life it’s not as simple as that, of course. Why? Because the other person may have subconsciously decided to lose their temper, and want YOU to lose yours too. (They don’t want to be miserable alone, so they want you to join them in their misery) So they’ll give you a harsh word to your gentle answer. What are you going to do then? Gentle or harsh?

Ok, let’s take a quick perspective jump over to the other side. How does the person using the harsh word justify speaking harshly? Recognize that oftentimes they feel they are speaking the truth and you are refusing to listen to it, so they think its ok for them to speak harshly to get the point across (or that you give them no choice, they HAVE to be nasty with you, for your own good).

And when you can give a gentle answer, they can see that you’re in control of yourself. That can lead to two results; either they’ll be sobered by that and try to bring themselves under control also, or they will be ashamed by that and want to drag you down to their level. So they turn up the hostility even more in the hope of provoking you further.

Proverbs 27:3 (NIV) - Stone is heavy and sand a burden, but provocation by a fool is heavier than both.

So what are you going to do then? Are you going to stay or leave the situation?

Proverbs 27:12 (NIV) - The prudent see danger and take refuge, but the simple keep going and suffer for it.

At this point you are in danger of losing your own temper and saying and doing foolish things. If someone is determined to make you lose your temper it is very difficult to keep it, especially while the provocation continues. I highly recommend leaving the scene.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not against anger. I believe anger is a precious gift from God, to give us energy to take action when our boundaries are being violated. The problem comes when the anger is becomes a reflex action, we snap into anger (and not thinking) when things go wrong or when people continually provoke us. This is why the Bible says:

Proverbs 22:24-25 (NIV) - Do not make friends with a hot-tempered man, do not associate with one easily angered, or you may learn his ways and get yourself ensnared.

And you’ll see from this whether it is wise to continue associating with such a person. But when would you have no choice, you’re stuck with such a person?

Proverbs 21:9 (NIV) - Better to live on a corner of the roof than share a house with a quarrelsome wife.

Let’s start putting the pieces together. A quarrelsome wife often infects her husband with the same quarrelsome spirit. This is very hard to avoid, since the husband is face-to-face with her everyday, and his attempts at giving gentle replies to turn aside anger are repulsed. It’s very easy to just think it’s no point, and he just swings to the other extreme and gets as quarrelsome as she is. In fact, out of frustration he may even decide to go one-up on her. (And then of course the wife starts seeing herself as the innocent victim).

This, my dear siblings-in-Christ, is the beginning of a toxic environment, one that may easily end up with both the spouses going physically violent on each other, since they have already started being verbally violent. Now, think about the kids. In such an environment, what are they learning about resolving conflict, relating with people of the opposite sex and how to behave when they are angry?

Could this be one of the ways a foolish woman tears down her house? If you really want to know, you’ll have to read through the book of Proverbs and pay attention to how often folly and being bad-tempered and quarrelsome are spoken of together.

Then if you examine the whole process again you learn to recognize the symptoms of a person (male or female) who can go quarrelsome on you when things go wrong. And do so even before they actually quarrel with you in the first place. How much peace and freedom from strife will knowing that bring to your life? Is it worth the effort to mine the book of Proverbs for its treasures?

Do you start to see the reason why the Proverbs are oftentimes stating the obvious? Because when we are in the really negative situations in life, we often find it hard to see the obvious…

And all this is just simply on the topic of quarrelsome people in general (and wives in particular). If you want more to ponder, try this: what kind of person would regularly flop at Proverbs 18:13? How does such a person think? What are his or her assumptions? How would they behave? What are the ways they could have ended up that way? How can they get themselves out of that behavior pattern?

“Wow, JJ, that’s a lot of work. Are you sure we have to go through all this?”

What I shared above is ONE example of how I engage with the book of Proverbs. There are of course other ways of doing it that I am sure will give results too. What I do know for certain is that you MUST be prepared to mine the depths of this book to get the full benefits of the wisdom God has hidden inside.

Proverbs 25:2 (NIV) - It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of kings.

Well, my follow King-in-Christ, I suggest you take out your spiritual shovel, open up to the Book of Proverbs and start digging. And if you come up with anything interesting, send me an email!

Be blessed!

Ways to contact JJ

I am working out a communications system for my training. It's gonna involve my blog, the announcements page on my website (www.invisibleworshipmusician.com/announcements.htm) and the forums I am involved in. This will allow us to communicate more easily, instead of being totally dependent on email.

In other words, if you see a lot of announcements on my blog or site but you're not getting it on your email, you'll need to contact me to sign you up for my email mailing list. There may have been some error in the email address you gave the first time.

In case you need to contact me before that system is fully set up, I am a member of the forum at www.worshiptherock.com. You can join it free-of-charge and join in the discussions there, and you can also contact me through that forum if you can't get me through email. (And say that I invited you, it makes me look good). :)

Ok, that's all for now. Be blessed, everyone!

Nicolaitan Email

One thing I do to keep my finger on the pulse of the worship scene worldwide is to sign up for worship lists and forums. Just reading the same questions over and over again from different people all over the world is a great way to see what are the issues that bother the people in the body of Christ when it comes to worship ministry.

So when my book came out I also sent an announcement to ONE of the lists I subscribe to. Why didn't I send it out to more? Dunno, didn't feel right. Anyway, I got this email last week from someone who subscribed to that list, reproduced here for you in exact detail.

____

57.00 dollars for an ebook your insane

dont you feel your gouging the body a little bit here

bob sorges books can be found for 99 cents

judson cornwall let us praise abebooks com a dollar

and those are amazing powerful life changing books

go buy those insteads of hajis 57.00 ebook

_______

I took a quick trip over to my mailing list, the one that emails people links to the extracts from my book. Just as I suspected, this person didn't even check out my extracts before coming to a conclusion about my book. So at that moment I had to choose what to do. I chose to interpret Proverbs 26:4-5 (NIV) this way:

"Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you will be like him yourself." – Don't answer to this person in the same tone and attitude. I've to answer him at a higher level than he emailed me at.

"Answer a fool according to his folly, or he will be wise in his own eyes." This means that in my email I've to show him clearly his foolishness, or he'll think he was right and what he did was fine.

Let's face it, if you read my usual writing, you know it'll take me a lot of strain and effort to write at that guy's level, using his tone and attitude. Just for the exercise I decided to pretend I had a humungous lobotomy. If I had the lobotomy and a stroke (lost the common sense and courtesy part of my brain) and wanted to answer him according to his folly (same tone and attitude) it'll look like this:

_____

your insane yurself

u didnt even read the free pages u think u noe if the book is good

go read your powerful life changing books if they teach u to judge befor you get all yur facts rite

if money is an issue go get a job instead of emailing what you dunno bout

or if you want my book free ask nicely I sometimes do charity work haha

______

But of course, I didn't reply to him that way. Here's my spur of the moment reply

______
Hi, R!

> 57.00 dollars for an ebook your insane

No, not really. (nevermind what my wife thinks.) :) (following proverbs 12:16)

> dont you feel your gouging the body a little bit here

If you want to see what is my opinion of gouging the body, read the most recent post on the worship business
at www.jvworship.blogspot.com. If THAT doesn't get your blood boiling...   (Using proverbs 15:1)

> bob sorges books can be found for 99 cents
> judson cornwall let us praise abebooks com a dollar
> and those are amazing powerful life changing books

And you can say that my book isn't. Without reading it. Hmmmm... There's a
verse in Proverbs 18:13 about those who answer before listening.
You want life-changing at a discount? Get THAT verse. (You do have a bible of your own, right?)       

(ok, that last part wasn't nice of me. I admit that)

Hey R, let me tell you something about what I am doing. I am writing a tough book, one that people need to read.
And I am putting the whole thing on a money-back guarantee. Everytime anyone buys the book I have to pay Paypal.
That means I make a loss if anyone asks for a refund.

IF you are involved in worship ministry (not just a bystander) get the book. If you don't get results from it (or even if
you do but you still don't like me) ask for the refund. The ebook is still in YOUR possession (I can't take it back),
I'll have made a loss, and you'll still have the insights, revelations and knowledge I paid for with not just money, but
sweat and tears.

> go buy those insteads of hajis 57.00 ebook

Let me ask YOU a question then. How much would YOU price an ebook written by a friend of yours if you know that
the message in this ebook is difficult for people to accept, but has been used by your friend over and over again to not
only lead worship himself but teach total newbies to do the same. And do it effectively, over and over again. How much
would you tell your friend to charge for that?

And how much would that ebook be worth if lots of the other material around not only doesn't work, but blames the
user ("What I teach you doesn't work for you, not because I am teaching you the wrong things, but because you're not
called to the worship ministry or there's something wrong with your heart").

What price would you tell your friend to charge for the book if you know he will get loads of grief, accusations and
misunderstandings, often from people who are perfectly happy with the status quo and don't want growth? And you,
personally, what would you say to your friend who knows that he will get grief for what he's trying to do for the body of
Christ, but still goes ahead and does it anyway, because many have been blessed, but he still wants to bless even
more?

Thanks, R, for taking the time to email your thoughts. I respect that a whole lot more than people who would
criticise me behind my back. You had the courage to bring up the matter with me directly. I respect that. 

And I also appreciate the opportunity to clarify my thoughts on this. I mean, you can guess that what I just emailed
above isn't what I should put on my website, yah?

Finally, R, I'd like to get your permission to quote YOUR email and my reply on my blog. It's something that the rest
of my students need to read. Are you ok with that?

_____ 

Yup, that was my email reply. I actually wanted to use his email for a generic post on Proverbs, but the fellow actually emailed me again with shocking news – he's actually a pastor. Hence the main point of this post.

I teach the Bible, and I know for this season that God has entrusted me with insights and understanding for the body of Christ in the area of worship ministry. It's not my responsibility at this season to teach about other areas. But that doesn't mean that what I have to share doesn't apply to other areas of life too.

One of the things I have taught about in my book is about the Nicolaitan spirit. I described that spirit and how it manifests itself in the worship ministry in some detail in my book, but I didn't mention this one symptom of the Nicolaitan spirit: behaving as if one is above the rules. In other words, "the rules that apply to others don't apply to me".

Under the conventional worship ministry paradigm, which claims that effectiveness was based on the heart, it was difficult to be effective in worship ministry and not fall prey to pride. Think about it, people kept saying that the heart was the key factor for success, which implied that if you are effective in leading worship, you had a heart that God was pleased with. Not easy to resist pride if you believe that.

If a worship musician or leader from that point gets infected with the Nicolaitan virus, it can manifest in various ways, such as skipping sermons ("I don't need to go, since I know the way to the presence of God") or missing practices, or not attending church when not serving in worship. Or in how he/she treats other people.

This principle also applies to ministry beyond the worship ministry too. We have in this situation a clear-cut example of a pastor who forgot that the wisdom from heaven is pure, peace-loving and considerate (James 3:17). God may be using this pastor powerfully in some ways, but Proverbs 18:13 still applies to every one of God's children, no matter how powerfully God uses him (or anyone else) in the ministry.

Or let me put it to you this way: if you are a father, would you put up with one of your children insulting another one of your children? Would you close one eye and say "it's ok, he's dedicated to my work and purposes, I can let him bash another one of my kids once in a while"?

Don't think so.

For those of you who have read my book, by the time you get to the last chapter you'll understand why you can say that my entire book is addressing the Nicolaitan spirit that often arises in the worship ministry. And though I explain loads of technical issues in considerable detail in the book, once you understand it you'll realize that leading and playing for worship is so embarrassingly simple there is absolutely no room for pride, much less the Nicolaitan spirit.

The true nature of worship ministry is diametrically opposed to the Nicolaitan spirit. Oftentimes, just exposing the Nicolaitan spirit is enough to break its hold. I don't know if there are any easy answers to dealing with the Nicolaitan spirit outside of the worship ministry, but I hope that if there are any God will entrust them to me as I continue to be faithful with dealing with it in a worship ministry situation.

Well, this is the email I mentioned in my last post. I know some of you may disagree with me over how I handled the situation. Anyway, I can't take back my reply to him, neither could he take back his first email to me. Of course if he asked me not to quote him I wouldn't have, not because he's a pastor (I didn't know that until he replied) but because he's a sibling-in-Christ, and I know God would prefer that I respect his feelings and remember that mercy triumphs over judgment.

And for those of you who are hesitating over getting my book because of the price, grab it now while it’s on a special offer. You can check on the special offer here at www.invisibleworshipmusician.com/successstory.htm. This offer expires 27th May 2008, so hurry!

And maybe next post I can get on with the Proverbs post I want to do, one that involved child development theories... Stay tuned!

14 years - What that means

Why 14 years?

If you’ve read my promotional materials, you’ll notice that I’d emphasize the fact that I’ve been in the worship ministry for more than 14 years. It’s not having one year’s experience 14 times. The time frame is VERY significant, as you’ll understand if you’ve been around the scene long enough or if you know the history of the worship scene. That’s what I’ll be explaining in this post.

As I said before, around the mid 90’s the floodgates of worship chaos were unleashed upon Singapore. The full effects began to really kick in about the late 90’s or so. (So far my research suggests that it was a worldwide phenomenon). Despite being a believer for more than 23 years by now, I only started regularly attending church from 1992 onwards. This meant that I had firsthand experience in the worship scene before AND after the changes.

Was there no performance music in church before? Of course there was! But it didn’t take centre stage as much as it did later. There were worship leaders who did worship albums that had SOME performance-type songs, but the majority of what they did was usable in church. At that time CCM (contemporary Christian Music) was beginning to rise in prominence (remember Jars of Clay, anyone?) and the music of CCM was NOT used in congregational worship.

What laid the groundwork for all the later confusion was the fact that even though worship music was more common during that season, no one clearly defined what made up worship music (in fact, as far as I know, I am the first person in the worship scene to seriously expound on the topic). That was okay then because we didn’t really have to choose between using worship music or performance music for worship at church at that time.

But when performance music hit the scene in a massive way we had a correspondingly massive problem. People couldn’t agree on whether it was just a new style which needed getting used to, or if there was something that just wasn’t right. In general the musicians and the younger people welcomed the shift (“what’s wrong with good music?”) while the more conservative people (the elders and deacons) weren’t too sure.

Some of them wanted to give the new music a chance, just as they gave the modern worship format a chance when it first started. Others felt that there was something wrong but couldn’t give any objective reasons for it. And so the musicians and the youth ignored their reservations and objections and happily embraced the new sound. And so it spread.

To top it all off, some of what came out in that time COULD still be used for church worship. If you had a continuum with pure worship music at one end and pure performance music at the other, what came out in that period of time was just slightly past the midpoint of the line. It could still work, but required more effort. Then as time passed the songs went more and more towards the performance end of the line.

Now if the elders, deacons and other conservatives at that time said “All this is great to listen to, but difficult for most people to sing in church, so just listen to the CDs but not try it in church”, who knows how the worship scene in Singapore (and everywhere else in the world) might have developed? Too bad, that didn’t happen. So as the new stuff grew in popularity, those with objections or concerns found themselves more and more in the sidelines, marginalized and ignored.

I started training people in worship music during the season when the tides started changing. You can guess how confusing it was for me. Just when I thought I had the rules all figured out, the game started changing. New songs started growing in popularity, and they presented a problem for me when doing training.

Try to imagine what it was like. I was teaching the elements of worship music using worship songs as examples, and because the number of new songs popular in church grew suddenly my song selection became more and more retro in the eyes of the students. Of course I wanted to use the newer songs, but I soon found that those new songs didn’t work that well for teaching the elements of worship music unless they were dumbed down considerably, and the musician in me resisted that.

Add to the mix the fact that some of those songs really needed tweaking (or a massive overhaul) to make them work at church level (I mentioned a few such songs in my chapter on Worship Music 101) you ended up with the dilemma of giving the customers what they hear from the CD (what they wanted, what they thought was worship music) or giving them what would work when they actually used those songs themselves. It was a tough situation. People were paying you to teach them what they wanted. But what if what they thought you should do is different from what they wanted? And you couldn’t explain why?

I know I come down hard on Praise and Worship Inc. (in my book, in this blog and every other chance I get), but I did have firsthand experience in trying to make a living in the Praise and Worship business. I know firsthand what it was like to TRY to balance out my ideals as a musician and worship trainer with the pressure of having my first son on the way, loads of stuff to buy, bills and mortgages to pay. And what made it more difficult for me was that I didn’t understand what was happening in the scene. It’s so much easier to make sense of the whole thing now after a few years have passed.

God’s timing is still the best. If I knew then what I knew now would I have made a significant difference? Don’t think so. Why? Because people would still want to try out performance music anyway. And it would take years for the whole thing to run its course and for people to realize that it’s not bearing fruit. I think the season for effective worship ministry and genuine worship music has pretty much arrived. And my book’s release is a key part of that, because it explains in a step-by-step, logical format what worship music is and why it works.

Of course in the course of my journey there were funny moments as well. There were times when I’d have to lead worship, draw up a song sheet with my ‘retro’ selection, and have people say it was boring. Then I’d lead worship and everyone would encounter God in a powerful way, then I’ll be seen as a great worship leader because I could work wonders with ‘boring’ songs. Hmmm, if I had to choose between interesting songs that don’t work or boring songs that work I’d take the boring songs any day. Not a difficult choice, right?

So that’s my take on the 14 years in worship ministry. Some of you have been in church for as long as me (or even longer). Or maybe you have your own experience and opinion on the way things changed and what it meant. If my sharing of my own thoughts and opinions has triggered off your own thoughts and recollections as well, I’d love to hear from you. Do email me what you have to share!

That’s all for now. In my next post I’ll share with you all an email I received a couple of days ago and how I replied to it. I promise you that you’ll find it interesting (the offensive, non-politically-correct, JJ kind of interesting). In the meantime, be blessed!

Junjie

More on the Worship Business

When people read the chapter on Praise and Worship Inc in my book, some may just think I am just against making money through the worship business. So let me clarify, I am NOT against making money in the worship business. If I was, why would I be selling my worship ministry e-book? I should be giving it away free! (and have it valued as much as everything else I’ve given away free…)

My attitude towards the praise and worship business is heavily influenced by Marc “Animal” MacYoung. He wrote this about the Martial Arts business.

“As we said earlier, we're capitalist swine. We do believe in a fair exchange of service or goods for money. And that is where you run into problems with common practices in many commercial martial arts schools. If you are paying for something, then what they are providing had better well be what you are supposedly buying.”

http://www.nononsenseselfdefense.com/MAbusiness.htm

And that has pretty much summed up my attitude towards the worship business.

That means I am totally FOR anything that does work and that does add value to other people’s lives. I unashamedly price my e-book higher than other worship books out on the market, because I know what I teach in my book is of comparable (or greater) value than what is out in the rest of the market. I totally support copyright and royalties to songwriters, because they don’t earn money unless what they wrote ministers to the Body of Christ. And how much they earn is in direct proportion (as far as humanly possible) to the degree they have blessed us.

Read the story behind Laura Klein’s ‘I Love You, Lord’ here at http://www.ccli.co.nz/articles/article.cfm?id=8 It is one of those fantastic songs that you have specially put in effort to mess up. I challenge you to read her story, consider how many people have been blessed by this song, and tell me to my face that she doesn’t deserve to be a millionaire…

Or how about Sondra Corbett Wood’s “I Worship You, Almighty God”? Read the story here at http://www.ccli.co.nz/articles/article.cfm?id=4 How much did she bless the Body of Christ by writing one of the very few ‘in-case-of-emergency-break-glass” songs? What I found touching is the implication that, through the royalties from this song, God provided financially for her even when she lived her life totally away from the Lord.

But this kind of quality isn’t largely what comes out in the praise and worship business. What usually comes out is a lot worse.

For example, when you think about ‘worship training’, what are you expecting? If you sign up for it, what do you REALLY want? A very broad scope overview that encompasses every aspect of your life but doesn’t change any part of it? Or specifics on leading or playing music for worship, whether at small group or congregational level?

Think very carefully about your reply. Because all too often people have entered the worship business arena with the desire to learn the specifics, the details on how to lead or play for worship. Then they are told that worship as a lifestyle encompasses so much more than that (true). Finally, they are given a whole load of stuff that briefly touches on all the spiritual, non-musical aspects of worship, but leaves them still unprepared to lead or play for worship (what they paid for in the first place).

And they feel proud that they have a more sophisticated, ‘in-depth’, deeper understanding of worship than the ones who CAN lead and play for worship. The Americans have this expression called ‘drinking the Kool-aid’…

While we’re on the topic, who is the best person to teach you all the non-musical, deep, spiritual stuff about worship anyway? Wouldn’t it logically be your pastor? You can guess from my e-book that I do not have an elitist view of the Bible (i.e. I do not believe that you have to be a pastor to interpret it correctly), but why pay for training and seminars to teach you what your pastor probably is already yearning to teach you if you ask him/her nicely enough?

Now about the teaching of 'worship' music, I feel bad saying what I have to say, because many of those teaching performance music as worship music sincerely believe that they are teaching worship music. Round about the mid ‘90s, the floodgates of worship chaos (trying to use performance music for worship) were unleashed in Singapore and it soon gathered momentum (will talk about this more in-depth some other time). I am currently trying to find out if this happened in other countries at around the same period of time.

What this means is all the people who came to Christ from the mid ‘90s onwards were brought up on performance music as worship music. That is all they knew, therefore that is what they sincerely teach. You can imagine how difficult it is for them to believe what they knew from the very beginning of their Christian lives is wrong. The thought would probably be totally incomprehensible.

But all the features and criteria for worship music (given in my book) still remain true and applicable, whether or not people believe or accept them. And those criteria mean that it is very much easier to play worship music than performance music. Which means it should NOT take that much time to train a person (even a music newbie) to play worship music.

What DO you need to play worship music anyway? You need to be able to keep a steady beat. As my first guitar teacher once said, think of your grandmother patting a baby to sleep. She doesn’t try any erratic tempos or odd time signatures. She just naturally, instinctively keeps a steady pulse that soothes an infant to sleep. So if your grandmother can do it…

If you want to play the piano for worship, you can be very adequately prepared to play knowing five common chord types. With 12 keys and 3 different finger positions (voicings or inversions) that gives you 180 chords and shapes to know in your right hand.

Many people at this point are screaming at me “Are you nuts, JJ? There’s no way I can memorize and remember 180 chords!” These screaming hysterically to me are the very same people who:

1) type on a computer keyboard that has 26 letters, 10 numerals, and lots of different punctuation marks (while a piano has only 12 different notes repeated over and over again)

2) type (often without looking) on a keyboard that has keys a fraction of the size of a piano key (more precision and accuracy required)

3) type in English, which has a working vocabulary of 2000-3000 words, for which they have memorized the spelling of probably 850 words. These words vary in length from 2 to more than 10 letters (‘complicated’ has 11) and are made up of combinations of 26 different letters. On the piano you are pretty much playing 3 notes in the right hand, 1 note in the left, and they are made up of combinations of only 12 different notes.

So if you can type in English (and pat a baby to sleep), you have what it takes to play the piano for worship.

Or how about the drums? I’ve had a number of people tell me that they could never play the drums for worship, because they couldn’t coordinate all their four limbs the correct way at the same time. These are people who had the confidence to get into a car and drive it (using coordination of the same four limbs) in traffic situations that fluctuate continually.

More importantly, if you mess up playing drums for worship, the worst thing that can happen is that you don’t play the next week. If you mess up driving a car, you AND your loved ones are in deep trouble. These people can still tell me with absolute sincerity that they have no confidence to play drums or take drum lessons.

The whole point of what I share here is that it should not take you that long to be ready to play for worship. I’ve seen people who’ve attended ‘worship’ music classes and practiced diligently for more than a year and still can’t play for worship. When I teach them what’s in the chapter Worship Music 101, they’re like people who sat at the driver’s seat of a car for years, prayed to have the right heart to drive a car to the glory of God, interceded with God about the heart condition of the rest of the people in the car they are driving, and were suddenly told they had to turn the ignition key to get the car to move…

Of course, I am not saying that there is no value in learning performance music. Right now I want to spend more time studying classical piano. Though understanding it has greatly improved my worship music sound (especially when looking at Baroque music) and my harmonizing, it is still very much performance music. I would highly recommend that keyboardists without classical training get at least a few months of training in it, because it is great for your personal growth as a musician.

And I’m seriously looking at voice training. My voice is more than fine for leading worship, though no one is gonna pay me to sing in the near future. But, just for growth’s sake, I’d love to improve my voice so that it can work in a performance setting.

If you are continuing to learn performance music, then recognize you are learning it and remember that worship music is a different skill set. If you are happy learning performance music, great! I’m happy for you! I just don’t want you to pay to learn worship music, get performance music instead, and think that there is something wrong with you because you still can’t play for worship, get it?

In other words, I don’t want you to pay for Japanese lessons, get Chinese lessons instead (but termed as Japanese), and think that you are not called to be a missionary in Japan because you don’t have the gifting (or anointing) to learn Japanese from taking Chinese lessons. Am I making sense here?

Anyway, that’s all for this topic. Stay tuned, my next post will probably be on why I keep talking about 14 years in the music ministry in my promotional materials. It’s actually very important. More next time…

Be blessed, everyone!

Underwhelm Yourself...

Hi, everyone!

As I last announced, my website is finally up. You can check it out at www.invisibleworshipmusician.com/index.htm For the time being I am only offering my e-book at that site, (together with a free e-course made up of extracts from my book), but I look forward to eventually offering even more stuff there as time goes by. Thanks to all of you who quickly grabbed the book at its initial offer price! The special offer is over, but the book is still a great deal at its full price. Once you get it (and tell me you get it, of course) those of you taking lessons from me can just move on to cover new ground or study the book’s material in greater depth.

That way we all save time and get more done, right?

Anyway, I finally got the site up, set up some advertising operations and took the break I said I’d take. I woke up later (didn’t set any alarm), worshiped God and spent a while on my very-neglected kenjutsu exercises. Boy, that was a workout!

One thing that struck me that day is that for many of us it only takes a bit of effort to bring about improvements in our lives. Many of us have areas in our lives which are totally neglected, and when something is totally neglected, it only takes a little more effort in that area to start seeing some improvement.

In other words, stop seeing things as all-or-nothing. Because if you do, you’ll often end up doing nothing…

Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. (Romans 12:1, NIV)

And I’ve found great benefit in applying this concept to my health. There are people who have taken that above verse from Romans (offering our bodies) and combined it with Malachi 1:13 (don’t offer God blemished sacrifices) and come to the conclusion that we need to keep our bodies in optimal health or our bodies will be blemished sacrifices.

It’s a great idea, but pressurizing for most of us. Most of us already know what we need to do to take better care of our bodies, but because we see it as all-or-nothing, pretty much nothing gets done.

So instead of thinking “I need to drink 8 more glasses of water a day”, just think “I will drink ONE glass of water NOW.” Instead of thinking “I need to go gym 3 times each week” just think “I’m gonna do 10 push-ups NOW.” Instead of thinking “I need to eat more fruits and veg”, just think “I’ll eat ONE apple NOW”.

It’s all based on the idea I mentioned with some of you before, the idea of underwhelming yourself. Because when you underwhelm yourself with an activity, it is very easy to keep it up consistently. You then build momentum from that also. Using this concept I went from a totally sedentary lifestyle to working out 5 days a week (I still can’t believe it myself).

And I still don’t see myself as a disciplined person. If I REALLY was a disciplined person, I’d… (fill in the blank with all the activities in my life I still see as all-or-nothing)

This applies to music, prayer, Bible study, health and especially exercise. If you sat yourself down to name just ONE thing you could do NOW just to make your life a little more like what you’d want it to be, what would that one thing be? Get up and do it now. Drink the water, do the push-ups, eat the apple, read the 2 verses from Proverbs (that’s not bite-sized, that’s nibbling!); whatever it is, do it! You’ll finish it in 5 minutes, but you’ll feel so much better about yourself that you’re gonna do it again. And again. And maybe do it again tomorrow too. But let’s not think so far ahead. Let’s just look at the NOW.

Before long you’ll find that you can do stuff that will take you an hour a day (write a book, maybe?) and actually stick to it over a longer period of time. And from that point on, the momentum of change you build in your life will be surprising, even to yourself.

Just some thoughts I wanted to share with you all. I know that some of my recent posts have been quite generic, not specifically on the praise and worship ministry. But that’s gonna change. Because of my advertising efforts, over the next few days there will be a number of people introduced to this blog, people I don’t really know personally, and people who specifically want more information on praise and worship. So I’ll be talking about that more. I’ll also be answering questions that those who got my book bring up, and of course they will be more focused on the worship ministry as well.

So pray for me, people, that even my blogging will be done with wisdom from God, that I can minister through this blog even to siblings-in-Christ from overseas (some have names that look African, others from nationalities I don’t recognize YET).

Thanks, everyone! Be blessed!

The Book is released!

Hi, everyone!

Great news! My book, the Invisible Worship Musician, is now officially released!

Drawn from more than 14 years of serving in worship ministry and studying the Bible on worship, this 160+ page e-book is now available at www.invisibleworshipmusician.com/launch.htm

Check out what’s in the book by going to that page. And if you are involved with the worship ministry (or desire to get involved), move quickly. I am offering the Invisible Worship Musician at more than 50% off only from now until the 4^th of May.

The webpage is kinda rough, I know. For all of you who use Internet Explorer, the page may not look that good. Rest assured, I’ve tested the links and they are working. You may also email me your comments or questions at jvworship@gmail.com, ok?

Be blessed, everyone!